Metallica are hard at work on their new album, but guitarist Kirk Hammett recently took a few moments to speak with Ultimate Classic Rock about the recording process for the band's upcoming disc and offer an update on their music.

"It’s heavy," says Hammett. "We’ve got some heavy stuff going. It delivers on that front for sure. You know, I would say a lot of it is along the lines of Death Magnetic. A lot of it seems to be going along those lines. But you know, with social media now and everything else, I’m a little bit wary to comment too much on the album, because then people pick up on it. Then, people think that that’s the final definitive statement on what this album is, or how much of it is done, or what it sounds like or whatever – and that’s not really the case. It’s not accurate. [Laughs.] We’re still working on it."

As many fans are aware, Metallica are known for having an incredible wealth of musical ideas going into each album and one of the biggest tasks is trying to figure out how it all fits together. Hammett also offered some insight on the album creation process, explaining, "We go in there and see what we have, as far as material. Usually, you get the material together and then you can kind of see what the commonalities are and then from there just kind of expand on all of those commonalities and you know, after a while, you kind of have a uniform sound which later on turns into the signature sound of the album. That’s pretty much what happens every time. But it happens over time and a lot of times, it isn’t apparently obvious -- at least to myself."

He adds, "Over the course of time, you just kind of watch how things are morphing and changing and then at one point, you’re like, 'Hmmm, okay, it’s sounding more complete now. I’m getting more of a complete picture of what this album is actually sounding like.' And then that’s when you can actually start commenting on what the album really sounds like in earnest and correctly."

Hold tight Metallica fans, new music is coming and we'll keep you up to date as more information surfaces.

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