Metallica vocalist/guitarist James Hetfield is the latest member of the legendary thrash outfit to sit in the hot seat for their ongoing ‘So What!‘ interview series surrounding the band’s impending new album “72 Seasons“. Amid the chat, which can be found in full over at metallica.com, Hetfield spoke of how this eleventh studio album found the group reinventing their writing dynamic.
Traditionally, it has been Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich who have sought to steer the ship for many of the band’s records. That was not the case this time around, as Hetfield sought to bring in guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist/vocalist Robert Trujillo closer into the fold. He said of that and being more open to the creative input of his bandmates on this album:
“A lot of – whooo – a lot of open heart surgery in a way in this album. We opened up. I was much more ready to open my heart to everyone in the band: lyrically, emotionally, and creatively. I was really an advocate, going out of my way to say, ‘Send in your riffs. We need stuff, c’mon,’ you know?
I don’t want to sit there with [only] Lars and create the songs anymore. I want everyone to be a part of it and be in it. ‘Can we all show up? Can we all be in the studio together? Can we jam on these things together? Can you speak up and say what you think might be great and not so great?’ Really wanting to open it up, and there were challenges in that. But I think we got through most of ’em, you know?
And again, we’ve all got our own personalities for a reason, and sometimes, when you put the mic in front of someone and say, ‘Here you go, say whatever you want,’ they realize that maybe they don’t want that and they’re better off playing off of what you come up with.
And I’m the same way. Someone’ll come up with an idea. I’m good at taking that and hopefully bringing it up to the next level. So it was challenging, but it was available, and that felt very freeing for everybody.
It took longer because there were more voices, obviously, and then Greg Fidelman [producer] is a trusted outside ear. And he’s able to say, ‘I don’t know about that,’ or, ‘Hey, that’s really good, do that again.’ So the writing process was a lot more open and a lot more fun having all four of us here.
You know, ‘Here’s a riff – let’s go jam on it and then see what comes up from it.’ There’re so many different ways to approach writing a song. In the past, some were already kind of put together and brought to the band. This was a little more, ‘Hey, this riff from Manchester, it’s awesome! Let’s see what we can do with it.’ So it started with less ingredients, I would say. We were building this record, and there were four chefs instead of just two.”
Later in the chat, Hetfield revealed that the title of the album’s first single “Lux Æterna” was his vote for the album’s title. While he didn’t get his wish, the yellow in the artwork is inspired by the idea of ‘eternal light’:
“…My vision was I wanted this album [to be] called Lux Æterna because that summed up all the songs for me, kind of an eternal light that was always inside of us that maybe is just now coming out. And I was out-voted, which is great. 72 Seasons is definitely more chewable. You get to figure out what it is. You get to dig into it and chew on it a little more. But that color came out of ‘Lux Æterna‘.”
“72 Seasons” will be out this Friday, April 14th.
