Kirk Hammett said he was keen to work on horror movie soundtracks — but he's waiting for directors to call him, rather than offer his services to the industry.

The Metallica guitarist employed his well-known passion for the genre to create his recent debut solo EP, Portals, which contains the tracks “Maiden and the Monster” and “The Incantation,” among others.

“I’m waiting for the phone call,” Hammett told Loudwire in a recent interview. “I never had any doubt that I could do it. I just never got around to putting it out there that I’d be interested. But I think, you know, rather than announce, ‘Okay, I’m ready to do soundtracks,’ I’m going to let them figure out whether or not they want to work with me.”

Hammett offered another reason he’d like to work in the genre – it’s gone through a renaissance in recent years. “We're now going through the second golden era of horror,” he said. “There’s so much great horror stuff out there — books, comics, toys, films, series. It’s so great. People are really pushing the boundaries.”

He added: “For a long time, during most of the ‘80s and a lot of the ‘90s, horror was just one big regurgitation of all the friggin’ themes. It was a bit much, you know? Then the whole zombie thing came in, and it was just everything zombie. And I was so tired. Then the ‘creepy kid’ thing came in, and it was just like, ‘Oh no — another creepy kid movie.’”

But he argued things had changed. “Now, you have this whole folk horror genre. It’s a genre that was never really fully explored, and people are exploring it now. And the consequence is that you have some amazing films coming out, it’s so great.” He singled out 2019’s Midsommar for praise, saying: “[It’s] just like folklore, you know? It’s one of the best horror movies to come out in a while.”

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