METALLICA Bassist Says Writing Process For New Album Has Begun

GulfNews.com recently conducted an interview with METALLICA bassist Robert Trujillo. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

GulfNews.com: In terms of new music, your last album, "Death Magnetic", was out in 2008, and you have been touring heavily with that. Are you currently working on new material?

Trujillo: We've been busy writing and recording. We've got a couple of new songs we have been working on the past couple of weeks. The writing process for the new METALLICA album has begun. We've been in the studio with Rick Rubin, working on a couple of things, and we're going to be recording during the most of next year. We've got a lot of work ahead of us. But the great thing is that we have sort of already jumped off the launch pad and we're swimming. It's happening. It's reality. It's a lot of fun, there are a lot of ideas, and we're really excited about the new record. For me, personally, "Death Magnetic" was the launch pad for the next record. This is the beginning of something very, very cool.

GulfNews.com: The band have been going strong for 30 years. What keeps the passion alive?

Trujillo: When we go into the studio and put our guitars on, and Lars [Ulrich] gets behind the drums, we feel like teenagers again, hanging out in the garage jamming to [IRON] MAIDEN or BLACK SABBATH, and we still do that. And the jokes fly around, and there's really good energy. There's new riffs and new song ideas. And that's where it is very special, because a band like METALLICA have been around for nearly 30 years now, and we haven't lost that spark. Unfortunately, a lot of older bands lose that spark after a while. We're excited to create and we still feel like punk kids.

GulfNews.com: How do you balance your work life with your family life?

Trujillo: We like to keep things flowing in a positive way, and believe it or not, a lot of what we do revolves around our family. We centre our tours around what is going on in our family life to keep things solid at home as well. In the summertime, we bring the kids out on tour with us. You can have the best of both worlds. During the course of "Death Magnetic", the reason the record took so long for us to finish was because we had five kids born between us. Two from my wife, and Kirk [Hammett, guitar] had two children and Lars had a child. It is a large family now, because James [Hetfield, guitar/vocals] already has three older children, and Lars has two older children.

GulfNews.com: METALLICA fans are arguably like no other. What do the fans mean to METALLICA?

Trujillo: The fans are very passionate. They embrace the lyrics that James brings to them. There's something wonderful about having them take something that you identify with in your life and have it mean so much to them as well, so it's very soulful. We really like to meet our fans, so every show we would have a meet and greet with a few fans. Obviously it is impossible to meet 20,000 fans in one setting, but we do take the time to meet about 20 fans per night, shake their hands and sign things for them. And that goes a long way.

Read the entire interview from GulfNews.com.

Photo below courtesy of Metallica.com

(Thanks: ZombieRichard)