Eight years in the making, the 12-track record stretches to nearly 80 minutes and includes a tribute to Motorhead legend Lemmy on the song Murder One.
“We’re still up there, man,” frontman James Hetfield tells the BBC.
“As far as our look and our health, we’re doing our best. We got grey hair but we’ve earned this stuff.”
After the playback, the band decamped to Webster Hall for an intimate (by their standards) charity concert, playing songs from throughout their 35-year career, alongside new tracks Moth Into Flame and Hardwired.
“I don’t know, eight years went by fast,” Hetfield told the crowd at one point. “But not for you, I guess.”
The morning after the show, singer and guitarist James Hetfield, drummer Lars Ulrich, guitarist Kirk Hammett,
I’m still kind of tripping on the sonics. It just sounds really good and really rich and really full.
The last record (2008’s Death Magnetic), as it went along, it kept getting bigger and bigger. The songs got longer endings and that type of stuff. This record was quite different. The songs got tighter and leaner and a little more concise.
So when I hear this, I feel this is Metallica at the leanest we’ve been for a while. Maybe even the leanest were capable of.
