MTV

As the tides of popular music ebbed and flowed on metal's shores, at least one band has managed to ride it out and remain afloat.

While many of their contemporaries have fallen by the wayside, the men of Metallica have survived on a steady diet of dense, dark rock served in heaping portions. A good deal of the group's continued success is owed to perseverance, but some should also be chalked up to the band's willingness to grow and adapt, traits they've put on display recently with an acoustic set at Neil Young's Bridge Benefit concert, and a creative partnership with Marianne Faithful.

Even though it seems like they never really went away, Metallica will soon be back with a new album, video, and single, and MTV News' Chris Connelly recently caught up with the band to find out where they're headed and what fans can expect from their next offering, "Re-Load."

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CHRIS CONNELLY: Has this record been easier to put together than the last few just because you had the songs, you already knew that you were going to put it out, or was it more work than you anticipated?

LARS ULRICH: Well, all the songs were written and all the basic tracks were recorded at the same time as "Load" so all the stuff is sort of two years old. So we've only been in the studio for three months finishing it off, which is a lifetime for some bands, but for us its just a quick walk in the park. So it went pretty quickly, compared to the last couple of records, fairly effortlessly in fact, there wasn't a lot of arguing. There was not a big sort of stuff flying back and forth, there wasn't the burnout factor.

When you're finishing a record and you've been working on it for six months and you've been writing the previous six to nine months the burnout factor is so much more intense. But because we were working on stuff that was written and recorded a few years earlier, we had kind of a fresh approach to it so it went pretty easily. What we did, we just went in and finished the songs that we sort of started. We're not the kind of band that will go in with these kind of half-baked ideas, then kind of start a little... we'll take it this way, we write a song then we go in and record it and that's basically the process that we sort of went through... the overdubbing, the coloring, James is finishing his vocals and stuff like that and then we mixed it and that's been the last three months and it's done -- part two of "Load."

People ask me how does it tie, it is part two of "Load?" It's nothing more, nothing less. It's not the scraps, it's not all the B material. It's the other thirteen songs. "Load" was supposed to be a double album and it still is. The two records just came out a year apart.

CHRIS: Yeah but didn't anyone tell you, why don't you just give it a new name and give it a whole new album cover...

LARS: We did!

CHRIS: ...and make it look like its some brand new album instead of stuff from the next to the last record?

LARS: That certainly was raised by most of these people standing here looking at us, but I really wanted people to understand that all these songs came from one creative spark, there was one writing period in the fall of '94 through the spring of '95, and I think that there is a purity in that where, you know, to some people all the stuff we are just sitting here talking about means nothing. It's just another record, and I'm not going to sit here and tell people how they should react or anything. I'm just saying it comes from one creative burst about three years ago -- fourteen of the songs were released last year here, the other thirteen, I think. All the songs on the two records are totally interchangeable with each other, everything from the artwork, all the artwork is interchangeable, its a double album over two records, its the simplest analogy. I'd say the only other plus factor that hasn't come up is that when you put two records out instead of a double album it counts as two on your record contract and you can go in and renegotiate quicker which is cool, but, I'm just being silly here of course.

CHRIS: You had the option to do a double release like Guns n' Roses or Bruce Springsteen but you opted not to do that either...

LARS: Yeah, you know, Lollapalooza came up and at that point we had been in the studio for long enough and Lollapalooza came up and it was just like "look, instead of being in here and torturing ourselves for longer and longer and longer and burning out and then having to go out and do the never-ending sort of two year tour it kind of comes." What we wanted to do is put out records more often and tour more scattered, and by breaking this into smaller bits that becomes an option. So Lollapalooza was there and it was just like, "Lets put the songs out that are done, get a record out, get new material out there, get out and play and have some fun. Do Lollapalooza, go over to Europe and blah blah blah... So we did it.

CHRIS: So there's even more diversity on this record than "Load," which was a big eye opener for a lot of reasons.

LARS: Yeah, I think the reason people thought "Load" was so diverse is because it came five years after a record that was very different from it. "Reload" is very diverse and within "Reload" there is a lot of different material, a lot of extremes. But because it is following a year later, a year behind a record that was very surprising and was very diverse, I don't think the shock is going to be quite as traumatic to people. So I think people will be a little more, "I think now I know what to expect." This is a record very much tied into "Load" -- its not the next album, its really part two of the last one bringing that chapter to a close.

