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Metallica's Kirk Hammett is saddened by his observation that Guns N' Roses are now a 'nostalgia act'.
In an interview with the LA Times about how Metallica keep evolving, the lightning quick guitarist was asked what he thought about the fact Guns N' Roses, who previously toured with Metallica in 1992, played no new material on their recent headline tour around the USA.
Hammet said: "Unfortunately, they’ve turned into somewhat of a nostalgia act, which to me is kind of sad."
Guns N' Roses may have netted $117 million from the tour. But from a creative perspective, unless the band have something up their sleeve they're not telling us it's easy to see why their contemporaries are concerned.
However, the fact Duff McKagan, Slash, and Axl Rose are even together on stage is somewhat of a miracle and should be celebrated because what they did do for hard rock is priceless as some of their songs are just above and beyond great
By contrast, Metallica have led a great example of how to sail a ship through rough seas and have kept together through thick and thin - and that includes death of Cliff Burton.
Creativity is something they just can't switch off. “I don’t want to think we’re trying to stay young by writing new stuff, but it makes us feel relevant, it makes us feel like we’re still progressing,” said Hetfield in the interview.
This week Metallica will release Hardwired... To Self Destruct - their tenth studio album.
Each of their relases offer something phenomenal and given that they've been together since 1983 yet are only on their tenth album, shows the amount of time, energy and perfectionism they've put into every release.Expect something that'll blow your head off come Friday.
Meanwhile, Metallica are set to play at the House of Vans on their release day and are also going to be doing a signing at HMV on the stroke of midnight 18 November.
Elsewhere, Hetfield has said to Team Rock what he thinks Cliff Burton would have made of Metallica's more mainstream less thrashy material in the 90s: "Well, I certainly would have thought there would have been some resistance, for sure,” said Hetfield. “I think Cliff would have probably interjected some different stuff, getting his bass heard and some more musically challenging things, probably.”
He continued: “I would certainly think that the Load and Reload [era], I would have had an ally that was very against it all – the reinvention or the U2 version of Metallica.”
There’s some great, great songs on there,” Hetfield said of the Load and Reload era – but that he ‘wasn’t comfortable with that period at all’.
“But my opinion is that all of the imagery and stuff like that was not necessary. And the amount of songs that were written was… it diluted the potency of the poison of Metallica. And I think Cliff would have agreed with that.”
Hetfield added: “For me, ‘St. Anger’ kind of stands alone. It’s more of a statement than an album. It’s more of the soundtrack to [Some Kind of Monster], in a way. There’s some really interesting and cool riffs, some great songs on there. But sonically it sounds fragmented, which is exactly where we were at the point. But in that fragmentation it brought us together. So it was a very necessary piece of the puzzle to get us where we are today.”
