‘Low Man’s Lyric’: The Metallica song that saw Lars Ulrich “ditch the snare”
Heavy metal, as a genre, has spawned countless abrasive bands and artists to turn up the distortions and embrace their darker side. However, few of these bands could live up to the iconic nature of an artist like Metallica, who have been flying the flag for San Francisco metal for upwards of 40 years. Although the band has witnessed various personnel changes and musical collaborations over the years, their core sound has always been based around the sonic partnership of co-founders James Hetfield on guitar and Lars Ulrich on drums.
Ulrich is a fairly divisive figure within the drumming community, with some hailing him as a kind of heavy metal god who has paved the way for multiple generations of metal drummers, while others criticise his relatively banal playing style and his recurring inability to properly keep time. Regardless of your thoughts on the technical abilities of Ulrich, he is an indisputably essential aspect of Metallica’s sound and success. Perhaps that is why virtually every song by the San Francisco band features Ulrich sticking very closely to his usual style of heavy metal drumming.
If you are looking for a band whose discography includes a broad variety of sounds, Metallica probably aren’t for you. Across their 11 studio albums, released between 1983 and 2023, the band have rarely strayed from the distinctive metal sound which first earned them an audience.
In fairness to the band, much of their audience likely would not be too pleased if Metallica suddenly announced an intimate folk-orientated album; the band occupy a specific place within the American rock music landscape, and fans have been content with that fact for decades.
Any true artist, however, cannot resign themselves to reproducing the same thing over and over again. As such, there have been a handful of examples of Metallica straying from their usual sound, most notably on the 1997 track ‘Low Man’s Lyric’, from the album Reload. Completely separate from anything the band had attempted prior and a definite outlier on that particular album, the ballad sees Metallica take on an unusually mellow sound, bordering on gothic at points.
Explaining the construction of the song, originally entitled ‘Mine Eyes’, Hetfield once revealed that Ulrich was essential to its sound, even though he was forced to adopt a different drumming style than usual. “That song had originally been recorded as a metal ballad,” Hetfield explained. “We’ve got so many of those fucking things already, so I finally convinced Lars to ditch the snare and play a tambourine or something that sounded like it was just lying around.”
The effect that this changing drum sound had on the song was profound and exactly what Hetfield had envisioned. “I was going for the real broken-down, homeless sound – like a song played on some random instruments found in an alleyway, with some lyrics that were haggardly thrown in there,” he explained.
Despite ‘Low Man’s Lyric’ being snuck into Reload towards the end of the tracklisting, it remains one of Metallica’s most intriguing compositions and has earned itself something of a cult status among fans of the band. While it sounds nowhere close to the distinctive metal tones that the band usually produce, hearing Metallica completely switch up their sound and embrace a style of music that you might not necessarily associate them with remains a rare treat that is certainly worth the listen.
