For a guitarist who’s spent more than four decades in one of metal’s biggest bands, Kirk Hammett doesn’t often reflect on his own back catalog. But in a recent interview with Metal Hammer, the Metallica guitarist was asked a simple question: on which album does he feel his playing was at its peak?
“It’s weird, because my opinion of that changes all the time. I don’t sit around listening to Metallica, so sometimes something comes on and I’m, like, ‘I haven’t heard this in fucking five years. I forgot about that sound,'” Hammett admitted. “I don’t look in the rear-view mirror too often. The whole band is like that — we just move on. What’s the next cool thing we can do? It’s just how we are.”
Still, after a moment of consideration, Hammett pointed to The Black Album, the band’s 1991 self-titled juggernaut. “I will say, there was a period where I thought my playing was fucking spot on, and that was The Black Album. Those solos wrote themselves. Almost all of them worked out instantly.”
Not everything came so easily, though. “There were only a few things I wasn’t prepared for, and that was ‘The Unforgiven’ solo, which is pretty well documented,” he recalled. “And the solo for ‘My Friend Of Misery’. But because the solo of ‘The Unforgiven’ ended up being so spontaneous, that made me want to do them all like that from that point on.”
The recording of “The Unforgiven” would, in fact, prove pivotal in shaping Hammett’s future approach to solos. Speaking to Total Guitar in 2021, he reflected on those sessions: “It wasn’t happening, and then Bob Rock accused me of not doing my homework. I don’t know what he was talking about, because I arrived in the studio with all these ideas, but they just didn’t work. I had to throw them all out. I was bare naked with no idea what to do.”
Rock’s advice was simple: adjust the tone and let Hammett just play. “Bob told me he would try to tweak the sound for me, and when he did that, it really helped. They said, ‘Just play,’ and I was, like, ‘Arrrgh!’ I had maybe a minute to put myself into a real mood. I just needed to block everything out and go deep emotionally. We hit record and I didn’t know what the fuck to play but something was going to come out… Something always does.”
What emerged was one of the album’s most iconic moments. “That solo was raw emotion. I had no idea what to do; it all came to me as I played — real improvisation,” Hammett said. “I was so happy after that, really excited and inspired.”
That breakthrough would shift Hammett’s entire outlook on how to craft solos. Rather than meticulously composing every note, he began to lean into the unknown. “I knew I needed to do more of it, and ever since that moment, I’ve worked on being better at improvisation and completing music thoughts that are very much listenable,” he explained. “Forming complete solos naturally, if you know what I mean.”
On The Black Album, Hammett estimates that “I came in with 80 percent of the stuff worked out and 20 percent was improvised, including ‘The Unforgiven’ solo.” These days, the ratio is reversed. “Nowadays I prefer to have it the opposite way, with 20 percent worked out and 80 percent improvised, because it’s more exciting, more spontaneous and honest.”
That embrace of spontaneity has become central to his process. “I don’t know what’s going to be on the album as much as anyone else,” Hammett said. “It feels right doing it like that, it feels better — rather than composing something and making it fit, sometimes forcing things where they might not feel right. Pure improvisation is more real and human.”
