"THE GROOVE IS EVERYTHING!"

The biggest guitar album of the year has arrived: Metallica's 72 Seasons. Lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo tell TG how this legendary band finds new inspiration in the pursuit of heaviness...

- Jenna Scaramanga

Kirk Hammett has a confession to make. Metallica’s lead guitarist is talking about the band’s new album  72 Seasons, and how the energy within it comes from a spontaneous approach to writing and recording...

“First and foremost I’m an improvisational musician,” he says. “I’ve realised that everything you do is pretty much improvisation. Any songwriting is improv. Writing melodies is improv. Improvisation is playing guitar.”

And as he muses on this subject, he admits to a longstanding ‘fixation’ with one of hard rock’s greatest lead players, AC/DC’s Angus Young. “One of the things I love about Angus is how he never plays the same solo twice,” Kirk says, before adding in a conspiratorial tone: “I have to confess that this is the album that got my Angus fixation out of my system finally.

“I’ve been obsessed with AC/DC most of my life – Angus and Malcolm’s guitar tones, just their whole approach. I don’t speak too much about it because it’s a real common thing. Everyone’s blown away by AC/DC.

“But I’ve always marvelled at Angus’s guitar style because it’s the perfect combination of blues, hard rock and boogie. He has a lot of humour in his playing, and yet it’s just so intense. You can’t f*cking beat it! Coming from Angus it’s just so organic. You know he’s not thinking about what all the guitar magazines are gonna say. He just goes up and f*cking does it. And I love that.”

A similar ethos is at the heart of 72 Seasons, which finds Metallica doing exactly what they did in the 80s. Not always