@@TheSageCookieuwu he's hitting the snare only on the 4th beat. Normal snares are on 2 and 4, sometimes only at 3. This doesn't mean he's off tempo, off tempo means he's playing faster or slower than everyone.
@@europeanian4205 pft Lars doesnt suck he's a pro drummer and been gigging for decades, some of you guys just take it to far Lars ain't the choppiest grooviest drummers drummer but he backed some legendary original songs and held it down with a legendary successful band. Thats more than most all of his haters have accomplished
Seen a few of those drummers who miss the Snare and drop the sticks every 30 seconds. I would have took over but the bands were always playing terrible radio songs
As a former high school jazz band drummer who hasn't touched a kit in 20ish years, I can confirm there are dozens of us, Lars included. Hell, I was staying in tempo with my finger drums on my desk watching this...
I love how with 40 years of experience playing drums professionally around the world he hasn’t learned that you can add kicks to your fills, doesn’t just have to be snare & toms broski lmao
@@jams7781 Everyone here talking shit on Lars' drumming either isn't a drummer or is even more basic of a musician than Lars is. Most of these fills are mostly on, albeit most of them annoying to my tastes. Still on though. The quick cutting between clips definitely makes them stand out a lot more. Lot of arrogance here.
The only thing that is wrong with any of these fills is that some of them are noticeably out of tempo but that’s extremely common for drummers to do especially when not playing to a click. Lars gets a ton of completely unjustified hate. Yes he’s not technical like modern metal drummers but why would you expect him to do anything else than what he’s gotten good at?
While simplistic, a lot of the fills are fitting and actually a core component to the overall Metallica sound. Some are just bad and/or poorly played, though.
@@JiihaaS Dave mustaine did a blood pact & summoned the devil on their show. He was flying around the rafters... up by all them hockey and basketball banners.
@2 Other well I didn't think Lars would be staring at the ceiling for no reason unless there was something up there. It was the devil and Dave flying around the basketball & Hockey banners.. thanks for the thumbs up I appreciate that
He was actually very good on The Call of Ktulu,, his drumming was unpredictable and very complex. I bet nobody can cover exactly the drum part like the record even lars himself.
I realized that when I played guitar hero Metallica on the drums, now I can’t unhear it ever again. Although it also made me realize how good he can be when he wants to.
When I see truly exceptional drummers, like Thomas Haake or the late Vinny Paul, I am always amazed at how they can be so percussive but precise at the same time, like every stroke is perfectly practiced and calculated to wring the best tone out of their drums. Then I see Lars and immediately think of a toddler banging on pots and pans while his parents consider adoption.
@@OrphanMartian simon phillips too, there are a lot of absolutely great drummers (Ie musicians). scott travis from judas priest, marco minnemann. they're solid. tom hunting from exodus. see, i got carried away.
someone apparently listened in on james' monitors in his ears that was playing at one of his sets and believe it or not all evidence actually points to james being the one who keeps the rhymth of the band, as in lars is following what james does and not the other way around
@@paddypenguin8895There’s history of dodgy timekeeping in metal bands as far back as Sabbath tho. Bill Ward played along with Geezer. He described himself as “a percussionist”.
@@user-sf7kl9uh7k One of modern metal's pivotal moments was the time Slipknot's Joey Jordison and Slayer's Dave Lombardo filled in for Lars Ulrich during Metallica's set at Download festival in 2004. Unable to appear due to a health emergency brought on by exhaustion, Ulrich's no-show left the band's set in doubt.
ok some of these are super painful but he also write a TON of iconic parts and led untold thousands to pick up sticks. I have a lot of respect for his creativity.
When are the drums the iconic part of any metallica song? He always plays the most boring beginner level rhythms that he could possibly get away with, at best he's decent enough to not be too big of a distraction from the actual iconic parts played by the rest of the band.
@@bxhrbr4940 …well let’s not get ahead of ourselves 🤣🤣🤣 He was definitely a beast on the first 5 albums, and he was pretty solid even up through St. Anger (his drums sounded like ass but his playing was actually great). It was right after st anger where things fell off.
One of the recent ones I watched was TGTF from maybe three or four years back. It was horrific. Fluctuating tempo, rushed fills, and completely neglecting the drum flourishes that makes that song great. The comments were all positive though so I think I'm in the minority in finding it unlistenable.
