METALLICA's ULRICH: It's Difficult To Talk About How Great TRUJILLO Is Without Dissing NEWSTED

Revolver executive editor Brandon Geist has posted Part 3 in "The Best of the Rest" of his recent METALLICA interviews for the magazine's current cover story on the band and its highly anticipated new album, "Death Magnetic". In this installment (the follow-up to last week's interview with guitarist Kirk Hammett),Brandon talks to drummer Lars Ulrich about bassist Robert Trujillo's contributions to the creative process, why METALLICA is still the biggest metal band in the world, Guitar Hero and the Internet. Below are a couple of excerpts from the chat.

Revolver: How has Rob's presence affected you guys' creative process?

Lars: He's great. In moving the process forward, he's so effortless and so easy to, kind of, have around. He's just a good vibe. So, when we've been working, he kind of moves with us really quick. He throws his two cents in once in a while. He's very quick. When me and James [Hetfield] are working on an idea, we're kind of like, OK, try it this way and try it that way and try that. It just moves really quick and he can kind of move with that and also be a little bit of a balancing point between different ideas and different kinds of energies. It's like a Zen thing. I dunno if Zen and heavy metal go together, but there's something there, I'm telling ya. [Laughs] It's like a vibe that just works. It's hard to explain. And also, I don't want to be disrespectful to Jason Newsted [former bassist]. Because Jason Newsted really put a lot of effort into this. Fifteen years. He dedicated his whole life. It's difficult to talk about how great Rob is without dissing Jason Newsted, and that's not fair either.

Revolver: How are you feeling about the new record?

Lars: I don't think the world needs another fucking band member telling the fucking rest of the world how awesome their new record is, how it's the best thing they've ever done. How it's the heaviest thing they've ever done. And how everybody's just gonna fucking flip when they hear that album. I don't need to read another fucking quote from me about that. I feel great about it. Ask me six months from now. I'm too close to it, man. Yeah, I know that there's some people out there that are like, What's taking so long? and this and that. You know, it takes its time. There are no issues. It's been a really stress-free experience. An analogy is, say that, whatever number you put on it, it's an arbitrary number, let's say it takes a thousand hours to make a METALLICA record. It still takes the same thousand hours. When we've worked, it's moved along fast. But the thousand hours has been spread out over two or three years instead of over a year because we don't work 18-hour days. We don't work six days a week. We don't want to tour every three months and we don't want to play European festivals every summer. We go to Japan and we go to South Africa and we take care of our kids. So, the people I've played it for like it: I played it for Bob Rock. He liked it. I played it for my dad; he liked it. I played it for, you know, [ALICE IN CHAINS'] Jerry Cantrell and Mike [Inez], and John [Dolmayan] from SYSTEM, and a few of the hood rats, and they all like it. They all say the same thing. They all say it sounds like METALLICA. That's the biggest compliment you can get, you know. [Laughs] When I sit and listen to it through other people's ears when I play it for other people, it sounds really, really lively to me, like guys are sweating, playing together for a live gig. It's not put together on a computer. It's the first record that we've made since "Kill 'Em All" that wasn't made to a click track. I hear that. It's a little loosey-goosey in a lot of places, and I hear that and I like that.

Revolver: Yeah, it is pretty amazing. One of the things that I've been asking all the guys is, Are you kind of shocked that you're still the biggest metal band in the world? That no one's knocked you guys off the top?

Lars: [Laughs] What a strange question. Shocked? I don't know. There's not very much that shocks me. We're just doing what we do. I don't know. I have so much love and respect for so many other artists out there. There are so many bands that fucking get my dick hard every day while I watch them play or listen to them or whatever. Knocked us off? We're fortunate. We've got MACHINE HEAD, who are, like, the coolest of the cool and whose records I love. And you sit there and you tour with them for two weeks in Europe like we just did. I get off the bus and have a drink of Gatorade and the four members of MACHINE HEAD are, like, staring at me. [Drops jaw in expression of awe.] It makes you step up and bring it up a notch. You know what I mean? I listen — IRON MAIDEN put out a song a couple of months ago. It was awesome. I dunno. You're the journalist. You answer the fucking question. [Both laugh]. I think that we're just fortunate that a bunch of our shit somehow resonates with a lot of people and a bunch of our shit has found a way to end up being kind of timeless. We're lucky with that. You know, you go out and tour all the time. You play different songs. You play different set lists. You do all the things that — you do as much as we do, you want to keep the experience as new and exciting to keep doing what you're doing to the best of your ability. But, dethroning — I dunno. I can't answer that. [Laughs]

Read more of the chat at this location.