Metallica guitarist and horro fan Kirk Hammet has updated his fear festEvil blog with a new entry, Menacing And Monstrous Haunted Vehicles. An excerpt is available below.

"WHERE’S MY CAR TO THE PEABODY??!?

OK, look folks, I have to talk about the whole subject of haunted and menacing vehicles too.

Ever since I was a kid I’ve found the idea cool, and as a parent, there was a time when the kids were toddlers and I’d play with the ‘lock/unlock’ button, delighting in hearing them scream that the car was haunted. I even once had an old Datsun truck that would turn itself off whenever it wanted to! And even though some ‘smart mechanic’ told me that it was because I needed to properly set the idle time, I remain convinced it was haunted!

I still remember first seeing Duel. Man, what a scary film! And in my mind’s eye, the driver of the truck chasing Dennis Weaver was always a demon driver or the actual devil himself!

So that movie, whenever I watch it, it’s an even cooler experience to think of that driver as Satan himself. Steven Spielberg directed it, and originally it was a made for TV movie in the States which ended up getting a movie theatre release internationally. The whole concept was scary. You’re driving down the road in a relatively quiet, safe place when all of a sudden, out of the blue, there’s this menacing force which happens to be in a tractor trailer that not only spots you but starts tracking you at high speeds!

That is scary man!

Imagine it happening to you – it comes out of nowhere, the situation is impossible to gauge because you’re driving, trying to escape, you’re filled with puzzlement, fear, it’s extremely claustrophobic and…the ONLY thing you see of the driver is his boot and a kind of silhouette right at the end, because he’s in the shadow of his own big rig cab. I think Duel was the first movie of its type, and I cannot think of anything before it. Can anyone else? Let me know!

Then came Christine.

For me, it was incredibly original.

An actual entity, an actual haunted vehicle.

It was great because there was the origin story of a murder inside it, there might’ve been a sacrifice thing going on, and then that ending with the auto compactor – and hey, you have to wonder whether the haunted elements were recycled into another vehicle or entity. I love the ending because it is so dubious!"

Read more here.

Hammett recently spoke with FasterLouder about his journey through life with Metallica. Following is an excerpt from the interview.

Q: What do you think is the appeal of Metallica to a 16-year-old now, in 2017, versus a 16-year-old in, say, 1986?

Hammett: "That pissed off 15 year old, or 16 year old — or, actually I should say, that 15 or 16 year old who might be pissed off — might find a great release through our music, might find our music to be a great cathartic sort of process for them to get out any anger or frustration that they have. Our music has historically been able to do that… at least for myself, our music helps me in a very cathartic sort of way, and the hope is that it would help people in the same fashion.

The big difference between 1986 and now is, yeah man, things are a lot more divided and things are a lot more uncertain, a little bit more unpredictable; the world is just unpredictable much more nowadays and changing really, really quickly. So yeah, I would say for all the uncertainty in the world and disenfranchisement that uncertainty can create, maybe Metallica and our music is something real and solid and predictable that people can latch on to and use to help them. Maybe they come to a point where they can use our music in a cathartic way and hopefully find a way to cope with the world after experiencing our music.

Another thing I have to say is that our music has stood the test of time, I mean, Master Of Puppets, if that album came out today it would pass muster as far as, y’know, sounding contemporary. Even though it came in 1986, I think if it came out today it would stand up to any of the other contemporary releases."

Q: Not many bands make it past 30 years together. The relationship between you, James and Lars: is there a secret to making you three work? What do you think you can attribute your longevity and ability to come out of stuff like Cliff’s death, or the St Anger and Some Kind of Monster period and just keep on going?

Hammett: "We started a long time ago, when we were really, really young, and we’ve experienced so much stuff together, and we really are kindred souls: there’s something in all of us that I think we recognised on an unconscious level that bonded us together. We’ve experienced so much, so many incredible things — incredibly great things, incredibly awful things — and we’re still standing… and what keeps on pushing us forward and further on down the road is each other. Just knowing that we’ve experienced so much and we have such a deep bond, playing music, experiencing life, growing up, becoming parents, going into middle age, we’ve done all else things together. Metallica is a job, it is a career, but it is also our lives. And it’s so deep within us the thought of not doing what we’re doing is more of a jolt than just continuing to do what we do.

What we do is what we know: it’s in us.  And every time we play music, it sounds like us… so why would we not get together and make music, it’s just what we do, it’s like living and breathing and walking and talking to us… playing in Metallica, playing shows, playing together, going out on the road, recording, it’s just something we’ve always done, and something we’ll always do, because we’re just set in the routine of Metallica… and sure it looks attractive to go do your own thing, but could it really be better than something we do together? I highly doubt it. So knowing that, why would I even think of a life without Metallica? I know that now. I know I’m probably in the best position I could manoeuvre myself in to make music, so why would I change that?"

Click here for the complete interview.