METALLICA's HETFIELD Talks About DAVE MUSTAINE, EXODUS And Follow-up To 'St. Anger'

METALLICA frontman James Hetfield has spoken to The New Zealand Herald about his current relationship with former METALLICA guitarist Dave Mustaine (MEGADETH),the recent reformations of some of the thrash metal genre's pioneering bands, and METALLICA's next studio album.

The following are some of the highlights of the interview:

On his current relationship with Dave Mustaine:

James Hetfield: "It's alright. . ." Asked if they keep in contact, James says, "Well, you know, we share struggles, trying to stay clear and present, we don't really communicate much, we're doing a lot of communicating within the four of us, in the band... I wasn't around when he (Mustaine) was there [for the filming of the 'Some Kind of Monsters' documentary], I was doing my own soul searching."

On old thrash bands like EXODUS, NUCLEAR ASSAULT and DEATH ANGEL reforming and touring:

James Hetfield: "Great. Kirk was in EXODUS, and ahh, they've gone though some tough stuff too, their original singer died, and those other bands, they were all around when we were growing up, and starting. . . I mean, it's great, if they want to do it, why not... I mean if it feels right, if it feels good, some bands have survived, and some bands needed to go away and then come back when metal got, kinda together again."

On a possible follow-up to "St. Anger":

James Hetfield: "Well we've got a lot of songs that we didn't use on 'St Anger', maybe about 18 songs. They might see the light of day somewhere, we might kind of revamp some of them, but there's no lack of new stuff coming. Every time we go in the 'Tuning and Attitude' room, there's something new [coming out of us]."

To read the rest of the interview, click here.