Metallica has quite a few classics in their catalog. From fan favorites like "Enter Sandman" to classics that helped solidify a genre like "Master of Puppets," the band has had some extremely significant moments. Now in an interview with SiriusXM's Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk (via Blabbermouth), Metallica drummer and man who still thinks St. Anger's snare drum was a good idea, Lars Ulrich tries to decide which song best represents the band.
His choice is not all that surprising.
"'[Master of] Puppets' is definitely a very, very, very close to the top choice, because, I guess, it checks a lot of boxes," said Ulrich. "Obviously, it's a longer song, it's kind of a journey, and it's got the light and the dark, the heavy and the more melodic. So it's got the many different moods. Obviously, it's also got an incredible set of lyrics. The lyrics can be whatever you want. And I've had conversations with tons of people about different meanings and so on, but when Hetfield writes lyrics that can be interpreted in any way that the listener wants, that's when I think they are at the best. And so it's got those lyrics. And it checks a lot of those boxes. Another song that checks a lot of those boxes is 'One'. But then there's some deeper cuts. I think a song like 'Bleeding Me' has a lot of those boxes checked also. And some of the stuff from the last couple of records. To me, it's a testament to the strength of the last two records, 'Death Magnetic' and 'Hardwired'.
"A lot of the earlier records, we'd make them, and then we'd kind of sit there six months later or a year later and go, 'I don't know about that mix,' or, 'I don't know what we were thinking on that outro,' or, 'I don't know what was going on in that guitar part,' or that crazy drum fill or whatever," he continued. "But both 'Death Magnetic' and 'Hardwired', to me, the shelf life of both of those records in terms of me sitting there and questioning the decisions that were made, they both come in still very, very well on my critique list, or however you phrase it.
"I think that a song like 'Moth Into Flame' or 'Halo On Fire', and even going back to 'Death Magnetic'… When I was jamming along downstairs a couple two, three days ago, I was playing 'Cyanide' on drums, I was playing 'Broken, Beat & Scarred' and I was playing 'All Nightmare Long', and a couple of those tracks still sound as fresh and relevant as they did 12 years ago.
"But forced to make a choice, I guess I would probably nominate 'Master Of Puppets' or 'One' as the ones that cover most of the bases and most of what we in Metallica are proudest of in terms of what we do."
Speaking of Master of Puppets, you can watch Metallica play the album in its entirety here from a show filmed in 2006.
