The five greatest live bands Lars Ulrich has ever seen
As a lifelong music lover and the drummer of Metallica, Lars Ulrich has seen many great acts come and go. After the thrash titans formed in San Francisco in 1981, it wouldn’t take long for their blend of hardcore punk and the new wave of British heavy metal to capture imaginations and pour life into a metal genre grappling with an identity crisis.
The group spent time honing their sound, and in 1983, they released their debut album, Kill ‘Em All, a cult effort that typified the emergent thrash sound. With their ensuing albums, Ride the Lightning, from the following year and 1986’s Master of Puppets, Metallica confirmed themselves as one of the decade’s most influential bands and a genuinely innovative metal act. They provided a muscular and more lyrically substantial alternative to the macho posturing of glam metal and the ridiculous, fantasy-inspired drama of Iron Maiden.
Being such an important group saw Metallica tour the world and rub shoulders with other boundary-pushers. 1986 was the year of thrash, with their former guitarist Dave Mustaine’s band Megadeth releasing Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying? and Slayer arriving with Reign in Blood. Then, in 1987, to top it all off, the genre’s other titans, Anthrax, arrived with the indomitable Among the Living, which confirmed beyond all doubt that thrash was here to stay and that it was the most forward-thinking offshoot of metal.
For a short time, following the tragic 1986 death of bassist Cliff Burton when on the road in Sweden, it looked like time may be up for the band, but they quickly found a successor in Jason Newsted. He helped them push their thrash formula forward on their way to genuinely eye-watering mainstream success with 1991’s Black Album. Following that release, Metallica were no longer just a metal band, and since then, they’ve kept the company of the world’s biggest stars. The sweaty clubs of California were just a distant memory, and the new decade was to be strange for all involved. 1991 was their peak; they’d all rather forget most of what followed.
This arc, along with the underlying love of an array of music, has seen Metallica witness a variety of notable acts in the live arena. There might be several criticisms you can send in the way of Ulrich, but to be fair to him, he’s always championed good music and never strayed too far from his roots in this domain.
When speaking to Classic Rock in 2022, Ulrich named the five best bands he’s ever seen, and unsurprisingly, they’re all legends. What is intriguing, though, is that while four of them are from the classic rock era and had a hand in metal development and his ear forming, one is a more modern act with much more credibility than the others. This is Rage Against the Machine, the rap-metal act that fused hardcore fury and metal muscle with profound political imaging, whose rise was in part facilitated by Metallica and thrash.
Ulrich said: “Motörhead, AC/DC, Rage Against The Machine, Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy. I don’t know if one is better than the other, but I was fortunate enough to see all of them very early.”
Although it would be a struggle to pick the best of the bunch, it seems Ulrich has a soft spot for AC/DC. In late 2023, he revealed he got “misty-eyed” watching the Australian group perform at the Power Trip festival. He’s a lifelong fan of the band, and watching them perform whisked him back to his early years when Metallica hadn’t even formed.
