Speaking with the Los Angeles Times, Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett has slammed Guns N’ Roses for touring on their catalog without any new material in nearly a decade saying, “Unfortunately, they’ve turned into somewhat of a nostalgia act, which to me is kind of sad.”
With their new album on the way and, as the band has stated, a massive U.S. tour in the works, singer James Hetfield adds, “I don’t want to think we’re trying to stay young by writing new stuff, but it makes us feel relevant. It makes us feel like we’re still progressing.”
In 2014, this was a topic again, when Hammett was asked if Metallica would ever stop making new music. The axeslinger said to the El Comercio in Ecuador, “I hope not. There’s a lot of different aspects to this band that we need to tend to. But I really think that the touring part supports the recording part, and the recording part — the creativity, the songs — supports the touring part. Both of those things kind of support each other and need each other for us to move forward. So I think that we would always need to write music, write songs, record them… It might be the exact opposite — we might just end up recording songs for the rest of our career at one point. Or we might end up just touring. But I, myself, doubt that any of those two things will happen. I’m pretty confident that we will always be creative, because that’s how we are as individuals. I mean, that’s how I am — I get bored, pick up my guitar, and next thing you know, I have a f***ing riff. I get excited and I show it to the other guys, and next thing you know, we’re jamming on it. It’s a part of what we do.”
Stay with The Loop to win copies of some of their greatest works and qualify to win a one-of-a-kind experience with Metallica that we’ll give away when the new album “Hardwired…To Self-Destruct” is issued on Friday.
Here’s a sample of the new stuff!