METALLICA Drummer On 'Lulu': 'We Always Like To Think Outside The Box'

METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich was interviewed on on the Season 8 finale of VH1 Classic's "That Metal Show", which premiered on Saturday, October 22. Ulrich discussed the humble beginnings of METALLICA, the Napster scandal, METALLICA's recording strategy, and the band's collaboration with former VELVET UNDERGROUND frontman Lou Reed. You can now watch the entire episode below.

The METALLICA/Loud Reed album, "Lulu", is due on November 1 in North America via Warner Bros. Records and one day earlier (October 31) in the rest of the world through Universal Music. The CD, which is available for streaming in its entirety at LouReedMetallica.com, was co-produced by Reed, METALLICA, Hal Willner who has produced albums for Reed, Marianne Faithfull, and Laurie Anderson, among others and Greg Fidelman. Fidelman also mixed the record.

"Lulu" finds METALLICA playing behind lyrics written and sung by Reed that are based on a pair of early 20th century German Expressionist plays.

During his "That Metal Show" appearance, Ulrich stated about "Lulu", "It's very jammy, most of it's one-take, most of it's kind of freeform After 1-2-3-4, then nobody really knows where we're going. Somebody calls out a key. It's very loose. I hope that all the METALLICA fans will be very open to it. It's quite heavy, but it's certainly not structured, four-minute easy heavy metal songs.

"We always like to think outside the box, and we hope that most of our fans, if they don't follow us, at least respect that. And also every time we go outside the box, it kind of invigorates us to come back inside the box and feel even better about heavy metal and all that type of stuff that we do, so it works on all fronts. . . It's certainly, I would say, more of a Lou Reed project [than it is a METALLICA album], because he wrote all the lyrics. These compositions have already premiered at a play in Berlin. So it already has a little bit of a history. We've kind of come in to heavy it up."

METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett told Revolver in a new interview that "Lulu" is "one of the best things we've ever done," adding, "We haven't been spontaneous like that for years and years and years, probably since the '80s."

Hammett added that fans should not consider this the next METALLICA album, saying, "All I have to say is don't judge it by heavy metal standards and maybe you'll understand it better."

Reaction worldwide to the samples of music heard from the project so far has been a mix of confusion, hostility and disappointment, with fans cautiously lauding METALLICA for daring to experiment but also saying that this project was perhaps the wrong combination of artists.