METALLICA's KIRK HAMMETT: 'I'm Still Against File Sharing'

Saby Reyes-Kulkarni of The Pitch recently conducted an interview with METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

The Pitch: Looking back to the Black Album, why did you suddenly go for shorter songs? You had three classic albums in a row with winding, involved, progressive songs, and your fanbase up until that time came to you for that.

Kirk Hammett: We were just burned out on it. We wanted to do something that was more groove-oriented and had a little more soul. With the stuff we did in the '80s, a lot of times it was about showing off our chops.

The Pitch: So why the return to form with "Death Magnetic"?

Kirk Hammett: We got tired again. [Laughs.] When we started writing for "Death Magnetic", we found out that the more progressive stuff sounded good again. We hadn't done it for a while, and all of a sudden it just kinda sounded fresh. A lot of it also has to do with the fact that [producer] Rick Rubin said that he wanted to make the ultimate METALLICA album. In his mind, the ultimate METALLICA album would be more along the lines of what we did back in the '80s.

The Pitch: In the 2007 documentary "Get Thrashed", you said, "METALLICA invented thrash metal." I wanted to ask you about EXODUS, who you were playing with first. EXODUS' Gary Holt says that everybody who was there knows what EXODUS' role was.

Kirk Hammett: You know what? [Laughs.] I guess I was just at the center of two storms. If I was still in EXODUS, I would have said that EXODUS invented thrash metal. I said that only because I was in METALLICA at a certain moment in time. There were steps that were being taken, and there's a whole group of musicians who were feeling it. It was a zeitgeist. I would say METALLICA and EXODUS probably simultaneously, ANTHRAX and SLAYER, too — we were all just taking cues from what we heard and what the state of heavy music was at that point. It was something that we all just kinda felt.

The Pitch: After the Napster backlash, how do you look back on the band's attempt to fight downloading?

Kirk Hammett: I'm still against file sharing. I still think people should respect the concept of intellectual property. I don't have a problem with downloading that intellectual property once the people that deserve to be paid do get paid. Technology is a double-edged sword. It's convenient and quick, but we pay a pretty high price for that convenience, that impatience. I would much rather be able to go out and buy a better-sounding CD than a shitty MP3. The whole e-mail and texting thing — I'm not sure if it's really bringing us together as much as it's isolating us. I kind of miss how people used to just call each other up.

Read the entire interview from The Pitch.