METALLICA's JAMES HETFIELD: We're Writing New Lyrics As A Group

METALLICA frontman James Hetfield has revealed that, for the first time in the band's history, they are writing song lyrics as a group. "Scary thing is that it is actually working, it just takes longer," Hetfield stated. "The feeling that everyone can get behind the lyrics as a group, is addressing one of those doubts I had whether they understood my lyrics or not."

Meanwhile, during an August 12th chat via the group's official Jump In The Studio web site (as first reported here yesterday),METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich commented on the progress of the recording sessions for the band's forthcoming studio album, which is currently being tracked in San Francisco for an early 2003 release

"How far along are we? I have no idea," Ulrich stated. "Like I've said a few times before, the main thing for me is to not have a fucking deadline, a schedule, any pressure, fuck that shit. We did some great work last year before James went away, and we've done some great work for the last three months since we've started up again. How far along are we? Fuck knows, but when any of us figure it out, we'll let you know here first.

"The way we're writing and recording is completely different than ever before, it's one process now instead of two separate ones. In the past, me and James used to write the songs off in our own world and then take them to the rest of the band and then go into the studio and record them. Now we're all jamming together, coming up with shit together, writing and recording in the same moment and working a lot with that in the Pro Tools system. It's a very cool way to do it, much more organic, less anal, more free, yadda, yadda, yadda, get it? We're probably somewhere around 25 basic ideas, give or take, and right now we just keep going 'til we feel we've exhausted the creative batteries. Then our plan is to go back and look at everything, start throwing shit out, start going to the next level on the stuff we like, and so on and so forth. The main thing we feel that will be different is that in the past we never threw anything out and we were so full of ourselves that we believed every idea, every song we came up with was good enough to go on the record, should go on the record, was no fucking way not going on the record. This time around we look forward to being selective and censoring ourselves and just going with the best shit possible, whatever that may be at that moment."

Guitarist Kirk Hammett has also offered the following update on the songwriting and recording sessions for the forthcoming album:

"We just finished a couple of verses worth of lyrics and James is currently singing them. We are debating whether or not to take the song to the next level. Surf was good this morning and [producer] Bob [Rock] & Lars have been bickering all week, but it has all been in good fun. Things have been moving well this week, The emphasis has been more on lyrics and melody. We are trying not to write any new songs because we lost count of how many we have and we don't want to subconsciously increase the workload, because those songs have to be finished sooner or later!"