Metallica have over seven hundred riffs ready

Mouthpiece Lars Ulrich says James Hetfield has "over 700 riffs" for the next Metallica album.

Ulrich spoke to UK's Metal Hammer, dodging questions about hitting the studio for what Kirk Hammett previously described as "more a recording project than a bona fide Metallica album."

But he did reveal that guitarist and vocalist James Hetfield has been a riff writing machine while they were on their Death Magnetic World Tour.

The full quote (and it's always wordy when it's Ulrich talking) is below.

"James told me in Australia that he had over 700 [new] riffs. That was slightly overwhelming. When I spoke to him yesterday, he told me that he'd been playing guitar again in the last couple of weeks. And listen, when James tunes his guitar, he comes up with three to five usable guitar riffs. It's kind of frightening. James is not allowed to play guitar without being recorded. Literally! There are also hours and hours of jams and tuning-room shindigs.

"After the ['Big Four Of Thrash'] gig, we're gonna sit down and wade through two and half years' worth of riffs and jams and hopefully a lot of the seeds for the next Metallica record will be in that. When you're just jamming instead of – quote – 'writing,' things have a tendency to be more organic and flow a little more. We can use the rest of the riffs for ringtones or… I don't know. Set up a web site: SpareRiffs.com."

Sounds promising.

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Undercover.com.au