Lars is by far the most influential metal drummer. The guy's innovative kick drum fills were the speed metal pearls of the eighties. Loved to listen to them then, and I still do.
"Out of tempo"? Nah, you just don't understand his "Odd time signatures".. annnd, neither does anyone else..(Including, and perhaps especially Lars). 🤣
Like Gene Simmons w kiss!! Take the easy road for a buck!! Lars needs a serious slap in the EGO! After which he'd suck his teeth for a half hour while making up excuses for the fact that he's a lousy drummer!! And he really always has been,,go back and listen to the old stuff,,,, nothing to write home about and it's only gotten worse!! All about the money.
I think the entire decade of the 2000’s up until 2012 might have been Lars’s worst period of drumming. The level of laziness and his inability to play his drum parts like the albums really shows in the time period. I did read somewhere that James and Kirk finally had a come to Jesus meeting with Lars’s live performances. After Metallica played the Glastonbury Festival a few years ago is when they told him he needs to tighten up. Lars literally and completely screwed up the timing of Creeping Death and played the first section of the song twice leaving James, Kirk, and Rob lost and confused. Luckily James being a good frontman and leader managed to save the performance and song without stopping and making it look too obvious. In Lars’s defense now, I think his live drumming has improved and is much better than it was back in the 2000’s and early 2010’s. Clearly his best days of drumming are long behind him but he has been doing a much better job since the release of 2016’s Hardwired to Self Destruct. What I find completely astonishing is that Kirk is the one making mistakes live by screwing up his guitar parts.
His playing here 0:39 looks like the nightmares I have playing drums at a live gig where my limbs move at 1/8th the speed they can in real life and I have to play songs my body can’t physically process
They are successful because of the period where Lars was actually good, when they released their best albums, not because of the last 30 years, so you're not really wrong 😅
idk lars isnt a great technical drummer but his ability to make music is undeniable the reason why hes so successful get basically writes all of the songs
@@spaghettisauce445 correction, Lars helps to arrange the music ... most of it is written by the other members, first and foremost, one of the best lyricists ever ... James Hetfield. Without James, there would be no Metallica. Lars would go crawling back to Dave Mustaine without James.
He's so in between Time signatures its like hes playing right into the idea that he sucks but i bet this is just high brow jazz improv on display. I mean this IS a guy that sips champagne well selling art for millions of dollars okay. He's not dumb, he's... special. :)
@@jamesarmstrong88 I heard that Lars recorded song sections separately and they spliced it together like Frankenstein to sound coherent on And Justice For All
Hands up any of you drummers out there who have never overplayed or lost track of the tempo, especially during mad practice jams (like @02:19)? Lars still a much better drummer than I will ever be...
My theory is that Lars originally got to jam with Metallica as part of a Make-a-Wish Foundation wish fulfillment in the early 80’s, and, astonishingly, he made a full recovery! …unfortunately, the other guys in the band were too polite to tell him that playing with them was supposed to be a ‘one-off’ thing. 40+ years later, Lars is still sitting behind the drum kit bashing out arrhythmic fills like a chimp on trucker speed.
@Potato Man According to him , between kill em all and Ride the lightning he took drum lessons And thats why it improved a lot between both albums plus touring Also i think he really practiced then , just see the progression till 1989 .
I think a big part of Lars' problem is that even in the early days, when they were originally recording some of their big hits, he was a wildly inconsistent drummer. Listen to Master of Puppets; he almost never plays the same bar twice. He just can't help but throw in random crashes and fills. And now, all these years later, it's no wonder he can't remember how to play them. Now, not only does he just throw in random fills, he can't even keep them in time anymore. I think that's why the Black Album was so popular; it was just back to basics. Most songs on the album Lars just plays a standard beat with bass on 1 & 3 and snare on 2 & 4. Which let the rest of the band have a bit more fun with it. But now he can't even play those songs right.
thats the first thing a beginner drummer does to impress - add random crashes and fills. i mean, what else is he gonna do to mask up the fact that he can't really drum? the problem is that this strategy actually works on most non musicians.
