METALLICA's KIRK HAMMETT Has A 'Brotherly' Bond With His Bandmates

METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett was interviewed on a recent edition of Westwood One's "2 Hours With Matt Pinfield" radio show. You can now listen to the chat below.

Speaking about his bond with his METALLICA bandmates, Kirk said: "Being in a band with these guys, it goes beyond just friendship. Part of the reason that we're together is, I believe — and I might be full of shit, but this is just what I believe — when we found each other, we recognized something in each other, something that we all kind of shared, a commonness about ourselves on a deeper level, an unconscious level, a subconscious level, deeper level, I think, that we recognized this. And the bond that we have that we've established very early on that has just grown over the years, it's just so strong, it's brotherly. It's, like, I love those guys so much, I hate those guys so much, I can't live my life without them. It's the kind of thing where we've experienced so much stuff together and we've experienced so many peaks and valleys, so many high points, so many low points that you just have this bond that you can't get rid of — I mean, it's there and it runs deep."

He continued: "I can't picture my life without these guys. I get emotional when I'm confronted with the thought of not being able to play music with these guys. Eventually that will happen, but right now, as I speak about it now, we're so ingradiated with each other, we have such a deep bond that it's just kind of impossible not to do what we do; it's hard not to do what we do now. It would be more difficult for us not to do what we're doing. We've crossed a threshold, we've crossed a line somewhere where it's just, like, we really don't have any choice; this is a part of our lives. And when we pick up our instruments, we play the way we are inside, and the way we are inside is the sound of METALLICA — that is the sound of METALLICA. And we'll never get rid of that, 'cause it is inside of us. It's something that we can't get rid of unless we tried… You know, I could probably sound like someone else, but with a lot of effort, with a lot of work. It's just way too late in this game to back out of anything."

Hammett added: "And, you know, we're still figuring it out too. It's never perfect, from any given point to any other given point. I mean, we're still figuring it out, we're still trying to do the right thing. We still have our goals, we still… It doesn't feel like we're going downhill, it doesn't feel like we're in the winter of our creative lives. It still feels like we're hungry, motivated… I don't feel like I'm done or even near any sort of completion on any of this."

METALLICA will next play South America's Lollapalooza events in Argentina and Chile on March 31 and April 1, respectively.

The North American leg of METALLICA's "WorldWired" 2017 tour kicks off in Baltimore and will hit stadiums in 25 cities before winding down in mid-August. Support on the quartet's first North American trek since 2009 will come mainly from AVENGED SEVENFOLD and VOLBEAT, with GOJIRA taking over for the latter group for the last six shows.

The first European leg of "WorldWired" kicks off on September 4 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and stretches through November. After a break, the trek will pick up again on February 10, 2018 in Bologna, Italy, and continue through May, finishing up in Helsinki, Finland.