MTV: How'd you get Marianne Faithfull into the mix?

LARS: Well I called her up and said "Hey, do you want sing on our record?" She goes "maybe."

CHRIS: Who the hell are ya'?

LARS: Yeah, "Who is this? No, I, you know what? She's so cool. You know us, we are the band, we are the antisocial band of the modern rock era and we just keep everybody at bay and never had anyone ever guest on our records. We sat there and we wrote this song and it started dawning to us that maybe having a character on the song would be a good thing, having a voice or character, somebody playing part of the scenario that was being created for the song. And we had a very, very short list of people, Joni Mitchell... there was basically nobody and every time we said we need someone charismatic, someone who is weathered in every possible way... just that we need someone who has a lot of character in her voice and so on, and every time it was just, Marianne -- there was nobody else.

So I called her up on the phone and said it would mean a lot to us if you would sing on our record and she did. And she said yes, and me and James jumped into an airplane and flew over to Dublin and I had the tape under my arm and we hung out all day and drank wine and exchanged stories and she sang on our record and that was it. She's sort of wandering the halls here today as part of our video shoot. That's really cool. She's very, very, very pure and real and not kind of like "been there, done it" little man type of thing. There are a lot of people that we run into from that generation that I feel very uncomfortable around because they really have a kind of like, they are very sort of artsy and artisty and so full of themselves and its very difficult and they have really mastered the whole technique of talking about themselves very well. She's not like that and that's a very beautiful thing.

CHRIS: Do you see a sort of musical progression from the last one to this one or is it all in the piece?

KIRK: Well, songwriting-wise, all the songs come from the same period as "Load." If there is any progression that I can speak of, it's the guitar parts that James and I are putting down and the vocal treatments that James has done. We really utilized the studio to its fullest this time around, I think. Because we didn't have so much time, we really had to do a lot of simultaneous recording. James and I would be doing guitars in different rooms, Jason would be doing bass in another room, Lars would be looking at drum edits or whatever.

CHRIS: It's nice 'cause they can't tell you what to play then...

KIRK: Oh well, so you would think. But, Bob Rock would be presiding over everything. If there is anyone that deserves a medal for this album, it's Bob Rock because he had to do so much juggling and had to deal with everyone and we only had so much time to do it. And we managed to do it. We managed to finish it, which was a miracle. There was a lot of tension in the air, but I think that kinda pushed everyone along. But production wise, there were a lot of different guitar things that James and I have done -- things that we have never done on Metallica albums before. Which is like using a lot of different guitar sounds, a lot of different guitar textures, a lot of texture just using lots of noises. We brought in other players, which is a first for us. We brought in a hurdy-gurdy player for one song. And, actually on the same song we brought in a violin player and, you know, it was such a great vibe doing that. It was a first for us. I see us doing a lot of this sort of thing in the future.

CHRIS: A lot of players say they're singing with fewer notes. You've made that reference as well. How has that affected your playing? How do you feel about that in your work, saying more with less?

KIRK: You know, it just resonates. Everyone has experienced this. You sit down with a person and this person just talks and talks and talks and doesn't really say anything. It's the same thing with music. If you're a lot more concise and tasteful with you notes you can say so much more. A lot of times, and especially with guitar players, they play guitar solos and it just sounds like they are emulating notes. Notes are just coming out with no real meaning or feelings or emotions. What I've found is, the more simplistic you are, the more you say, and the more people are able to digest it effectively. And that's a battle for me to be simple. It's harder to be simple. I mean, I know a million guitar licks but I am not going to try and cram it into every song . I am going to pick the most appropriate one for the song and make it work. It just feels better also when I am playing it night after night. And you can hear the notes and you can hear the tone and people can relate to it because again its a lot less to digest and the same feelings and emotions are coming across.

CHRIS: "Load" was described as a project with a lot of creative tension between the band.

KIRK: Good healthy tensions.

CHRIS: How about this time, same sort of tension? Or did the time pressure add additional elements to the fact that you had tracks finished? Did it make it easier or harder? What was it like?

KIRK: It was leaning on everyone's psyche. It was a motivation. Definitely a motivation to just try things because we don't have the time to second guess it. I mean, we did have the luxury to say, "well you know, I'll put it down later." It was more a case of "put it down now because we might not have the time to do it later and we'll just work it out on the mix". Famous last words. I must have put down a million things that didn't make it through the mix. But hey you know, so does everyone else. But you know for the most part, though, I really think that Load and Re-Load are a good, positive statement on where we are coming from now, in the mid-nineties. And, I hope people really see these two albums as a period of Metallica. And where we stand musically now. And I hope they understand that it is part one and part two. Not "Reload" being the new Metallica album.

