Metallica’s new album “Hardwired … To Self-Destruct” was released on November 18, 2016. Album was the best-selling album of 2016.
Kirk Hammett made no contribution to the songwriting process of the album. He just played the guitar solos. There are various explanations about this subject. Kirk Hammett had said that he could not contribute to the album because he lost his phone contains all riffs.
Metallica’s frontman, James Hetfield, was the guest of the interview conducted by Planet Rock. Papa Het spoke about guitarist Kirk Hammett‘s lack of songwriting contributions to the band’s new album, “Hardwired… To Self-Destruct”. Asked if it’s true that Hammett lost his phone with hundreds of riff ideas for new album. He said:
“I don’t know. That’s what he tells us [laughs], so I take that as the truth. No, he submitted some riffs. I mean, not ‘submitted’… We all pile in our ideas, and they’re in the giant Metallica riff pile, and Lars is the one — since he’s not writing any of the riffs — he sifts through ’em and he’s able to identify ’em.
He’s got a great ear for the riff, and he’ll hear things that I don’t hear. I think, ‘Hey, this riff is great,’ and, ‘Yeah, but what about this part of this one?’ [And he says] ‘Nah, it’s not so good.’ And, ‘Let’s take that…’ So he’s not a guitar player, so it’s an unorthodox approach at picking riffs, which his great.”
But as far as Kirk… Kirk was not present in the studio. He was dealing with life. He had a lot of life things going on for himself, which he’ll choose to talk about if he wants. But, you know, [it was] Lars and I steering the ship as usual, going through the riffs, creating the songs. And I got to do a lot of guitar stuff that I was missing around ‘Death Magnetic’ and ‘St. Anger’ — some of the harmony guitar things, harmony vocals… You know, a little more layering, like the ‘Black’ album.“
You can listen to interview from below.
