KIRK HAMMETT: The Great Thing About Working With Producer RICK RUBIN Is He's Never Around

August 11, 2008

METALLICA recently spoke to MTV News about the band's decision to collaborate with Rick Rubin, one of the most important producers of the last 20 years, on their latest album, "Death Magnetic".

According to guitarist Kirk Hammett, Rubin's style was drastically different than that of Bob Rock, the man who helmed the previous four METALLICA albums, in that he was less hands-on. In fact, he was barely ever in the studio.

"The great thing about working with Rick is he's never around," Hammett said. "I would say that's a very strong point, in that it leaves the four of us to take on the entire brunt of the work and the planning that goes into the songwriting process and the recording process. Of course, Rick was there for part of that process — when we recorded drums and vocals — but the fact that we were isolated in our studio, working on the songs ourselves, made a big difference, because it kept our sound pure. We got more METALLICA that way than we had previously with Bob Rock.

"Bob would add a lot of his own musical input, and with that came a lot of his own influences and style and jurisdiction and idiosyncrasies," Hammett continued. "And it would eventually make it into our sound. But with Rick, because he wasn't there, it's almost 100 percent undiluted METALLICA. He'd come in and say, 'That's good, that isn't, change that.' And we would have to figure that out for ourselves. This is the most pure we've sounded in a long time."

Read the entire story from MTV News.

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