Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett revealed that he has over 600 musical ideas for the band's next album. During a chat with Uproxx, Hammett spoke about the band's followup to 2016's chart-topping, Hardwired. . . To Self-Destruct collection, saying, “I've been using this time to go through all my musical ideas that I've come up with. In the last three or four years, it's over 600 ideas. It's taken me a couple of months to go through it all. But they've been sent into the big musical idea bank, and we're starting to talk about going through all that stuff, and exchanging ideas, and just starting to get the ball rolling towards creating some new material.”

Regarding the sessions for the upcoming album, “There's a lot we can do remotely, but I really think that we all need to be together in the same room, to really create some really, really, really great songs and music. The magic really happens when we're all in the same room, breathing the same air, even though that can be deadly.”

It came as a surprise to fans that Kirk Hammett wrote no new music for 2016's Hardwired. . .To Self-Destruct. He told us at the time that it was a strange feeling to not contribute any material: “In terms of my coming to the table with something to contribute, it's been my first time in decades that I have not had anything to contribute. Thank God I still had my lead guitar playing to contribute, or else I would have felt like just a bystander or something.”

AUDIO: METALLICA’S KIRK HAMMETT ON NOT TAKING RECORD SALES FOR GRANTED