Lars Ulrich says Metallica have discussed making riffs left unused after each album recording session available for other bands to pick via an eBay-style website.
The drummer revealed the idea speaking to The National in Abu Dhabi where he also insists the legendary metallers are not avoiding making another record.
He says: “We have more riffs than we know what to do with. We talked about setting up a special riff thing, where maybe we could share some of these riffs with others, like an eBay kind of thing for leftover riffs. Some of them are actually quite decent, but we won’t be able to use all of them.”
(It’s not the first time a similar idea has been suggested: Classic Rock reported in February this year that Tony Iommi and Brian May had a similar project in the pipeline. May had visited Iommi’s studio and discovered a huge catalogue of unused material. “I thought it would be great to make a compilation out of them,” said the Queen guitarist. “The idea was to put all these riffs out in some form so people could build their own songs of them. You could make your own music with Tony Iommi on guitar.”)
Lars Ulrich, meanwhile, dismissed suggestions that Metallica were leaving too long between new albums.
“We’ll always make another record,” he said. “We’re certainly not avoiding making another record. We’ve been fiddling around a little bit when we have a week here, a week there, but we realized the other day that this (Through The Never) movie will take up realistically the next four or five months. But I hope we will get to another record when this movie is over.”
Ulrich also explains it is a love of the band which has helped fuel their longevity. He adds: “Somewhere along the line we learnt to get along and somewhere along the line we learnt we’d rather be in Metallica than not be in Metallica. I think we have tremendous respect for whatever it is Metallica means.
“I’ve never known anything else. This is the only band I’ve ever been in, since I was 17. So ultimately, you want it to survive, and you figure out what works, what doesn’t work, and what’s best for the band. Somewhere along, you just figure it out and you pray you have more good days than not.”
source: classicrockmagazine.com