METALLICA's KIRK HAMMETT: 'We're At The 25 Percent Point' Of Writing Process For Next Album

METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett spoke to Billboard.com about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the band's the long-awaited follow-up to 2008's "Death Magnetic".

"We have a lot of good songs," Hammett said. "The songs are ever-changing at this point. Nothing is etched in stone. We still have a lot of material have to sift through, still. We have well over a dozen songs and we still have well over two or three hundred riffs, too, so it's hard to say at what point we actually are in in the project. I don't think we hit the middle point yet. I would say we're at the 25 percent point, maybe 30 percent point. It's hard to say, but I mean we are working on it and there are songs and we're making plans to write more songs and record."

He continued: "Whenever we go into the studio, it becomes such a huge sort of thing in our lives that it does take on monstrous proportions. It takes up a lot of space in our lives. Yes, you can look at it as something monstrous, for sure — and we've made movies about it, so there you go, man."

METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich recently told RollingStone.com that the band has written close to 20 new songs for its long-awaited tenth studio album, and will get closer to entering the studio in the near future. Ulrich said, "We've got lots of songs, and we're honing them and tweaking them. It's pretty close."

He continued, "In our world, there's been a distinct difference between the creative phase and the recording phase. With this project, we're trying to bridge the two a little more organically and not have there be such a great divide between the processes. We want to see if we can bring some of the creative curiosity, the impulsive stuff that happens when you're first playing a song into the studio."

Ulrich added that the band doesn't want to record in a way that feels "labored over and overthought."

Even though Ulrich warned that "life continues with family and personal events," he added that the band is "certainly down there [writing] pretty much every day."

METALLICA spent a lot of time outside the studio in 2014, with activities that included a string of European all-request shows last summer, appearing as guests of honor at a film festival, and playing a week-long residency on "The Late Show With Craig Ferguson".