Five years have passed since Metallica released the epic "Black Album." During that time, the music world has radically changed-and so has Metallica.

By Tom Beaujour

"When we were making our last record, nobody even knew who the fuck Kurt Cobain was!

"Kirk Hammett, at ease in the lounge of the New York City recording studio where he and the rest of Metallica are rushing to finish their sixth album, Load, is acutely aware of how much the musical climate has changed in the five years since the band put out their last studio recording.

In the late summer of 1991, when Metallica released Metallica, "smelling like teen spirit" was still something to be avoided at all costs. A few short months later, Nirvana's Nevermind had turned the music world on its head. With its metallic sheen and top-dollar production values, Metallica (the "Black Album") stuck out like a sore thumb in grunge's raw sonic landscape. Yet, powered by timeless metal anthems like "Enter Sandman" and "The Unforgiven," it has sold more than eight million copies, in the process turning Metallica into one of the biggest bands in the world. As it turned out, it was also heavy metal's swan song, or at least the last recording to be successfully marketed as "metal." Today, Metallica stands as the last towering monument to an era marked by bombast and excess.

When it came time to make Load, Metallica clearly felt the need to find a new, more forward-thinking sound. "A lot of bands get stuck staring at their own belly buttons," says vocalist/guitarist James Hetfield. "They're like, `Wow, we made such a good record last time. We've got to keep doing this.' We won't do that. The whole point of Metallica is to come up with fresh shit.

"Load is a fiercely modern album, combining the moody melodicism of Seattle's best bands with the skull-splitting crunch that only Metallica can deliver. Load also finds Metallica exploring new sounds and previously unexplored genres. Songs like "2x4," with its Aerosmith-like swagger, and "Dusty," which rocks to a ZZ- Top-on-steroids groove, reflect the band's new-found ability of the band to incorporate Hetfield's love of Southern rock and Hammett's blues jones into Metallica's patented grind.

GUITAR WORLD: The listening public's tastes have shifted radically since you made your last album.

JAMES HETFIELD: They've completely shifted since we started writing the songs for this record!

KIRK HAMMETT: In the time between albums, we watched all this shit fly by and wondered, "How does Metallica fit into this?" And then we realized that we didn't fit into it at all, never have, and never really will.

GW: The "Black Album" has sold eight million albums to date and is still on the charts. What-if any-are the drawbacks of having such a huge hit on your hands?

HETFIELD: Everything gets so inflated. Everything is "More! More! More!" More touring, more interviews-more of everything. Everyone wants something-always.Luckily for us, success wasn't a night and day thing. We had taken a few steps on our way up, so we were able to handle it mentally. No one in Metallica ended up shooting himself or shooting up, or whatever it is people sometimes feel the need to do in these situations. You see it every fuckin' day in this weird-ass business.I mean, everyone has their little things that they need to do to release pressure. When you're touring for that long, there's shit that just happens to your head. Sometimes you stray, and hopefully you've got a band that will help you through. We're really lucky to have stuck around this long without having any major crises. I mean, we've had people die in the band and things like that [original bassist Cliff Burton was killed in a tour bus accident in 1986], but as far as people pulling and tugging and fucking with shit, there haven't been too many problems.

GW: When you do get some time off, what do you do? Do you get as far away from music as possible?

HETFIELD: I go in cycles. I won't bother listening to music for quite a while, and then I'll feel down or shitty or something and realize that it's because I haven't picked up my guitar or played music. I've conditioned myself to need this stuff for so long that I can't be away from it for too long. It's like, "Whoa, I've got to fuckin' pick the guitar up and start playing." And it's scary when you haven't played for quite a while and can't remember the riff to "Seek and Destroy!"It's hard to figure out what you want to do when you come off a two-year tour. While you're out on the road, you make up this list of things that you want to do when the tour's over, and then when you get home you end up vegging. It's a strange feeling to be on your own again, not to have the Metallica family around you. There's no tour manager to wake me up and tell me what to do. It's like, "Whoa! I have to start doing shit for myself here and deciding what I want to do." And then when I finally get it together and start doing all the shit I planned to, it's time to get back to Metallica again. Sometimes you get torn between the two worlds. Especially when you get to our age, you start to develop a family life and get things kinda going. No one in the band is married or has kids or anything, but you have a girlfriend and your little sanctuary at home, and you've got to keep that together. But Metallica is the fucking world to me-it always has been, and that's not going to change. Whoever becomes my partner through life has got to deal with that. I'm married to Metallica.

GW: This album is the first time that both of you played rhythm guitar. Was that decided before-hand?

HAMMETT: No. One day when James was away on a hunting trip, I was laying down a couple of solos, and when I finished the lead on one of the tunes our producer, Bob Rock, said, "Okay, tune up and we'll do the rhythm for this song now." I was like, "What?"

HETFIELD: By the time I came back, Kirk had put down rhythm tracks on four songs.

HAMMETT: I went out of my way to come up with a second guitar part that would complement James's, not ape it. Our parts have a really good sense of interplay. And you can actually separate the two guitars and tell who's playing what. James is on the left side, and I'm on the right.

