In a brand new interview, Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett defined how “poisonous masculinity” and, in his personal phrases, “bizarre masculine macho bullshit” has helped stoke Metallica’s enduring heavy steel flame.
Talking to The New Yorker, the longtime Metallica member expressed how these male behaviors typically seen as detrimental to society seemingly helped glue Metallica collectively.
Is “poisonous masculinity” why Hammett has stayed with Metallica’s founding members, guitarist-vocalist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich, since 1983? That is in all probability a stretch, however the lead guitarist can nonetheless recognize how some questionable machismo powered Metallica.
“Poisonous masculinity has fueled this band,” Hammett specified by the piece that emerged on Monday (Nov. 28), the identical day Metallica revealed their upcoming album, 72 Seasons, and shared its first single, “Lux Aeterna.”
He illustrated, “I am nonetheless sitting round saying, ‘OK, I am gonna write a very, actually powerful, kick-ass riff. Simply take a look at my rhetoric there: powerful, kick-ass riff. It is an aggression that everybody feels, however it was ratcheted up in us — this bizarre masculine macho bullshit factor.”
Certainly, trying again on all of the years that Metallica members have spent collectively, Hammett can pinpoint the place that form of considering led to early spats within the group.
“We’d get drunk and simply begin in,” the guitarist recalled. “I keep in mind as soon as James acquired up and pushed Lars, and Lars actually flew throughout the room. We’d see one another and begin wrestling. We may very well be in a room of 20 individuals, and we might fixate on one another. Nobody else mattered.”
Maybe that “poisonous masculinity” in Metallica prolonged to the band’s enterprise dealings. Trying again on the act’s early-2000s battle with Napster, Ulrich remembered Metallica’s reactionary positioning on the onset of the peer-to-peer file-sharing web companies.
And although the drummer mentioned he now takes “no solace” in the way it all performed out, he nonetheless described it as a “road struggle.”
“It was, ‘You are fucking with us; we’re gonna fuck with you.'” Ulrich mentioned. “After which it simply ran amok. On reflection, might we’ve completed a greater job of seeing that coming? Most likely.”
Metallica’s 72 Seasons arrives on April 14, 2023. The band will tour the world once more across the identical time. Get Metallica live performance tickets right here.
Watch Metallica’s “Lux Æterna” music video beneath.
Metallica, “Lux Æterna” (Music Video)
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