Hammett spoke with Ultimate Classic rock about his 'Ghoul Screamer' guitar effects pedal and the conversation turned to the new album that the band is currently working on.

"It's heavy," he said. "We've got some heavy stuff going. It delivers on that front for sure. You know, I would say a lot of it is along the lines of Death Magnetic. A lot of it seems to be going along those lines.

He then warns that he doesn't want to make any definitely statement about the direction of the album at this point. "But you know, with social media now and everything else, I'm a little bit wary to comment too much on the album, because then people pick up on it. Then, people think that that's the final definitive statement on what this album is, or how much of it is done, or what it sounds like or whatever - and that's not really the case. It's not accurate. [Laughs.] We're still working on it."

Hammett also discussed the band's process for coming up with new music. "We go in there and see what we have, as far as material. Usually, you get the material together and then you can kind of see what the commonalities are and then from there just kind of expand on all of those commonalities and you know, after a while, you kind of have a uniform sound which later on turns into the signature sound of the album. That's pretty much what happens every time. But it happens over time and a lot of times, it isn't apparently obvious - at least to myself.