METALLICA's LARS ULRICH: I Love The Way 'Death Magnetic' Sounds

Greg Kot of ChicagoTribune.com recently conducted an interview with METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

ChicagoTribune.com: "Death Magnetic" was portrayed as a conscious return to the style of your '80s albums. Do you agree?

Ulrich: It didn't start that way. We just wanted to make the best record possible. We had a weird taboo relationship with our early records that we felt scared to revisit because we'd be in some way cheapening them. Rick [Rubin] made us feel pretty good about doing that: going back and not copying, but trying to put ourselves in the same head space as much as possible. ... Rick felt that none of our records had ever captured the frenetic energy that we get in a live situation. Our records always got watered down in execution. He wanted us to play together, lock in with each other, and play with energy in a really connected way instead of overdubbing and being all perfect.

ChicagoTribune.com: How do you respond to accusations that the record was botched in the mixing process and sounds distorted?

Ulrich: A METALLICA record is too loud for people? That's a statement in itself. The irony of that. Welcome to the world of digital recordings, compression overload, MP3's. People are moving in a different direction and things are becoming more linear, less dynamic. We can't put out records for every niche in our fan base. We attract such a diverse group of people, we can't please everybody. METALLICA has made career out of doing what we need to do for ourselves … I love the way the album sounds. Rick pushed it as far as he needs to go. Did he push it too far, farther than some people wanted? Absolutely. In a world of compression, maybe it's too hot for some people. But there is some perverse beauty in knowing that a METALLICA record is considered too loud.

ChicagoTribune.com: Did you read the reviews of the record? Do you care?

Ulrich: We read the reviews. If an artist of any magnitude says he doesn't read reviews, I'd say 99 percent of them are lying. We follow criticisms and evaluations of what we do without necessarily affecting what we do. You can read reviews without altering creative process, without turning into a parody. … [But] we made a bunch of top-10 lists. There is so much goodwill and positive energy. It's the best-received album since the "black" album 200 years ago [the self-titled 1991 album]. It's doing as well or better than anyone expected.

ChicagoTribune.com: But for a long time anger was a necessary ingredient in METALLICA's music. How do you maintain that when things are so settled?

Ulrich: That's the $64,000 question. Is it necessary? I would answer back. I don't have the answer. If we can spit out a record like "Death Magnetic" 27 years into a career, it can't be that bad. I was listening to [the 1988 METALLICA song] "Dyers Eve" the other night. Incredible lyrics, but James isn't that guy anymore. I think there is such validity in what is coming out of him now. It doesn't necessarily succeed or fail on whether his anger can get up to "Dyers Eve" level. There are enough other things that work to keep it from being comical. Rubin would tell us if it gets comical. I know there are 5 or 10 out there who feel it's comical, but the majority feel there is something left. Otherwise, I hope we'd be the first ones out of here.

Read the entire interview from ChicagoTribune.com.