Kirk Hammett Hints at Metallica’s Future, Says Band Hasn’t ‘Really Peaked’
Metallica's Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo had their eyes on the future when they jointly appeared on NBC Sports in the band's Bay Area home base last week. The two rockers' appearance came ahead of a July 22 baseball game between the act's favored San Francisco Giants and the rival Los Angeles Dodgers.
Speaking with George Kontos, a TV game analyst and former MLB pitcher, the Metallica guitarist and bassist, respectively, each relayed how the heavy metal pioneers aren't done rocking just yet, even for all their history. To wit, Hammett claimed the band hasn't achieved its apex.
Watch the video down toward the bottom of this post.
"Man, it's crazy when I think about four decades," Hammett said of the influential outfit that formed in 1981. "I swear to God it seems like just yesterday that we were on a tour bus somewhere in the middle of America, just trying to keep up with everything. … Forty years passed so quickly, it's amazing."
The guitarist continued, "What's truly amazing now is the fact that I still feel like we haven't really peaked — we're still real hungry, we still wanna make music, we still care about music, we still care about each other. I don't see any signs of us slowing down … we have stuff that we wanna do."
Trujillo alluded to fresh Metallica material, saying, "You know, what's insane about all this is that there's no shortage of musical ideas and riffs and grooves and bass lines. A lot of times when bands have been around that long, there is a shortage — people run out of ideas — and we have the opposite problem; we've got too many ideas. So it's a good problem to have."
Metallica wrote at least 10 new songs while in quarantine, but drummer Lars Ulrich previously revealed that progress on a follow-up to 2016's Hardwired… to Self-Destruct was going slowly.
Still, the musicians are in a reflective yet forward-looking mood. Metallica will release a remastered version of their landmark 1991 Black Album on Sept. 10, including deluxe editions of the enhanced effort now available to pre-order on the group's website.
Alongside the reissue, tribute set The Metallica Blacklist will also emerge — it contains Black Album covers by over 50 other artists, including Miley Cyrus, St. Vincent, Ghost, Weezer and others.
Metallica recently shared a live "Wherever I May Roam," a rough mix of "The Unforgiven," a rehearsal take of "Holier Than Thou" and an alternate "Sad But True" as excerpts from the expanded parent album.
A black and white Metallica photo book arrives in October. Jigsaw puzzles for Metallica's three latest studio albums also come out this fall. Metallica and many of their contemporaries are currently leading a rock and metal surge in album sales.