(Credits: Far Out / Apple Music)
Wed 11 June 2025 21:30, UK
There’s a very simple answer to this question that anyone with a passing interest in Metallica can probably spot a mile off. Yes, “all of them” is pretty bona fide, especially looking at their live shows. However, we’re talking about a song by the thrash metal icons that Lars Ulrich himself would admit to ballsing up. Surely a man of his legendary ego couldn’t bring himself to do that, right?
After all, this is a man who saw himself as the hero when taking a teenager who’d torrented a few ‘Tallica songs to court. A man who also legitimately could not understand why others didn’t see him as the hero in that situation, either. A man who has never sought to improve his instrumental ability to even half the level of his truly generational bandmates.
That said, it’s the year of our lord 2025, we’re past making cracks about his skills now, surely? Are digs at the expense of Ulrich’s drumming abilities still valid? At this point, are they less of a bug than they are a feature? After all, no one in The Velvet Underground played their instruments in a traditionally skilful manner, and we love them for it; surely we can extend the same grace to Metallica?
Well, the problem is that metal is a genre that prides technical ability over nearly anything else. The Velvets wrote for their skill level and performed it well. Metallica write above their drummer’s skill level and naturally perform it not so well. Let’s not get into the kind of music that members of the Velvet Underground and Metallica write together though, shall we.
Which Metallica song did Lars Ulrich struggle with in the studio?
No, despite the man’s ability to stand by every last terrible idea he’s had as part of the heavy metal godheads, even he was forced to admit his own shortcomings in one particular song. What’s more, he didn’t just do so in the studio; his own admission found its way onto the album itself and stands, to this day, as a bonus track on the 1988 reissue of their debut record, Kill ‘Em All.
Perhaps ‘Blitzkrieg’, a cover of the song by the band of the same name, recorded before the worldwide megastardom changed things, with Metallica becoming big not by the standards of metal but by pop music as a whole. It probably meant that Ulrich had slightly more humility during the band’s early days than he would later. There is something genuinely charming about the way he and Hetfield crack up after ‘Blitzkrieg’ comes to a crashing halt, Hetfield belching as Ulrich admits, “I fucked up in one place”.
I can guarantee you that even the most die-hard Metallica obsessive would struggle to call anything their favourite band does “charming”. After all, this is a band that, a mere three albums after their debut, would be actively sabotaging their own records for the hell of it. …And Justice For All is one of the best heavy metal albums ever made, despite the band (read Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield) removing its bass just to fuck over new bassist Jason Newstead.
Given the choice of the band outright sabotaging their records and a few fluffed drum fills on a garage band’s first album, I know which one I’d rather listen to.
Related Topics
The Far Out Music Newsletter
All the latest music news from the independant voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.