The album that Black Sabbath “peaked” on, according to Lars Ulrich
Lars Ulrich is one of the ultimate titans of metal. A would-be tennis star turned drumming legend, without his work, thrash pioneers Metallica would not be the same leviathan that has been filling global stadia for so long. He gives the band their power, augmenting the work of bandmates James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo.
Whilst he is a lover of all music and has a strange penchant for Oasis, Ulrich has always held a special place in his heart for hard rock and early metal. It’s unsurprising as these are the genres that inspired him when he was just a teen to ditch his plans to become a tennis great like his father and grandfather and instead tread a new path. The correct decision, this one was filled with creative enlightenment and excess, a prerequisite of musicians of his stature.
Over the years, Ulrich has showered praise on many of the ultimate rock acts, including Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, AC/DC and Rush. However, another band holds a special place in his heart.
This is heavy metal legends Black Sabbath, and what they did to advance the genre is something that Ulrich will never forget. In a 2017 discussion with Rolling Stone, when listing his favourite hard rock and metal albums, he showed how much of a Sabbath fan he is by naming one of their most overlooked records as his favourite of theirs.
Ulrich fingered 1975’s Sabotage as the best Sabbath record and explained that this is because he thinks it is the album where they truly “peaked” and not Paranoid or Master of Reality as people often claim. He cited tracks such as ‘Hole in the Sky’ and ‘Symptom of the Universe’ as indications of the album’s power.
Ulrich said: “I know for a lot of Black Sabbath people, it’s Paranoid or Master of Reality. To me, the fucking one-two punch of ‘Hole in the Sky’ and then ‘Symptom of the Universe,’ that’s where it peaked for me, and then the deeper tracks: ‘Megalomania’ is, like, a journey of just fundamental heavy metal. Side A, if you look at vinyl, is probably the strongest 20 minutes of Black Sabbath. And then ‘Symptom of the Universe’ – the simplicity in the riff, the down-picking, the chug – it’s obviously the blueprint for the core of what hard rock and metal ended up sounding like … up through the ’80s and ’90s.”
“The first Sabbath record I got was the one before this one, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. I got it for Christmas in ’73 when it came out. It was all scary. ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,’ the song, when it goes into that second part, ‘Where can you run to?/What more have we done?/ … Sabbath, bloody sabbath/Nothing more to do.’ Fuck. Scary, crazy shit.”
He concluded: “This record had a little bit more of what I would call uptempo energy than some of the other albums, so that’s probably also part of the reason that it’s my favourite. Obviously, their sound got a little more advanced as it went on. There’s a simplicity to some of the earlier records that I’m appreciative of, but sonically, Sabotage is the best-sounding record”.
