Both Rob and Kirk has talked about the next album lately. It seems to be hard and heavy and if they are right, it must be well worth the wait.

Greece's Rock Hard magazine conducted an interview with Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo where he said: "I would say that this is album is dynamic, heavy, groovin' and you'll probably be excited to know that there will be guitar solos on it! In addition, Lars remembered to tune his snare drum properly this time! For me, this album incorporates part of the dynamic and character of 'Master of Puppets', as well as the melodic style that people liked in the 'black album,' as far as the melodies are concerned. As for the general music style, much of the current material is groovy, heavy, dynamic and surely interesting. I would say that it's different than 'St. Anger' — in a good way, of course."

Kirk Hammett recently told Austrian web site Krone.at that he thinks the band's upcoming album is "the best album we've put out in, say, fifteen years." Hammett added that the record contains "just a really spectacular range of songs. This time we're not afraid to refer to our past music in order to create future music. People will see that we've kind of embraced our old vocabulary again and are using that vocabulary to express new things...I think with this album we're definitely going a little more back into our roots."

Hammett also hinted that the new record features "a lot of really, really fast songs, a whole lot of really heavy stuff. We changed our approach to writing the songs...There's a lot of changes that we've made, but I believe that they are all for the better."