Music

Metallica doesn't want to 'get anyone's hopes up' for new album

by Richard Howard

It’s been a long-running joke that, when it comes to a new Metallica release, the least excited parties seem to be the band themselves. With a gap of five years between albums being a regular occurrence, and the torturous process the band goes through revealed in the documentary Some Kind of Monster, it’s pretty easy to see why.

However, even for Metallica, the writing and recording of their yet-unnamed new album seems to be bumming out the San Francisco metal lifers ultra-hard.

Over two years ago, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett told Billboard that the band had “pretty much come up with every sort of excuse we can not to start work on the album, but we’ve run out of excuses, so we pretty much have to start work on it now.” Whoa, Hammett, better be careful you don’t give yourself a stroke with all that excitement.

A year ago, Metallica said they were at the “just blueprinting” stage – meaning, presumably, they were able to discover a few more of those elusive excuses in the year in between.

It’s a poor choice of words from frontman James Hetfield at their pre-Super Bowl show, however, that has people ribbing Metallica extra hard. Chatting with the crowd between songs, Hetfield shared the following tidbit (it’s around the 1:05:00 mark of the video):

Hetfield was almost certainly referring to the fact that, in Metallica-Speak, “getting near the end” could mean anything from a summer 2016 release to one so far in the future the band will have lost a grasp of their faculties and are all in adult diapers. However, fans and detractors have been having a field day interpreting it as a warning that the elusive album might be sort of crap and we could be looking at a full-on Chinese Democracy.

They just need some sort of pick-me-up to get that drive back. Hmmm… OK, think of it this way, fellas. You’ve already made St. Anger, so you know the new one can’t be your worst album, right?

You’re welcome.