New Metallica Album.com

A five-minute interview with METALLICA guitarist/vocalist James Hetfield conducted yesterday (Wednesday, July 16) by VG TV at the opening show of the second leg of the band’s European summer tour in Bergen, Norway can be viewed below. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow.

On the title of METALLICA’s new album, “Death Magnetic”:

James Hetfield: “‘Death Magnetic’, at least the title, to me, it’s… It had something to do with… It started out as kind of a tribute to people that have fallen in our business, like Layne Staley [ALICE IN CHAINS] and a lot of the people that have died, basically — rock and roll martyrs of sorts. And then it kind of grew from there. Thinking about death… some people are drawn towards it, and just like a magnet, some people are drawn towards it, [and] other people are afraid of it and push away. And the concept that we’re all gonna die sometimes is over-talked about and then a lot of times never talked about — no one wants to bring it up; it’s the big white elephant in the living room. But we all have to deal with it at some point. So that’s kind of the subject matter.”

On bassist Robert Trujillo’s contributions to the new record and the band’s overall sound:

James Hetfield: “I don’t really have to say it, but I will — he’s an amazing bass player; very competent. He can play pretty much anything we throw at him. Not only that, but obviously [Robert] playing with his fingers brings a fuller sound. He — and no disrespect to Jason [Newsted, Rob's predecessor in METALLICA] — but Rob has already written more on this album than Jason had in his whole 14 years. A lot of that had to do with us not being willing, and I totally understand that, but just his material seemed to gel better. It feels as though we’ve known him forever, basically, is what it feels like. And there’s still times when I see him in pictures with us, and I go, ‘Oh, yeah! He’s in our band. Dude, we kick ass even more now.’ It’s a good feeling.” -Blabbermouth

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 7:09 pm and is filed under Album info, James, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.