Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich has explained why he wouldn’t change any of their albums, maintaining that “everything is part of a bigger picture”.
Ulrich was asked whether he’s become unconcerned with the comments on his abilities over the years in a new interview on Metallica’s official website. In the discussion, the Danish musician was questioned about whether he’d reached a “point of comfort” on the group’s latest album, 72 Seasons, that he hadn’t felt before.
In response, Ulrich said: “I think that’s fair to say. In this moment, yeah, I guess I’m very content with where it’s all sitting right now, and I’m also very content with where it’s been sitting in the past, but I guess the idea of somehow… I mean regret. Regret is an interesting word because there’s so much weight in that. I think as human beings, you can’t “not regret” things that you’ve done in the past. But regret does not necessarily equate [to the fact] that you wished you had changed it.”
He added: “So, if, as an experiment, you say, ‘What do you think of the sound of …And Justice for All?’ Then there’s 5,000 different opinions about how the record sounds, and then you sit and go, ‘Do you regret this, or do you regret that?’ But you can’t have The Black Album, the way The Black Album is and came to be, without the choices that were made on the …And Justice for All album.”
The drummer concluded: “You can’t have Death Magnetic and the choices that were made on that record without St. Anger. So, it’s all tethered together in a way that makes it a useless conversation at some point. Because everything is part of a bigger picture. And I guess I am very good at accepting the journey…”
In a two-star review of Metallica’s latest album, Far Out wrote: “72 Seasons isn’t a concept album, which is good, because its central themes only barely seem to hold together. Sometimes Hetfield is talking about witches, sometimes he’s interrogating himself, and sometimes it’s completely unclear what he’s on about.”
The review concluded: “Behind him, the other members break out a different variation of the same thing for every song. Metallica clearly thought that they could get by on speed and aggression because 72 Seasons proves that there’s nothing new under the sun for metal’s most popular band.”
