Cover Story: Pretty Hate Machine

James Hetfield is ready to rock. Standing amid the high-tech clutter of a control room at Right Track Recording, in midtown Manhattan, Metallica's singer and guitarist locks his legs in a gunfighter's stance and grips a '60s-vintage Danelectro guitar — a cream-white-and-burnt-copper-colored beauty — like a hunter holding an antique rifle, anxiously waiting to take his best shot. As he listens intently to the music roaring through his headphones, Hetfield's stern, leonine features crack into a devilish leer. "Yeah," he says with a contented growl, "I'm starting to feel a good hate buzz in here."

Hetfield is recording a last-minute overdub for "Wasting My Hate," a hot blast of rolling-thunder guitar and sneering vocal contempt on Metallica's new album, Load. The part is a short, slinky bit of fuzz-box roughage that has the thick, rubbery menace of classic Motörhead, and when the tape rolls, Hetfield attacks his instrument with such muscular intensity that you can actually hear the guitar strings bend and groan under the stress of his picking. His studio audience — Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, bassist Jason Newsted, the album's producer, Bob Rock, engineer Randy Staub, and a small platoon of assistants and technicians — nods in silent, smiling approval.

But Ulrich and Rock, sitting next to each other at the mixing desk, are not quite content. Ulrich, sporting a black T-shirt that reads, Jesus lives in Texas ... With a machine gun, wonders if the song's intro needs an extra sound effect "to pretty up the vocal so it contrasts more when the band roars in." Rock, a broad-shouldered man whose wide smile and easygoing manner belie his firm hand and steely authority at the console, says that Hetfield's vocal — "Ain't gonna waste my hate/Ain't gonna waste my hate on you/I think I'll keep it for myself!" — sounds "a little too serious."

Hetfield listens stonily for a minute. "That's because I am serious," he finally declares with a thin smile that suggests he's only half joking. "All those things I say that you think are sarcasm — well, I'm not kidding.