CHRIS: What was it like approaching lyrics for these tracks that had already been completed?

JAMES: Well, you know, first of all we liked the music, which was pretty important. We lived with these songs for two years and were kinda' wondering if we wanted to come back and finish them, but we were excited. We liked the songs and we wanted to get back into the studio after a little less of a tour. A lot of them needed a little work. You know, get the butcher and shears out. We took some unnecessary bits out. Some of the lyrics I had written didn't last. Didn't feel right this time to me, so we revamped a lot of them. We re-recorded at least one of the songs 'cause it wasn't the right feel. "Low Man's Lyric" is the one. It's got a more broken-down feel to it. Has the kind of homeless feel to it which is pretty cool. But basically the ideas were the same from the "Load" sessions of writing. We stuck to the same demo sounds and initial ideas of the sounds.

CHRIS: Does it feel like part of the same record for you, or does it feel like a totally different record?

JAMES: It's definitely the same because you know these songs are new to others but they are old to us. And we have lived with them for a while. And it comes as the two years between here. It's where our heads are at.

CHRIS: Anything organic that puts some songs on this record and some songs on "Load"?

JAMES: When you get into the studio you kinda want to warm up with some of the easier stuff and the stuff that doesn't drive you insane. Kinda getting back into the swing of the four walls and no windows in the studio, stuck in there, so we had done some of the easier, more simple things which ended up on "Load" because it was finished. So this was kind of more extreme and a little more intricate, and things that require a little more attention I think, but "Low Man's Lyric" has a hurdy-gurdy, there's a violin on there, there's Marianne on one song, there's a mellotron on one song, there's a lap steel I play on a song. So there's quite a few new sounds for us.

CHRIS: Do you think that you were encouraged to get more extreme by the positive response you got from playing the last record live?

JAMES: No. Out of sheer boredom we wanted to try new stuff. We've got this jones for trying new stuff, and one day we might get over it, who knows? [500k QuickTime] But we're trying to make some different things work.

CHRIS: Do you enjoy how the fans respond to this though? I mean maybe some of the hardcore fans are freaking out but everyone seems to be really positive on it out there.

JAMES: There's a little more of opinionated responses on these last couple of records I think. It's not like "it's o.k.," it's "I hate it" or "I love it," you know? Which is how I think it kind of should kind of be. We're not meant to be background music while you're driving. You either live Metallica or you don't want to live Metallica. And I think at the end of the day, it's us pleasing ourselves. We're selfish bastards, and have been since day one, and that's how we've stayed pure and how we've kind of lasted all this time [500k QuickTime], is doing exactly what we've needed to do, and feel we need to do.

CHRIS: How did putting this record together compare to putting the last one together in terms of relationships within the band? There was a lot of creative friction last time out which had a positive effect on the record perhaps. I'm sure there was some this time too...

JAMES: Well, there was a lot of ground broken on "Load" where Kirk was stepping in and doing some rhythm stuff. I was doing a little more lead things. I was experimenting with vocals, Jason coming in and playing what he felt was necessary instead of us breathing down his neck. There was a lot more freedom on this one. It give us a lot more confidence individually. "Wow, I tried something and it actually sounds great," whether it ends up on the song or not is something else. But there's no lack of ideas, which is great. If there's a hole in the song everybody tries to fill it and jump into it. I think the only difficult part on this was the two years of living with the songs and us taking individual notes, Marianne Faithfull singing here and all these weird ideas, and then coming together and comparing notes and going, "oh my god, we're not only on different pages were in a different library [550k QuickTime], you know?" But that's the Metallica way, really, a lot of collaboration.

CHRIS: I was saying to some of the other guys in the band its not too surprising you would want to put off dealing with the other tracks for a while, but that you stuck to it was very impressive.

JAMES: Yeah, we wanted to keep it pure to the "Load" sessions... this is a little chunk of history of our lives you know. Adding new stuff could have been really easy and it might have taken a lot longer actually, but because we've written so much after the black album and it's taken two albums to put it all together, there's a backlog of material again. So it will be interesting to see what happens next time...