Well, thematically it starts to develop with the lyrics. Once we get bits and pieces of choruses and verses from James, he'll sing this and that part while we're actually writing and developing the music. This time after a while, I noticed that a lot of the the lyrics had to do with death and suicide. We started talking about the rock n' roll martyrs that we've experienced in our generation like Kurt Cobain, and it started to develop. A lot of the songs are about suicide, redemption and forgiveness. It just kind of grew from there into an overall theme. “Death Magnetic” brought all those themes together.

You could definitely say that. Yeah, it can be applied to that... The beauty with James' lyrics is that it can be a metaphor or analogy for a lot of different things and to me that’s what makes James such a great lyricist. His lyrics aren't so cut and dry, they are not meant to be taken so literally. They can be interpreted in a bunch of ways. For me, the lyrics have somewhat of a deeper meaning.

Well, we felt it was time for a change so we were thinking of Rick Rubin quite a bit at that point. Also, it was funny, every time I was approached with the subject by fellow musician friends and associates the name Rick Rubin would come up. So it was almost destined for us to hook up with him and do this album.

As far as his whole approach goes, I think he is brilliant in that he really has a perspective that’s more like standing in the audience listening to a band rather than standing in a control room and trying to dictate what musical theory would work for a particular part of a song. What I mean is that he has a very non-musician-like approach. He'll hear things from the viewpoint of a fan or just a music appreciator. For us that is great because we can work on the technical side of the music while he just has to worry about the vibe and the direction we have to steer in.

Speaking of the music, on the last album you were a little more in the background, while on “Death Magnetic”, you are pretty much the vital piece, because of the heavy guitar work, riffs and the solos. Was that something that Rick pushed, or was it something that just happened naturally?

It was just something that was impending. It was bound to happen because of the way that last album turned out. We knew that our audience deeply missed the guitar solos and we realized how big a part of the Metallica sound guitar solos actually are. So that was something that was definitely going to be brought back. There was no discussion, it was just really obvious.

I love to play harmony stuff with James. It has everything to do with our love for bands like Thin Lizzy who played tons of harmony stuff on a lot of different guitar lines. So we did that mainly because there is love for it and also we felt there was a need for it in certain songs. As far as riffs are concerned, I always write tons and tons of music for every Metallica album, and on this album my riffs are just scattered throughout all the songs. And I have to say, a lot of the riffs were developed using Pro Tools and Guitar Rig.

Yeah, I developed a lot of different riffs on my own just sitting in my basement with my laptop and throwing stuff down on CD knowing that inevitably we would get together and start going through all the music that we'd written and saved over the last couple of years.

Oh, absolutely. What's so great about Guitar Rig is that when you have an idea and you want to throw it down you can cycle through all the different settings and tones and just get a real feel for what sound matches the particular type of music you need. If you're looking for a specific vibe you can just go through all the tones that actually work best without having to replay it a million times while dialing in every amp setting.