Guitarist Kirk Hammett might best be known for his smart heavy-metal writing, riffing and Mick Box wah-wah madness blessing and texturing multiplatinum-certified (and even diamond-certified) heavy-metal albums.
But as of late, he’s let us in on his horror-movie memorabilia collection, revealing through class-act museum shows this other dimension to himself. Combined with the surfing and setup in Hawaii and his enthusiasm for creativity and life — endearingly, he calls it “nervous energy” — what you get is the making of a man comfortable in his own skin as he faces 60 years on the planet.
Hammett’s new instrumental EP, Portals, envelops all of the above, and yes, even through its threatening rumble, Hawaii, which Hammett calls a dichotomy, a tropical paradise cloaked in a heavy military presence.
But, says Hammett, the direct cause of is really the monster stuff. “Yes, basically, I had an exhibition for my horror-movie poster collection happening at the Peabody Museum in 2017, in Salem, Massachusetts. What I wanted to do was spend just, like, an afternoon composing a little background piece of music, something that could play on a loop while people were checking out the collection. So, I sat down and started working on it, and in typical fashion, all of a sudden, it’s five hours later and I’m knee-deep into it, and it has all these other parts and all these other possibilities. And I’m thinking, yikes, this is turning into something other than I intended it
