The Metallica song Lars Ulrich never wants to hear again: “It sounds very awkward”
You’d imagine that if you were a part of one of the biggest metal bands to have ever graced the earth, you would pay homage to the grandeur of that band in every interview. The group that gave you the fame and fortune, one might imagine, should be treated with respect and love. However, Metallica‘s drummer Lars Ulrich doesn’t see it that way.
The truth is, when you are part of a giant band, it is difficult to maintain the reverence your fans give to the outfit. Ulrich hasn’t held back. The stickman has shared his disdain for certain tracks and has even discussed the one Metallica song that he never wants to hear again, saying that the track was “really forced.”
The legendary drummer was speaking to Vulture when he singled out his disdain for ‘Eye of The Beholder’, a song featured on the 1988 album …And Justice For All. “Wherever I hear that song, it sounds kind of like — I guess we don’t want to be super-disrespectful to it — but it sounds really forced. It sounds like you put a square peg in a round hole. It sounds like it’s got two different tempos,” Ulrich remarked about the track.
“There’s kind of a 4/4 feel in the intro and on the verses, and then I think the choruses are more like in a waltz tempo. It literally sounds like two different worlds rubbing up against each other. It sounds very awkward to me. I’m not a huge fan of that song.
“I guess the asterisk is that, to me, we did the best we could each moment. So of course, sometimes you sit down and go ‘Huh?’ or ‘That could have been better’ or ‘That was a little awkward’ or ‘That feels a little silly or easy’ or ‘That feels over-thought-out’ or whatever,” Ulrich added.
“It goes back to that whole thing about the past is the past, and I don’t spend a long time back there. And there’s not really much I can do about it [laughs], and honestly, I don’t listen to them,” the drummer then commented.
Ulrich then went on to say that he doesn’t “listen to a lot of Metallica music”, which may shock some of the band’s fans. However, there is a good reason the drummer can’t sit back and hit play on the group’s discography, he claimed it was “because I’m sort of overly analytical [about the details]. It’s basically almost impossible for me to listen to a Metallica song without going, ‘Okay, how are the sonics, how’s the mix, how does the guitar sound? The vocals are too loud, the bass is too boomy’,” he explained.
“It becomes this exercise in analytics. When you hear your favourite band — like if I listened to Rage Against the Machine or something, I just fucking let myself go. But when Metallica comes on it’s like, ‘Huh?’,” he humbly added. For a whole chunk of the metal-loving audience, ditching any part of Metallica is impossible to do; however, for Ulrich, it’s easy to one track without thinking.
