I’m on this eternal quest to get the best guitar sound in the world, but my vision of what is 'the best' changes every time I go into the studio. How important is the guitar sound to achieving that character? You know, 'This is anger, and here it is.'" It’s cool because it’s raw and in your face, but it has just one dimension. "I’d like to think every one of the albums has its own unique and distinct sound. The new album references the past, but it has its own character. This has to rise to the top again, somehow. It’s like, 'Come on, Johnny Cash is America. Johnny was totally screwed by his record company and kind of disappeared. "Yeah, presenting them again and giving them another chance to speak. Rick is great at taking a classic artist like Johnny Cash and helping them recapture what made them great in the first place. He’s good at capturing the essence of the artists he works with." It’s one of the reasons we chose Rick Rubin to produce the album. "Some of the engineers would complain and say things like, 'You can’t hear the vocal,' or 'You can’t hear the guitar… what’s that sound?' And we’d say, 'That’s us! Record it, please.' We tried to capture that attitude again. We’d walk into a studio and we’d play what we knew and that was that. When we recorded our first albums, we had no regard for authority or for the way things were supposed to be. It’s impossible to completely regain your innocence or virginity. "I guess I would say that it’s a look backward – taking the essence of our earlier style and playing it with our current skills. So with that, we begin our conversation that encompasses life, death and Hetfield's “eternal quest” to get the world’s greatest guitar sound. I always feel like telling them to just go and read them,” he says with a laugh. I hate it when people ask me about my lyrics.
Warming up to the topic, Hetfield, who is often said to have the best right hand in metal, says, “I’d much rather talk about guitar playing. The result, Hetfield explains, is a work of new “power, excitement and clarity.”Īs for his fabled rhythm playing, it’s never been harder, faster or more precise. Helping the band get back on track are superstar producer Rick Rubin, (noted for his productions for Johnny Cash, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Slipknot and Slayer, among numerous others) and bassist Robert Trujillo, who took over bass duties for the group in 2003 (longtime bassist Jason Newsted quit Metallica in early 2001 to pursue other projects). With our new album, we’re back into our earlier mode, where the songs are more of a ride. Anger is exactly what it had to be and needed to be. During that period I was breaking down and rebuilding. “We tore Metallica down to a bare-bones skeleton, and it was not unlike what I went through in my personal life. Or that snare sound was on,” he says laughing, referring to the distinctive tuning of drummer Lars Ulrich’s kit, which became the signature sound of the album.Īt the same time, the frontman defends the validity and sound of the work, which he feels directly reflected his state of mind following his much-reported stint in rehab. "Either the singing was on or the riff was on.
Anger was somewhat – I don’t want to say ‘boring’ – but it made the album pretty one-dimensional. “Being a singer, there are very few songs I listen to just for the solos, but the solo is the voice for a little while. “I wasn’t a big fan of not having any solos on the album,” Hetfield says. Featuring repetitious, grungy drop-C riffs and a surprising absence of shredding from the band’s virtuoso lead guitarist, Kirk Hammett, the controversial 2003 release was Metallica’s least successful studio outing. Falling short of calling it a “mistake,” it is clear that Hetfield has some misgivings about his band’s previous studio effort, St.
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