According to bassist Rob Trujillo, fans won't have to wait as long for a new Metallica album as they did for 2008's Death Magnetic or 2016's Hardwired… To Self-Destruct.
It was a five-year wait for Death Magnetic, and an even more agonising eight-year gap between that and Hardwired…, but Rob has reassured listeners that the metal titans' 11th studio album won't take as long.
"It will come a lot sooner than the previous two did…" he tells The Music. "This time around I think we'll be able to jump on it a lot quicker and jump in the studio and start working.
"We've all vowed to get this one going sooner than later. Now, how soon? I don't know. We've been touring non-stop. It's been over two years now. At some point, sure, we'll need to take a little bit of a break. It's sort of the right thing for us to do because we've been going so hard."
Rob also explained how Metallica can work on new music while on the road: "We have a zone we call The Tuning Room, which is a space where we can jam and warm up before the show. We're always in there coming up with ideas and you may get a few seconds of an idea but everything is recorded, always. And then of course at home, everyone has got ideas.
"Death Magnetic was, for the most part, a collaborative effort. Hardwired… was more central to James' [Hetfield, guitar/vocals] specific ideas and was also taking the spirit of what we had done on the previous record.
"I'm excited about the next record because I believe it will also be a culmination of the two records and another journey. There's no shortage of original ideas, that's the beauty of being in this band."
Very interesting…
In more ’Tallica news, the band just announced a tour Down Under with the mighty Slipknot – those dates look like this:
October
17 Perth, Australia @ Optus Stadium
20 Adelaide, Australia @ Adelaide Oval
22 Melbourne, Australia @ Marvel Stadium
26 Sydney, Australia @ ANZ Stadium
29 Brisbane, Australia @ QSAC
31 Auckland, New Zealand @ Mt. Smart Stadium