KIRK HAMMETT On Upcoming METALLICA Album: You Will See It When It's Done

In a brand new interview with San Jose Mercury News, METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett was asked when fans can expect to see the follow-up to the band's 2008 album, "Death Magnetic".

"You guys will see the album when it's done," he responded. "We have songs. I can verify that. We are working on music. I can verify that."

He continued: "It's so early in the project — things can shift drastically to the left or the right within a week's time. It's hard to comment on anything right now, because nothing is really permanent."

METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich recently told RollingStone.com that the band has written close to 20 new songs for its long-awaited tenth studio album, and will get closer to entering the studio in the near future. Ulrich said, "We've got lots of songs, and we're honing them and tweaking them. It's pretty close."

He continued, "In our world, there's been a distinct difference between the creative phase and the recording phase. With this project, we're trying to bridge the two a little more organically and not have there be such a great divide between the processes. We want to see if we can bring some of the creative curiosity, the impulsive stuff that happens when you're first playing a song into the studio."

Ulrich added that the band doesn't want to record in a way that feels "labored over and overthought."

Bassist Robert Trujillo told The Pulse Of Radio that there's always a surplus of new song ideas coming out of frontman James Hetfield. "James usually comes up with a lot of stuff," he said. "He's the kind of guy where he plugs in his guitar, turns a volume knob or a, you know, a tone knob, and he comes up with, you know, the greatest riff that you can imagine. So in that case, there's no shortage of riffs and ideas."

Even though Ulrich warned that "life continues with family and personal events," he added that the band is "certainly down there [writing] pretty much every day."

METALLICA spent a lot of time outside the studio in 2014, with activities that included a string of European all-request shows last summer, appearing as guests of honor at a film festival, and playing a week-long residency on "The Late Show With Craig Ferguson".