Kirk Hammett Releases Cinematic Solo Song ‘High Plains Drifter’

Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett has launched a solo music titled “Excessive Plains Drifter,” the primary style of his upcoming debut solo EP, Portals.

You possibly can take heed to the tune beneath.

The cinematic instrumental monitor begins with clear guitar arpeggios and brooding orchestral swells earlier than giving technique to overdriven chugs, thundering drums and a dramatic string association. Conductor Edwin Outwater, Queens of the Stone Age drummer Jon Theodore and members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic all contributed to the music.

“Excessive Plains Drifter” shares its title with a 1973 Western starring and directed by Clint Eastwood. Hammett defined in a press release that the music “was not meant to be particularly music for that movie, but it surely was as soon as it was written, I instantly thought it conveyed the identical sentiment because the movie, so the piece was christened accordingly. The music for ‘Excessive Plains Drifter’ initially got here from a flamenco piece I had written. It was a two-and-a-half-minute piece, and I actually appreciated it, but it surely was a type of riffs that may be exhausting to combine into Metallica.

“I knew I wished to do one thing with it, regardless that it got here out spontaneously,” Hammett continued. “I had been sitting outdoors messing round with a flamenco acoustic guitar I’d simply purchased, and it flowed out within the second. I used to be decided it will have a life. It could have its second.”

Hammett will launch the four-song Portals on April 23. It will likely be accessible digitally, on CD and as an unique Document Retailer Day ocean-blue vinyl version. The guitarist produced the EP and combined it with longtime Metallica producer Bob Rock, who labored with the band from 1991’s Black Album via 2003’s St. Anger.

“This music was created with what I describe as an Audio-Cinematic strategy,” Hammett stated in a press release. “They’re soundtracks to the films in your thoughts.”