Metallica’s Kirk Hammett: ‘We’re at the 25 Percent Point With Writing New Album’

This weekend (April 11-12) is Hammett's second annual FearFestEVIL, a metal/ horror festival in San Jose, Calif.

Hammett reports that after the festival, the band will get back to Metallica's HQ studios to continue work on its next album.

"We have a lot of good songs," he 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."

Hammett 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 spent much of 2014 outside of the studio, with activities that included a week-long stint on the The Late Show with Craig Ferguson, headlining at Glastonbury, and the Metallica By-Request Summer Tour.