Lars Ulrich said again what everybody else knew already in their hearts in an interview with David Frickle. Lars and the guys talked about the creation process of their iconic, to most the last, Metallica’s album “…And Justice for All.” Take a look:
“I think one thing as I’m sitting here really trying to dig deeper, I think by playing together, by touring, by growing, whatever was happening – I think we were getting better. Literally just getting better at what we were doing. We were more sort of on top of what we were doing. It felt like maybe we were just more confident steering the ship.”
“So we could do like ‘Frayed Ends.’ I don’t think we were capable of doing ‘Frayed Ends’ five years earlier on [1983’s] ‘Kill ‘Em All,’ on [1984’s] ‘Ride the Lightning,’ we just didn’t have the chops or the skills yet.”
“And I think at that time, still it was very much… There was this kind of underlying thing about ability and about chops and about, ‘What’s Slayer doing?’ and ‘What’s Megadeth doing?’ I think of this record as still the next step in that.”
“It wasn’t really until Bob Rock showed up a couple of years later and started challenging us in the way we were writing, the way we were recording, the way we were arranging, the way we would look at everything. ‘Justice’ was just the next record. The same process but more. The same process but everything was exaggerated. More riffs, longer songs, crazier sideways s*.”
“And it was inevitable that it would run into a wall. There was no place further to go.”
“It was always that puzzle. That goes back to the beginning. And if we sat and talked about ‘Hardwired… To Self Destruct,’ that’s still part of our DNA. I think that is when Metallica works.”
“There were times when we’ve forced different ways, and that’s maybe when something different and cool comes up. But a lot of people sit there and go like, ‘What the f**k are they doing?’ But when Metallica really is OG Metallica, that is what we do. It’s just this giant puzzle.”
