Context: was driving to work this morning and "Shortest Straw" came up on my iTunes shuffle.

I thought to myself, "Why exactly do some folks call Lars Ulrich a *bad* drummer?"

Is he not good live?

Is it because of that one album where his snare drum goes "clank"?

Does he not have the same technical prowess as some of the others in the band?

Is he an easy target because he's an arrogant ass?

Do he and others think he's awesome but he's just okay?

Focus on his drumming, not on him as a person...

Please enlighten the unenlightened.

EDIT: voted NC.

Look for some live clips. Weirdly stiff yet sloppy at the same time (poopy double kick). Usually pulled (edited?) together well enough for their good albums, but then you get to laugh at his ridiculous crash and fill placements. And yeah, he was the one who pushed for their most terrible drum sounds (plastic kick, skillet snare on Street Anger, etc.) so that falls under 'bad drummer' too.

Not the worst drummer certainly, but considering his position/ego: Crap.

Hearing them with a proper drummer is weird. Like they're not a band that sound like a band, they are Metallica that have the drummer Lars.

He got a lot worse with age.



I'm not even sure Lombardo practiced with them before this.

I've seen plenty of footage of his stiff, choppy playing to understand why a genre defined by technical prowess would be unimpressed with his lack of musicality.

One thing I will say for him is he conjured a lot of memorable drum hooks. Especially in the Justice for All- Black album era with his melodramatic cymbal grabs and military double bass patterns ('One' often comes to mind). It would be hard to argue with a musical sophisticate that those parts aren't comically broad or silly but most memorable rock radio, air-drum-in-the-car bits are.

losthighway wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 9:02 am One thing I will say for him is he conjured a lot of memorable drum hooks.

This, for sure, plus the usual 'Hetfield is the real drummer' bit.

Lars Ulrich was the perfect drummer for prime-era Metallica. Whatever his limitations, he composed memorable parts and they fit just so with the rhythm playing alongside.

Abstaining.

Happyman wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 8:29 am Hearing them with a proper drummer (Dave Lombardo) is weird.

Yeah.. they're so programmed to play to goofy accents and tempo shifts that they don't know what to do with a relentless locomotive behind them.

I saw them on the …And Justice For All tour with a metal drummer friend of mine. We were both surprised to see Lars skip over many of the complicated fills and double bass parts. Joe, my drummer friend, was appalled. He’d spent hours trying to learn some of those parts. I’d look over and Joe would have his middle finger up in the air, yelling “fuck you!” to Lars.

I remember Lars saying in an interview “I may not be the best drummer, but I’m the best drummer for James Hetfield.” James does a lot of the rhythmic heavy lifting in that band. Maybe he is the best drummer in that situation. I’m not so sure a drummer like Lombardo would work for Metallica.

Aside from the vocals, they were actually sounding like the old Metallica with Lombardo on drums.

Lars inexplicably played on four iconic albums. I think it worked because Hetfield has always been the rhythmic center of the band. He has been in obvious decline for 20+ years.

I've seen Metallica live quite a bit during the before before time, and never once did I walk out of any club or mid-sized arena show thinking that Lars was an exceptional drummer. In the studio, however, I thought he was incredible. The band I was in in high school played a shit ton of Metallica covers and was usually left baffled by much of what Lars was doing. To nail a hook or one of those weird-ass fills was always a joy. Very weird and challenging learning experiences. During AJFA I began having reservations about what I was hearing. It just didn't sound real, particularly "Blackened." The choppy, jump-up double-kick pattern sounds edited together. I could be wrong, I could also never get it together which probably informs my perspective. I could also never get together a lot of Slayer's drumming, but that never led me to cry "TRICKERY!"

All that said I think Lars is a good drummer who makes a lot of happy accidents in the studio. Case in point: during the final moments of "The Thing That Should Not Be" he begins a mid-tempo fill that stretches through the entirety of a passage, like it would normally be a turn-around but in actuality it sounds like the fill got away from him and he spent time trying to catch up to it. It's organic and completely weird sounding. Favorite Lars bit. There are many of those weird bits peppered throughout MoP.

Not Crap, but out of the big 4 he sits comfortably at the bottom.

Dave N. wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 9:22 am I saw them on the …And Justice For All tour with a metal drummer friend of mine. We were both surprised to see Lars skip over many of the complicated fills and double bass parts. Joe, my drummer friend, was appalled. He’d spent hours trying to learn some of those parts. I’d look over and Joe would have his middle finger up in the air, yelling “fuck you!” to Lars.

Sounds a lot like lead singers who change/lower the melody on songs, forego screams, etc., either to conserve their voice, or because they just can't sing that high any more.

Can't say I fault Lars too much here. Understandable, considering how relentlessly they toured for so long.