One of the most repeated questions in the metal world over the past couple years has been, "When is the new Metallica album coming out?" Now, at least we have an answer as to when the legendary act will commence work on the new disc.

In a new interview with Billboard, guitarist Kirk Hammett reveals the band plans to begin work on the new album "in a couple of weeks." He adds, "When we start, that's going to be our main priority, and we're pretty excited about it because we've been saying we need to start working on this album, but we've been procrastinating greatly with it. We've pretty much come up with every sort of excuse we can not to start work on the album, but we've run out of excuses, so we pretty much have to start work on it now."

As been mentioned in past interviews, Hammett stresses that the band has plenty of material to cull from. "We have too many ideas," explains the guitarist, "James [Hetfield] has, like, 800 ideas. I have 400. Those number alone are just crazy."

Hammett is also excited about his upcoming Fear FestEvil and the band's performance at the Grammy Awards later this month. Read his full interview with Billboard to learn what he has to say on those topics.

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