Metallica's 2016 album Hardwired ... to Self-Destructed marked the longest gap between studio albums for the legendary thrash band, arriving eight years after Death Magnetic. In a new interview with Mixdown Magazine, guitarist Kirk Hammett revealed that if it's up to him fans won't have to wait nearly as long for a new full-length.
"We're in our third year since Hardwired," he said. "Maybe we can get a bit more focus and go into the studio a bit sooner. I have a tonne [sic] of material. I've over-compensated, so I'm ready to go anytime."
Hammett goes on to cite the source of his inspiration to release albums more frequently: "When I was 13-14 years old, bands put out albums every year. Kiss put out an album every eight months. None of this eight years between albums ... We're hoping to avoid that this time around."
In 2014 Hammett infamously lost his iPhone, which reportedly included hundreds of files containing song ideas that were set to make it onto Hardwired, leaving him at essentially ground zero when the band hit the studio, and resulted in him receiving no writing credits on the release.
In an interview with Brave Words in 2016, he admitted, "Let's just say it's like, the reverberations for me, the consequences of losing my cell phone have been immense ... I had about, I don't know, 450 entries in there, which means there were about 250, 300 riffs, because a lot of times I'll write different versions of the same riff. And when I lost my phone, I could only recall about four riffs."
The Bay Area quartet's current Worldwired Tour has raged on since October 2016, with current dates set to end in November of this year. Find remaining dates here.
Below, watch Kirk Hammett tour the Salem Witch Museum and give us a preview of his 'It's Alive! Classic Horror and Sci-Fi Art From the Kirk Hammett Collection' exhibit
