Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich revealed that although the band is eager to start sessions for its new album — figuring out a way to play together still seems out of reach. Last month, guitarist Kirk Hammett told Uproxx he's collected over 600 separate musical ideas since the band's 2016 album Hardwired. . . To Self-Destruct.
When asked about when the Metallica would be starting the new album, Ulrich told NME, "I'm not sure — it's not easy, but we've been doing what we can. We've been exchanging ideas back and forth. The hardest thing about being in four different spaces is that there's no software that can have us all play in real-time to reach each other. So I can play something and send it to the next guy and then he can play on it and he can send it to the next guy, or vice-versa, but we can't play at the same time so it takes the impulsivity and the momentary energy out of the occasion."
He went on to explain that the band is taking remote collaboration seriously: "I've talked to some people in technology about how close we are to being able to all play in real-time with each other, but that hasn't been cracked yet. If it is, we'll maximize it, but for now, we're in this bubble for a couple of weeks, and we're looking forward to seeing if at some point this fall, we can get back into another bubble where we write and play and maybe even record — so we're looking forward to the possibilities on that one."
Ulrich, who formed Metallica in 1981 with guitarist James Hetfield, went on to say, "Right now, I'd say the hardest thing about all this is trying to plan because five minutes later, those plans change — that's just the nature of the state of the world at the moment and we're going to have to accept and surrender to it." think it's a good reminder of the fragility of the world and how maybe we should occasionally pause and be a little bit more respectful and appreciative of what we have and understand how quickly it can derail in terms of how we arrogantly expect everything to be the way we wanted as a human race."
Not too long ago, Lars Ulrich told us that the group has become more relaxed and less secretive about letting its music out: ["I know people like to think of Metallica as this big, y'know, I don't know, secrets. . . I mean, there are a bunch of people that have heard it. It doesn't live in, like, bank vaults and, y'know, guys walking around with, like, armed rifles. I mean it's. . . I don't know, things are just a lot more chilled out around here than they used to be."] SOUNDCUE (:17 OC: . . . used to be)