The 1993 song Lars Ulrich said would be in the afterlife: “Coming back”
When it comes to the greatest musicians in metal, there’s always a bit of an asterisk next to Lars Ulrich.
He is one of the foundational members of Metallica and helped bring them to the top of the rock and roll world at the dawn of the 1990s, but when you look at his technique, it’s not like he’s one of the most gifted drummers that the world has ever seen. But while it’s more fun for people to make fun of him every single time that he plays, there’s a good chance that metal as a whole wouldn’t have been the same without Ulrich fighting for what metal stood for at every opportunity.
There were more than a few times when he looked like the most arrogant person in the music industry, but the fact that he was flying the flag for metal was all that anyone could have asked for. The genre was known as scary music for outsiders, and while purists would have preferred if they remained an underground band for the rest of their lives, Ulrich knew that the band had it in them to become one of the biggest names in music.
But even when he became one of the wealthiest musicians in the industry off the success of The Black Album, Ulrich was never trying to keep everything for himself. He was still a huge fan of metal music, and even in his spare time, he was making different compilation CDs to put out on other labels to give his favourite bands a chance to shine. No one may have heard of Diamond Head if they grew up in the US, and Ulrich would do anything he could to help bring his favourite underground acts above ground with him.
Then again, Mercyful Fate was probably never going to be one of the biggest household names or anything. King Diamond’s horrifying look was what Gene Simmons would have looked like if he bothered to take himself seriously, and even looking at the back cover of an album like Don’t Break the Oath, seeing this intimidating silhouette standing in a doorway that looks like it’s leading straight down to hell is still one of the scariest images a kid could have seen at that age.
Covering a medley of their songs back in the day was already a major step for them during Garage Inc, but Ulrich had already returned the favour when he had played on one of their records. The track ‘Return of the Vampire’ probably wasn’t going to be one of his standout performances compared to ‘Battery’ or ‘Disposable Heroes’, but when looking back on his career, Ulrich said that song would be one of the few that would stick with him long after he’s gone.
He was immensely proud of the work he did with Metallica, but when asked about songs he would have played at his funeral, ‘Return of the Vampire’ was one of the few songs that he felt would follow him long after he’s shuffled off this mortal coil, saying, “That’s an old classic that I played on when they re-recorded it around 1993, and maybe in some weird way ‘Return Of The Vampire’ could be me in my afterlife coming back.”
At the same time, the fact that Ulrich drummed on that song at all was already one of the bigger problems happening in Metallica at the time. Jason Newsted was already told that there were to be no side projects in Metallica, so if he was being stifled while Ulrich and James Hetfield could perform with their friends, it’s no surprise that he wanted out of the band only a few years down the line.
Still, that wasn’t going to stop Ulrich from making the kind of musical choices that he did. He was already one of the biggest musicians in the world by the time that he guested with Mercyful Fate, and he wasn’t about to say no to a band that he and Hetfield had cut their teeth listening to long before they even had a single song to their name.
