Metallica: 10 Best Lars Ulrich Drum Performances
9. Fuel
When fans normally trace the decline in Lars Ulrich's drumming style, they normally focus on the band's 90's output, where they started to expand their sound beyond thrash metal. While the rhythmic structure of the songs were a bit simpler than the band's earlier output, this saw Ulrich turning into a real musical thinker rather than just a madman bashing away at the skins.
Though people tend to revile the band's Load and Reload albums, "Fuel" tends to stand out as the best banger on both albums, and Ulrich's work has a lot to do with that. The crash of the cymbal sounds incredibly crisp as the main riff takes us down. By Metallica standards this sounds simplistic, but for a hard rock tune, it has just the right amount of attitude to grab the listener's attention.
As opposed to taking it up a notch in the chorus, Ulrich shifts from his bashing snare to doing a lot of subdued runs on his tom toms. When most bands were hopping on the nu metal train with washed out cymbals, this was a really inventive move that you didn't see as often. This may be seen as Metallica dumbing down their sound, but the kind of accentuations in Lars's playing showed a definite artistic growth from their early days. Indeed, sometimes less is more.