"New Metallica album best in 15 years"

Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett told Austrian website Krone.at that he thinks the band's upcoming album is "the best album we've put out in, say, fifteen years." Hammett added that the record contains "just a really spectacular range of songs. This time we're not afraid to refer to our past music in order to create future music. People will see that we've kind of embraced our old vocabulary again and are using that vocabulary to express new things...I think with this album we're definitely going a little more back into our roots."

Hammett also hinted that the new record features "a lot of really, really fast songs, a whole lot of really heavy stuff. We changed our approach to writing the songs...There's a lot of changes that we've made, but I believe that they are all for the better."

The guitarist said that while the band had also written some "slower and melodic" tunes, he wasn't sure if any would make the final track listing.

Metallica has been working on the follow-up to 2003's St. Anger with producer Rick Rubin since earlier this spring.

The band will now head out on a European festival run before returning to complete the album later this summer. An early 2008 release is planned.
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