Metallica are set to headline their second annual Orion Music + More Festival, which takes place this weekend in Detroit. In a new interview, Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo speaks of the Orion fest, the band's progress on a new album and his experience joining the band at the time of their 'St. Anger' album, which was released 10 years ago today (June 5).

"We actually hang with the fans," Trujillo tells Banana 101.5 in Flint, Mich., about the Orion Festival. "There's a lot more [of] a connection. It’s not like we're rolling into a festival and we're rolling out, you know? Boom. Boom. We actually spend time for those couple of days, introducing bands and James [Hetfield] has a car show, because that’s one of his passions. That’s what he does. He’s a custom car builder … Kirk [Hammett] has 'Kirk’s Crypt' with the monster memorabilia… he’s got an incredible collection of movie posters and even, like, wardrobe from certain films and movies."

Trujillo continues, "I have Van’s skate ramp zone. I’ve been wearing Vans since I was a little kid, I wear them on stage and I grew up skateboarding and surfing. So we’ve got a vert ramp there with some of my heroes like Christian Hosoi, Steve Caballero and Tony Trujillo and a lot of of young talent there too. Last but not least, Lars [Ulrich] has his movie tent. He’s a film buff [who's] really, really passionate about it. He has Q&As that revolve around specific films that he’ll be showing and presenting through the weekend."

The bassist also spoke about Metallica's follow-up album to 'Death Magnetic.' "There is an arsenal, years of riffs that we have recorded. That ranges from, like, iPhone recording to Zoom Recorder recordings to our jam room Pro Tools setup recordings, because, on tour, we have a jam room and we jam stuff. James Hetfield, I mean, the minute he plugs in his guitar and adjusts the tone knob, he comes up with the world’s greatest riff. It’s a process of elimination to see what is gonna be good enough for what we’re trying to do and it takes a long time."

Finally, although Trujillo didn't actually play on the band's 'St. Anger' album, he did join Metallica around the time of its release. On the 10th anniversary of the album, he recalled his experience as follows: "It was like getting thrown in the wash cycle… and very overwhelming. I was not only learning the catalog of music… which I didn’t know actually, setlist-wise, what I had to learn because each guy would tell me something different. I think they were in this transitional period pertaining to what they actually thought they would want to play [and] I couldn’t get a straight answer. So I’m learning as much as I could without really knowing and then I had to learn the ‘St. Anger’ material, which was pretty complex, and the band hadn’t actually jammed that material. So everyone’s kind of coming into it cold. [It was] almost like learning that music for the first time."

In the full interview with Banana 101.5, Trujillo goes further in-depth about Orion and the upcoming Metallica album, while also offering his thoughts on the band's 3D movie 'Through the Never' and Lou Reed's recent liver transplant. Click below for the full interview:

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