METALLICA's ROBERT TRUJILLO: 'There's No Shortage Of Ideas' For Next Studio Album

METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo were interviewed on the red carpet of this past Monday's (May 12) 10th annual MusiCares MAP Fund benefit concert, which honored BLACK SABBATH singer Ozzy Osbourne. Speaking about the progress of the songwriting sessions for METALLICA's long-awaited follow-up to 2008's "Death Magnetic", Trujillo said (see video below): "The ideas are all there; there's no shortage of ideas. It's just finding the time to really nail it down and focus. And that will come very soon. After tonight, hopefully." Hammett added: "And we're old school about it, too; we like to all get in a room and bash it out. I know a lot of bands and a lot of musicians work digitally now, with just trading files, but, you know, we're still cavemen about it. We like to get in a room and bash it out and talk amongst ourselves and argue and fight. It's all part of the process, but it still feels real once you get to the end result."

Hammett told Guitar World in a recent interview that METALLICA will start working in earnest on a new album this fall, saying, "We totally want to make an album. But we have all these other touring commitments, and we have families now. It's gonna be summertime soon, and it's hard to work because the kids are out of school."

As he has insisted repeatedly in other interviews, Hammett claimed that the band has "a backlog of riffs in the riff bank," adding, "Now it's about picking riffs out, putting them together and moving along. Later, we'll revisit it all and see where it goes. We've all said to each other that September is gonna be the time when we buckle down. I know I told everyone it was gonna be last January . . . but that's just the way it goes!"

Drummer Lars Ulrich told The Pulse Of Radio not long ago that METALLICA no longer wants to devote large chunks of time to any one project. "You know, METALLICA, in order for it to be true and pure and honest, has to be fun," he said. "And so the days of, you know, writing for a year and then recording for a year and then going on the road for three years — those kind of endlessly long cycles — they're just behind us. I don't think we have the stamina to do anything for those elongated periods of time any longer."

METALLICA recently completed a South American tour where the band played a nearly all-request set, with 17 songs chosen online by fans prior to each gig and the last slot filled by the new track "Lords Of Summer".

That song or possibly another new one will also feature in the set list for the band's upcoming European festival run, on which it will repeat the "by request" format.

Hammett said that "Lords Of Summer" is far from finished, telling Guitar World, "I didn't have time to work out the guitar solo in 'Lords Of Summer'. The solo that's on the demo track was all we had time to do . . . If you compare the solo in the demo version to what I've been playing live at those South American shows, it's a lot better and more refined now."

METALLICA did spend some time this spring working on material for the follow-up to "Death Magnetic", but the band's 10th studio effort is not expected out until 2015.