Metallica Has ‘Enough Material’ for New Album

Metallica have enough songs for a new album, but their busy schedule in the coming months has sidetracked the band from putting their full focus on a new record. The rockers are helming their own Orion Music and More festival in Detroit next month, and are also prepping a 3D movie, Metallica Through the Never, for release this fall.

“I want it done yesterday,” frontman James Hetfield told Billboard, “and [Orion] and this movie is keeping us pretty busy at this point and it’s taking a lot of our time and effort. We’ve been touring some obscure places; I guess basically what we’re trying to do is pay for this movie, so the touring is keeping us from getting in there and finishing the record. Right now the focus is on the movie.”

Despite the film, Metallica have still found the time to hammer out a good amount of new music, even with Orion’s June 8th and 9th dates right around the corner. “We got out into the room and jammed and we’ve come up with enough material for a record, for sure,” Hetfield said. “We’ve gone through maybe one-tenth of the material that’s on our riffs CDs. We’ve got enough for an album, we just haven’t had enough time to really focus on it and dial in and start whittling it into these masterpieces, hopefully.”

“The grooves and the riffs that are already on the radar are really, really awesome,” bassist Robert Trujillo added. “We’ve still got more riffs to go through and jam out and throw into the process, but we’re getting there, and we’ll have something great, hopefully, in the next year.”

As for Metallica Through the Never, which opens September 27th on every IMAX screen in North America, Hetfield has high expectations for the ambitious project. “It’s pretty complex. It’s like three movies in one. . . . So there’s a lot of different dynamics happening within this movie, and every time we go and see it and tweak here and there,” he said. “It’s like putting a song together ”“ only it’s a little more expensive. It’s pretty scary but it’s been something on our radar for awhile. It’s become more unique than we ever though it would.”