METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett and drummer Lars Ulrich spoke to the Mercurynews.com recently about a number of topics. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Kirk Hammett on file-sharing: "Our thinking hasn’t changed at all. I mean, I think that intellectual property should be protected and respected, and it really is what makes a lot of the things in the whole entertainment industry go around. (Did your legal battle against Napster hurt you from a PR perspective?) It probably did, but you know, a little salt in the cake makes for a better-tasting cake, right? So, we can’t always make the right decisions. As far as PR and the way we handled it, we could have handled it a lot better, but we’re still sticking to our guns on it. You know, file-sharing as far as music is concerned hurts the audience in a roundabout way that a lot of people don’t realize. … People might think I’m an a–hole for saying what I’m saying, but knowing both sides of the equation well, I just have to say, it’s convenient in the short term, but it’s destructive in the long term."

Lars Ulrich on the 'loudness war' and criticism of the mastering of Death Magnetic: "There’s a lot of the rock generation who have aged and who are now in their 40s, and who are still holding on to what was 20 or 30 years ago, and I don’t fault that, whatsoever. But obviously compression plays a different role in music and mixing and mastering than it did 20 years ago or 30 years ago. And obviously, MP3s and online services and downloads - it’s a different game than it was. So obviously things sound different. You know, there’s no right or wrong here. It’s truly about tastes, and it’s truly about what people prefer."

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