Metallica drummer and band co-founder Lars Ulrich has admitted that he is occasionally prone to breaking that sacred rule of keeping one's sanity on the internet: he reads social media comments about his work.
Speaking to Metal Hammer as part of our brand new cover interview, Ulrich explains that when the metal legends released rollocking comeback single Lux Æterna late last year, he couldn't resist the opportunity to sneak a look online to see what what fans were saying about their new music.
“If you decide to go down into the comment sections, at least for me, you have to prepare yourself for not taking any of it overly personally,” Lars says. “You have to kind of remove yourself from it. But I’d like to challenge anybody in a band to say they don’t look at comments.”
“I mean, I’m not sitting up until four o’clock in the morning scrolling through every one,” he adds. “But when you haven’t put any music out in five or six years and you dump something like Lux Æterna on an unsuspecting world, you’re going to want to see what the feedback is.”
Hilariously, as it turns out, Robert Trujillo got great feedback on Lux Æterna almost immediately - so quickly, in fact, that it came before Metallica's bassist even knew that the band had released the single.
“I started getting texts the next morning from friends: ‘Wow, the new song’s amazing, the video’s awesome,’” he says. “I didn’t even know that the song was coming out. So maybe the success of keeping it a secret is some of the members not knowing.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Metallica also discuss the challenges of creating candid, conceptually loaded new album 72 Seasons in the middle of the pandemic, why they feel Lux Æterna's influences might not be as obvious as you'd think and being unafraid showing their vulnerable side as they get older and wiser. Well, at least mostly wiser - even Lars admits he has days where he feels "like a fucking idiot."
Read all that and more only in the new issue of Metal Hammer. Order your copy here. Metallica also are interviewed in the new issue of Classic Rock.
