Metallica Drummer Lars Ulrich has never shied away from speaking his mind. Once, during an interview from the early 90s, he said the metal scene was mostly “crap.” He did, however, name-drop a couple of bands he felt were making things more “interesting.”
After being asked how he viewed “the metal scene at the moment,” Ulrich admitted that he has “mixed feelings” about the state of the genre. Who gave him hope for the future? “Bands like Faith No More and the Chili Peppers and stuff like that come along, and you go, ‘Oh, it’s pretty cool.’ Nobody can label these bands,” he said. “It kind of…makes it interesting for a while.”
Ulrich then balanced his kind words with a dose of unashamed honesty. “Then you end up in MTV land again, and all these bands that have a tendency to start with W,” he said. “Then you kind of go, ‘Oh, no, not more of this stuff.’ It’s kind of up and down.”
“Right now, there’s a couple good things out there,” he continued, “but I think things are pretty much at a standstill right now, it’s just a lot of crap, regurgitated.”
Lars Ulrich heralded albums by thrash metal bands Armored Saint and Metal Church
After being asked to name some bands he felt were “doing good work at the moment,” Ulrich hesitated but then gave some praise to a lot of his peers. “At the moment? Well, I think the Armored Saint record’s cool. The Metal Church record’s pretty cool. The Mind Funk record’s cool. I like the Skid Row record.”
For context, this interview appears to have happened in 1991. So, it would have been around the time that Metallica released their self-titled Black Album.
Metallica frontman James Hetfield, who was sitting next to Ulrich, then teased him to mention his “favorite band.” Ulrich replied, “It’s not out yet,” then teased Hetfield by joking that he was a “Chris Isaak” fan. Finally, Hetfield reminded Ulrich that he was a fan of the iconic rap group N.W.A., to which Ulrich snarked, “No, this is a rock show, man. They don’t know who N.W.A. is on this show.”
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