Check out the statements
In an interview on a radio show hosted by Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe, James Hetfield was asked what Metallica had been doing in the years between their last release, "Death Magnetic," and their upcoming album, "Hardwired...To Self-Destruct." Check out his answer:
“What were we doing? Man, life was happening. You know, Metallica isn't fast-paced. We work on Metallica's timescale. And we're very proud of what we release, contrary to what people might think, we release what's best, in the best way we can, and that takes time sometimes, sometimes it doesn't. But you know, other lives happen. You try to do your best with everything, and you have lives, kids, all these other things happening, you make it work. And you have to have a good balance. And I say, life is great, it's right if I'm in the right place with my head, and this album is being released at exactly the right time. It's meant to be now, and we're happy to be able to release it. I'm glad there's all this anticipation around it, because I'm excited for people to hear it.”.
Hetfield also spoke about the new album being a double album, despite having only 12 songs:
“There are twelve songs, and they aren’t all three and a half minutes long like Hardwired. But there are some long ones, some short ones, some medium-length ones. You know, Metallica is diverse, and we love that. I think the maximum is 75 or 80 minutes, and then the sound quality starts to suffer, especially on vinyl. And I think there’s a maximum length on CDs too. And we want it to sound good, you know. In the end, we have a lot of songs that we love. So it has to be like that; the higher cost of making a double album is worth it.”.