Darryl Sterdan from the Torontosun.com spoke to METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett recently about a number of topics. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Torontosun.com: Is it true that Rubin told you to go back and imagine you were writing songs for Master of Puppets?

Hammett: "Yeah, absolutely. To him, that was the ultimate Metallica. That was our best period of creativity to him ... And I have to say it was inspiring when he said that. That spark of inspiration was really important for us."

Torontosun.com: I get the sense he's more of a guru than a studio technician.

Hammett: "That's a good description. Because the first thing he said to us was, 'I want all of us to be comfortable and relaxed and have fun. No stress, no anger, just have fun doing this and do it well.' And to me, that was a really good attitude. And spiritual in a way. And the results are what you hear on the album."

Torontosun.com: So how did you recapture the spirit of Master of Puppets?

Hammett: "We just asked ourselves, 'What would we have done if this was 1986?' We kind of put it through that filter, that lens."

Torontosun.com: But if it really was 1986, you would have drunk a bottle of vodka first.

Hammett: "Ha! Yeah, definitely. But it started off as an experiment and we started to get some really great results. So we decided to just follow it through. And we continued writing in that dynamic manner that we did back then -- which is to fuse a lot of vague, disparate pieces of music together to make them work rather than taking one bit of music and milking it for ideas."

Torontosun.com: So are these songs a lot more enjoyable to play?

Hammett: "Oh, they're totally fun for us to play. Are you kidding? We're rehearsing five of them because the intent is to play at least five new songs in our set, because we're tired of playing the same set list for the past three years. Our goal is to always write songs that are fun for us to play. But yeah, that these songs really do stand out -- they're just a lot of fun."

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