David Nwokoye I’m only getting pissed when he is unnecessarily filling when playing slower songs like one/welcome home/ nothing else matters... kills the mood everytime
But if he hits the wrong notes accurately every time, does that mean he's doing something, right? So he just rewrote all the drum tracks for every Metallica song every single time he plays it? 🤔
@@user-py3py5sx2f Yeah I know mate, I was probably a little harsh with my words.. But we weren't watching a jazz quartet with a virtuoso drummer presenting his final arrangement for his PhD candidacy or the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra tuning up for a world performance at Royal Albert Hall.... It's a rock/metal band, where 99% of all drummers ain't arranging their drumming based upon the key signature and the selection of the correct note frequency from the chromatic scale. They're laying down a back beat for the most part and staying well away from the melody. Plus it's Lars, a little too much criticised for my liking, but he's not part of the
Reminds me of these guys from the audience you allow to play just one simple song on your kit, who hasn`t played in years. And watching suffering your band mates, you think "Damn hopefully he won`t break my kit." This is Lars Ulrich Style.
I`m not any particular fan of Metallica, but even i have got to admit that James, Kirk and Robert must be very skilled musicians to be able to keep in rythme and feel despite having Lars as a drummer. can`t even hate Lars for it really, he has managed to steal a living as a drummer for one of the most important metal bands in history, he set himself up for life with Metallica, so congratz for him for successfully managing to pull of this scam.
I’ve been saying this for years- he literally sounds like someone who has been playing six months yet has the confidence of a rockstar. I don’t get how he hasn’t been pressured by the band to refine himself.
to me it is incredible how for years they bullied jason newstead, how lars fucked up and justice for all out of being shitty with the new guy, and still plays like this with confidence lmao
agree and most drummers find it hard to follow his weird fills, i have a band back then our drummer has no problems with slayer songs but metallica gets him pretty heat up because of the unexpected fills that is not uniform to the next platform.
@@renegadusunidos6151 i agree with that, sometimes live versions of songs get a bit weird, but i think for the most part they fit in a weird kind of way. it's just an out of the box way of playing, and i feel it gives life to a good majority of the songs live but in some cases it is out of wack.
YES I REMEMBER THIS = "SAD BUT TRUE" - At around 55 seconds - they changed the Album version TRIPLET into QUARTER NOTES for the S&M orchestral concert. Somehow, Lars NEVER went back to the original Triplet thing because he always started the song too fast in the first place, making the whole vocal and guitar and bass thing impossible, and his drumming to be IN BETWEEN somewhere between a triplet and quarter note. call it a "3.6666666" in that case. Hey, I love some of Lars' creations. I do. Just pointing that out.
I mean, if he manages to stay in tempo it’s a win. So the fact there are drum fills at all is kind of impressive in its own way. Also, Kirk’s expressions are the gift that keeps on giving…appalled, sad, angry, relieved…
At least he sounds pretty unique, there's no other drummer quite like him, for better or worse. That fill at 3:22 was pretty decent though, I'm stealing that.
I mean, yea... It's alright. He serves his purpose in the band, no doubt about that and their success speaks for itself. That said, it could be literally anyone there even you or me. Only think I give him credit for is for writing some of the drums and songs, maybe we wouldn't be able to do that, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
He's so self taught it's crazy. You can tell no one told him how to play, he just went with it and did his own thing. Like him or not, nobody plays like him and I know I'll miss him badly the day he's gone.
Lots of people play like him, most people don't know that because it is only for a short period of time until they actually develop. I apologize to Lars if I am wrong but I seriously do not believe he is a good drummer nor a unique one, only thing outstanding about the guy is that he managed to keep playing like someone that just started drumming last month for decades now
Plenty of people play like him. They're mostly teenagers who piss off their bandmates by playing beyond their skill level just just for the sake of being "creative."
He formed them, that's the only reason he's in the band at all. If he auditioned even a couple months after Hetfield and some other person formed Metallica, he would not have gotten the gig.
I love lars, I am 43 and picked up drums a year ago. I can play a bunch of Metallica songs with double bass, makes me feel like I am getting somewhere. Now time to move up to a ac/dc back in black song.
it was in the tuning room. They are just warming up for a show. Even James never really sing very well in the tuning room to preserve his voice. Not saying Lars is always great but no video from the tuning room can be taken as a standard to judge the band or any particular member.
Shallex here’s my question. If you’re a professional musician, why tf would you ever play so bad. Look at his face in that tuning room. He almost looks like he actually WANTS to piss them all off
yea that was terrible. It was the tuning room though and seems he's not taking it seriously but I've also seen a lot of his bad drumming over the years to tell that on stage he would sound better, but not THAT better
