Kirk Hammett: I think it's the best album we've put out in, say, fifteen years.
Krone.at: Oh, but that rules out quite a lot of work you've done in the past!
Kirk Hammett: Yeah, it's our eleventh studio album, but it feels like our sixth. It's just a really spectacular range of songs. This time we're not afraid to refer to our past music in order to create future music. People will see that we've kind of embraced our old vocabulary again and are using that vocabulary to express new things. I'm super excited to make this album, finish it and release it — 'cause then we can go out and play it to the people. We might have stretched our cores a little too much in the last fifteen years, but we've always came back to what we originally are and have been. I think with this album we're definitely going a little more back into our roots.
Krone.at: Does this mean, you're heading from "St. Anger" as a start further into, let's say, the raw meat!?
Kirk Hammett: Yeah, its super raw! There are some songs on that album that are so fast, that James and I kinda look at each other and go, "Ouch! Our wrist are gonna fall off." There are a lot of really, really fast songs, a whole lot of really heavy stuff. We changed our approach to writing the songs, all of us were working on the material this time. We also changed our tuning. With "St. Anger" we had the guitars really low. This time, we tuned the guitars back up to what they originally were for the first five albums. Because we've done that, James' voice sounds more like it did in the '80s than it did in the '90s. There's a lot of changes that we've made, but I believe that they are all for the better.
I've been wanting them to say something like this, u know, indicate that the next cd isnt going to suck so bad this time. They're making it out to be a really killer record but im gonna have to download it before i buy it lol

I have never written off Metallica and i always knew they had it in them to make more kick ass metal.
I just hope for their sake and more so for the true fans who have stuck by them through all the shit that they show us they still know how to make a killer record. I for one am really looking forward to hearing the new material..

It can't be hard to top their previous albums in that 15 years.
I'll buy the album regardless.

I really like Metallica a lot, so this is very good news!

the album will probably sell millions if its bad but im hopings its good

cant wait...i hope they realised how much the world did not like st .anger...and have made big changes to the sound.

Didn't they say exactly the same for 'St. Anger'?

honestly if it turns out like st.anger i will know metallica can never get their old sound back...

^ Yeah, I've got to agree with you to a certain degree there
But, I will buy it....see how it turns out
I hope it's good!!!!

I WANNA BUY NOW!! Id love it they did put out an awesome album coz it'd kick all those people in the balls that say Metallica are shit or are so determined to say they like metallica but only the old stuff. I utterly love the old stuff but the new stuff is alright, jesus i can think of a lot worse stuff than that.

PLEASE let this be true! I know that this is similar to what they said about St. Anger, but I'm very willing to completely block that thought out of my head. Hell, even something like the black album would have me going mental when they release it.
Though this sounds completely the opposite of the shitty 'new songs' on YouTube - if their new stuff is like Kirk is saying, hats off to Rick Rubin. That guy is one hell of an awesome producer, imo.