HETFIELD: It was what was needed for the record. The looseness just wasn't coming across. No matter how many fucking martinis I had, I could never get the guitar tracks to sound different enough. It was the same guitar player playing it fucked up. It wasn't a fucked- up guitar player trying to play it right. [laughs]We talk about all the different parts. For instance, I often have a pretty specific idea of what a solo should sound like, so it throws me for a loop when Kirk comes in with something else. But we work out a middle ground that everyone can be happy with. You don't want to have something on a record that someone in the band is going to go insane over and hate.

GW: What were the bones of contention?

HAMMETT: I had to sit down and explain my approach. I probably have the most open musical mind of anyone in Metallica. I like a lot of different stuff, and so, occasionally, I'll take an idea inspired by something sort of "out" and bring it to the band. I won't bring it to the band unless I think that there's a chance that they'll like it, and 90 percent of the time they do. But there's that 10 percent of the time where they question it.On this album, there was one song-which will remain nameless to protect the innocent-where the solo that I played had such a different type of feel that it changed that entire piece of the song. We spent hours debating it, and I literally had to walk James through every single note. There was something about it that he just didn't like, which he thought might have been a harmonic thing. But then we realized that it was just the general sound of the solo. Then James came up with something-like five notes-that colored what I had played sufficiently to make it work for him too.

GW: Your solos on this album are very textured.

HAMMETT: I would hate to say that I'm bored with the standard rock guitar solo, but I've done it for five albums now, and this time I wanted to go in a completely different direction. I wasn't interested in showing off any more. I wanted to play something that fit the song more like a part than a solo per se, something that had the power to establish a completely different mood in the section of the song that was allocated to me.When I play at home, I have a Lexicon Jam Man sampling delay with which I can create a loops on which to layer guitar textures. That's why things like the Roland VG-8 and the guitar synth, both of which I used on "Mouldy," are so interesting to me-they put so many sounds at my disposal.Don't get me wrong, though- I still listen to Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy, Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew. I'm still way into that type of guitar playing. I just don't feel the need to play that way within the context of Metallica any more..

GW: All of Load is tuned down a half step-another first for you.

HETFIELD: Tuning down a half step helped a lot of things, like getting the bends going in the riffs. The most fun thing in the world is sitting down with your guitar tuned down a whole step and riffing out. Unfortunately, that sounds too muddy, so we settled for tuning down a half step.

GW: Earlier you referred to "a lot of changes happening in Metallica." What, besides the changes in your rhythm guitar approach-and your haircuts-were you referring to?

HETFIELD: There's a looser attitude. Some new things happened with Jason [Newsted, bassist]. In the past, Lars [Ulrich, drummer] and I had the fucking shackles on everybody. I had noticed over the years how frustrated Jason was musically and how a lot of the stuff he's written isn't getting onto the records. It also used to really bug me that he was jamming with all of these other bands. He'd make a demo with some friends, and somehow it would end up on the radio and I'd be like, "What the fuck are you doing, Jason? This is Metallica! You can't do that shit!" Then I realized that he was doing it because he needs to get his shit out. We kept his frustration in mind while we hashed out the parts he put down on the record.

GW: Are there specific things on the "Black Album" that you wanted to improve on Load?

HAMMETT: The one thing that strikes me about the "Black Album" when I go back and listen to it is that there isn't enough variation in my tone. I kind of stuck with the same sound, and the only variation was a wah pedal here and a wah pedal there, or the minimal tonal variation that you get from tuning down.But you can't really look back. If you do, you end up constantly comparing yourself to the past, and that has a way of holding you back. You end up with a whole catalog of albums that sound like one particular album that was successful. The idea should be to move forward and try and develop a new vision.

GW: Load has a much more in-your-face mix than Metallica, which had a lot of ambiance.

HETFIELD: I wanted the guitars back in your face again. I like the way Kill `Em All [Elektra, 1983] just had fucking guitars up your ass and the drums were not the leader of the group. I think that on the "Black Album," everyone wanted to be up front. But something has to be back there, and it ended up being the guitars, which were given a wider, thinner sound and pushed back. I think that on this album, the drums drive the rhythm instead of leading the band, and there are these two guitars playing different things right up front.

GW: Were you asked to play Lollapalooza? Or did you do the asking?

HETFIELD: They asked us. We thought about it and said, "All right, why the fuck not?" All it is is a European style rock festival. We've done festivals all over the world.

HAMMETT: It's like the Reading Festival [an annual British festival]-except that it moves from place to place. We're used to being on different bills with different people. I mean, we played one festival in Belgium where we shared the bill with Neil Young, Lenny Kravitz, Sugar, Sonic Youth, the Levelers and the Black Crowes. That would never happen in America because those bands mean something completely different over here than they do in Europe.I like the vibe of Lollapalooza. I've been to every single one; I've actually jammed at a few, too. When Ministry was out I played with them a few times, and I did the same with Primus. I've loved Soundgarden since 1985 or `86. And everyone loves the Ramones. I was talking to Johnny Ramone the other day and he was saying, "Goddamn it Kirk, I'd already be retired and playing golf in L.A. if it wasn't for you guys calling us up and asking us to do this summer tour." And I said, "Well Johnny, there isn't any better way to go."