Livestrong 
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| Interview with Kirk in the British Metal Hammer Part 2 |
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WHAT IS THE NEW ALBUM SOUNDING LIKE?
Kirk Hammet: In comparison with St. Anger, this album is a lot more riffy, a lot more dynamic, a lot tighter in arrengement and a lot more to the point. It’s more traditional Metallica. And there are a lot more guitar solos on it, I have to say. One song cycles through so many changes, it feels like I’m soloing for a full minute.
WHY DID YOU SELECT RICK RUBIN TO PRODUCE IT?
KH: We knew that we needed to go down a different avenue. And it seemed like whenever I mentioned to people that we’d started writing another album, they’d say, “ You gotta get Rick Rubin.” And we’d been considering that ourselves anyway. We’ve known Rick since 1986 when Reign in Blood came out. I remember Rick showing up backstage at a Master of Puppets show.
And he had the master tape to Reign in Blood. And we were thinking, “Oh wow, he has the new Slayer album. We gotta hear it.” And I remember once we heard it we were just like, “Holy crap, that’s the best thing we’ve ever heard.”
WHY DID YOU DECIDE NOT TO USE BOB ROCK?
KH: We’ve been with Bob Rock a good 16 years or so. It kind of culminated with him playing bass in the band for St. Anger. I love the contributions that Bob has given the band. I really felt like he was in the band at the end.
But it was time to move on. We really owe a lot to Bob for helping us achieve the goals we wanted to achieve in the 90s, which were drastically different from what we wanted to achieve in the 80s.
Bob was the guy to do that, while still maintaining musical integrity. But now it’s a whole new decade and time for a change. We had all the usual conversations. “Who are we going to get to produce? Should we do it ourselves again? Should we get the ‘producer du jour’?”. And since Rick’s name was coming up every 15 minutes, we were open to giving him a try.
HOW HAS IT BEEN DIFFERENT WORKING WITH RICK RUBIN?
KH: Bob Rock had a certain amount of musical input to the songs. He’d say, “Allright, D sharp instead of F sharp,” or “Play a major pentatonic there rather than a minor pentatonic.” I think that’s great. We were into that. Maybe we needed it at that point. But Rick Rubin doesn’t get involved in the technical aspect things: sounds, or is this the right scale or the right key? He mainly goes by feel.
How we’re relating to each other and to the song. How we’re playing. The feel we’re projecting while we’re playing the song. And basically he lets us know if we’re on or not. He lets us know if a riff is not happening. If it’s happening, great. If not, he just tells us to write soemthing better. I really like that approach because the responsibility of it all is in our hands.
Rick is just letting us steer this thing ourselves. He’s not in the studio while we’re recording, so there isn’t that typical record producer micromanagement going on 24/7. Because that’s what producers do, right? Micromanage every detail. They’re into that. When we were cutting drums, he was there in the studio for us. Because his main concern is how the drums feel and how the vocals feel. But when we were there recording he was very laid back, literally.
He was on the couch. He has great suggestions and ideas. A lot of times they’re out of our range for thinking. But that’s due to the fact that he’s a non-musician who’s very musical.
He has a sense of musicality that’s more on the listener’s side of things, rather than the performer’s side of things. It’s obviously working for him. It’s obviously a universal thing. He gets results.
HOW ARE YOU WRITING THE SONGS?
KH: We used an approach that was the same as St. Anger, in the sense that we’d all show up and jam on songs. The seeds for the songs on this new album came out of jams that we would have on the road, before we’d go onstage.
We have this thing called the tuning room at our shows. It’s usually a really small room with a drum kit, two guitar amps, a bass amp, a P.A. that’s never loud enough and a Pro Tools setup. One of us would come in with a riff and we’d jam on it. James was always the first one in the tuning room, so often he’d be fiddling with a riff when the rest of us came in. And we would do this every time we had a show. So at the end of the tour we had over 50 hours of music. It was insane. We went through all of it, trying to narrow it down, which was a horrible process for me, because I think everything we play is great.
So I wasn’t any help! I let the other guys pick the riffs. Once all the major riifs were picked, we started jamming on them and tuning them into songs. After about a year’s time we had 22 songs. We just refinded it from there.
AT WHAT POINT DID RICK RUBIN ENTER THE PROCESS?
KH: Right around that Point where we had 22 songs. We had a lot of meetings with him. He listenen to the songs we had written up to then and he liked what he heard. He said, “Yeah, keep working on those songs, keep making them better.” Eventually we had a vote on the 14 strongest songs. From there, we pretty much focused on those songs and worked on them with Rick.
WHAT ARE THE LYRICS LIKE?
KH: I think James is handling the lion’s share of that this time. A lot of times I try to contribute songs titles because that might spur ideas. But at this point we still just have stupid working titles for the songs. With us, there’s never any shortage of ideas, which is the problem. There are already too many song titles. But I’m afraidt the list is not for public consumption. It ranges from the really great to the really stupid.
METALLICA’S AS YET UNTITLED NINTH STUDIO ALBUM WILL BE OUT “WHEN IT’S READY”, THIS YEAR.
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'Tallica is life, the rest is just details!
This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by Livestrong: 18.04.2008 16:29.
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18.04.2008 16:24 |
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Dinx
Official MetClub Member
Registration Date: 26.01.2007
Posts: 486
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Somehow it reads like the interview from the american magazine "Revolver" from February. There are really exactly the same phrases.
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Searchiiiiing, seek and ahhh what? SEEK AND DESTROY!
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18.04.2008 16:40 |
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Livestrong
Super Donator - Respected Member
Registration Date: 24.01.2007
Posts: 3,235
Herkunft: Civitas Nova
Thread Starter 
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Well, it's one to one from the May issue of the Hammer.
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'Tallica is life, the rest is just details!
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18.04.2008 16:47 |
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Marmetal
Official MetClub Member
Registration Date: 23.08.2005
Posts: 1,861
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Thanks again Livestrong!
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18.04.2008 18:32 |
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norbinho19
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Registration Date: 16.10.2006
Posts: 1,752
Herkunft: Tyrol, Austria
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thanks again!!
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Norbinho on Maiden 2011
May 31 - Munich, GER
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Jun 3 - Berlin, GER
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Jul 31 - Birmingham, UK
Aug 1 - Cardiff, WAL
Aug 3 - Belfast, NIL
Aug 5 - London, UK
Aug 6 - London, UK
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19.04.2008 14:30 |
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