During a recent conversation with Metallica’s fanzine SoWhat!, James Hetfield explained how drummer Lars Ulrich can sometimes get him wound up, here the guitarist and vocalist referred to the band’s songs by their working titles.

Here’s what Hetfield told the fanzine, who admitted he and Lars don’t exactly talk about lyrics when recording an album:

“There has not been a lot of that. There have been comments from him just saying, ‘Wow, these lyrics are really good,’ without him going into detail about them. And nor do I do that with his drumming.

“You know, ‘When you hit the third tom in that roll, it was fantastic. I really related!’ We trust each other to bring the best to the table. I think more this time, some of the feedback I got from him was, ‘I like this cadence better than this one.’ Simple as that. […]

“It wasn’t so much the lyrics but song titles there’s input on, and I can get wound up because Lars can name a certain song from three albums ago, and he still calls it by the working title. You know, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s the Black Squirrel riff.’ Like, ‘What the hell are you talking about? Oh, you mean ‘Cyanide?!’. ‘Yeah. Yes, I do.’

“And I can take that as a slight on not wanting to include the lyrical content into that piece of art, or I can just say that’s where his head was. He remembers that riff and putting that riff in that song, and that’s where he’s at.

“But when it comes to song titles, he likes to voice his opinion, and I put that out to everybody in the band. We have a little pow-wow and say, ‘Hey, here’s what I’m thinking for song titles. What do you think?’ It’s like what we do with the artwork or the album title itself. So it is a democracy in that way. I do find that living in consultation around that is helpful.

“Sometimes it’s not what I want to hear, but again, we all have to deal with differences of opinion and be somewhat humble in the band. This is representing all four of us, and even more than just the four of us, we just want to make it the best.

”And once I understand that everyone is wanting the best, then you can throw it out to democracy. And if three people say this one’s better than this one, okay, alright.”