Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett discussed the cyclical nature of heavy metal’s popularity in a recent interview with Cumulus Podcasts.
“As a guitar player, I just always shook my head and looked the other way because guitar ends and flows,” Hammett said. “It’s just like guitar is popular, then guitar is not popular, guitar-driven music is popular, then it’s not popular then it’s popular again. It’s weird because over the course of my life, it seems like people get sick of hearing it and want to hear something else.”
“But then when they hear too much of something else, they crave hearing guitar again, and I swear to God it’s been happening since the 30s and 40s,” he continued. “There’s just listening trends. And I’ve seen it. In 1979 or 1980, everyone was saying heavy metal is dead, and heavy metal hadn’t even fully blossomed yet.”
“Me and all my friends were listening to like this incredible freaking heavy metal coming out of the UK and and Europe and shaking our heads going if heavy metal’s dead they’re not listening to the same stuff as we are,” Hammett explained. “Because it was a really exciting time. Because man, the energy that heavy metal had it was a new hybrid of just like Punk energy, Punk aggression, heavy metal riffs.”
“Anyone who said to me heavy metal is dead, I’d say, ‘No, it just is not being played on the radio.’ For people like you who don’t have the wherewithal to like you know look beyond what they’re hearing on the radio. Me and my friends recognized a whole movement,” he stated.
“And I just refused to accept that heavy metal is dead. People were just kind of sick of all the guitar stuff. And so, all these synths came in. All these synth bands, the new romantic movement like Duran Duran,” Kirk added. “I can see why people would say heavy metal’s dead because they’re hearing nothing but synths these days. But under the surface, it was just waiting to strike and come back, and it came back with a vengeance. I believe, and now it’s the same cycle.”
“But instead of just synths, you have samples. You have whole like songs just created digitally. You also have like five or six writers on one song, which is like mind-boggling to me ‘cuz when you hear the song, you’re like, ‘It took five or six people to put out together that song?’ It just follows trends, and to say that something is dead will never come back I think, that’s just a dangerous statement to say,” he concluded.
Hammett’s perspective stems from decades of first-hand experience in the metal scene. He has witnessed multiple cycles of the genre’s popularity.
Hammett started with Exodus in 1979 before joining Metallica in 1983, just as heavy metal was growing. In the early 1980s, synthesizer-based New Wave music dominated, while NWOBHM thrived underground.
His work, like writing riffs for ‘Enter Sandman,’ helped bring heavy metal into mainstream music. He recently spoke about digital music and multiple songwriters, showing how the industry keeps evolving.
