Lars Ulrich picks his favorite metal and hard rock albums. Metallica‘s drummer is a clever artist and he likes to add old-school taste to his music for upcoming and new albums.
Lars Ulrich’s Favorite 15 Metal and Hard Rock Albums
Lars Ulrich is a Danish musician best known as the drummer and co-founder of the American thrash metal band Metallica. When she was a child he played tennis and traveled to Los Angeles. Also, training as professionally when he was 16 years old. We also know he is the son and grandson of tennis players Torben and Einer Ulrich.
After that, he began playing the drums rather than tennis. Lars Ulrich met James Hetfield after placing an ad in The Recycler (newspaper). Lars Ulrich also working with James Hetfield, has songwriting credits on practically all of the band’s songs. And the two of them are the only remaining original members of Metallica.
In interviews and on Metallica’s “garage days” recordings. Ulrich also proved his pure taste by covering songs by Diamond Head, Black Sabbath, Motörhead, Mercyful Fate, and many other bands that eventually made the cut on this list.
What are Lars Ulrich’s favorite music albums?
During the interview with Rolling Stone, Lars Ulrich shares his favorite metal and hard rock albums of all time:
Here are Lars Ulrich‘s Top 15 metal and hard rock albums, along with his thoughts on each. This list is randomly numbered:
1. Rage Against the Machine – ‘The Battle of Los Angeles’ (1999)
Rage Against the Machine‘s third studio album, The Battle of Los Angeles, was released on November 2, 1999, by Epic Records. It was nominated for Best Rock Album at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards, while the song “Guerrilla Radio” won Best Hard Rock Performance.
In 2017, Lars Ulrich told to Rolling Stone:
“The Battle of Los Angeles just sounds so f****g authentic. There’s no filter. It feels so instinctive, impulsive, and from the gut. Until that time, a lot of hard-rock records were very labored over, including our own. A lot of work was put into them, and this just sounds like four people, playing music in a room, ready to f****g take on the world. And the consistency is just amazing.
There is “Testify,” “Calm Like a Bomb,” one of the great deep tracks, “Sleep Now in the Fire” and some deeper, deeper cuts like “Voice of the Voiceless” – it’s just insane. And when Zack [de la Rocha] is yelling at you, it sounds like he’s like in your face, just talking to you. All great records have that thing where you feel like it’s for you, like it’s talking directly to you.”
2. Black Sabbath – ‘Sabotage’ (1975)
In 2017, Lars Ulrich told to Rolling Stone:
“I know for a lot of Black Sabbath people, it’s Paranoid or Master of Reality. To me, the f******g one-two punch of “Hole in the Sky” and then “Symptom of the Universe,” that’s where it peaked for me, and then the deeper tracks: “Megalomania” is, like, a journey of just fundamental heavy metal.
Side A, if you look at vinyl, is probably the strongest 20 minutes of Black Sabbath. And then “Symptom of the Universe” – the simplicity in the riff, the down-picking, the chug – it’s obviously the blueprint for the core of what hard rock and metal ended up sounding like … up through the Eighties and Nineties.”
3. AC/DC – ‘Let There Be Rock’ (1977)
In 2017, Lars Ulrich told to Rolling Stone:
“This is AC/DC’s heaviest record, AC/DC’s densest record, AC/DC’s most energetic record. Four or five of the songs are just staple AC/DC live, between “Let There Be Rock,” “Bad Boy Boogie,” “Whole Lotta Rosie,” and “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be.” I don’t even want to try to comprehend how many times these songs have been played live. Obviously, this is before AC/DC hooked up with [producer] Mutt Lange on the Highway to Hell album and started crafting to perfection the idea of the three-to-four-minute rock song as a radio hit. Here, it was the perfect balance of two guitars: just endless guitar solos and the riffs and Angus and Malcolm playing.
A lot of the songs would start with one guy playing a riff, the other guy playing open chords. Then, after 16 bars or 32 bars or whatever, both guitars would lock in on the same riff. Then Bon would come in with these cheeky, great, almost cartoon-like lyrics about women and bad behavior and illicit experiences. It’s one of those albums where it sounds like you’re sitting in the studio with them. At the beginning of the songs, you can hear the amplifiers buzzing, and there’s, like, count-ins and you can hear the talking in the studio and all that kind of stuff. This is raw, blues-based hard rock at its absolute peak.”
4. Blue Öyster Cult – ‘On Your Feet or On Your Knees’ (1975)
In 2017, Lars Ulrich told to Rolling Stone:
“This is one of the ultimate live albums. A significant amount of these songs are from Blue Öyster Cult’s album Secret Treaties. It has some of their earlier hits like “Cities on Flame” and some of the deeper cuts like “The Red and the Black” and a ballad that was part of the blueprint of great hard-rock ballads in the Seventies called “Last Days of May.” There is a density to this record and consistency.”
5. Deep Purple – ‘Made in Japan’ (1972)
In 2017, Lars Ulrich told to Rolling Stone:
“Deep Purple obviously had a handful of insane songs, from “Highway Star” to “Smoke on the Water” to “Speed King” to all the rest of them. But there’s probably no other band in rock where the difference between the album versions and the live versions are more radical.
‘Made in Japan’ is the first record from Deep Purple that I had my hands on, and I got to know all the songs. On vinyl, there were two songs per side on Sides One, Two and Three, and then on Side Four, it’s just one song: “Space Truckin’” – almost 20 minutes’ worth. And then when I subsequently got the albums over the next couple of years, I got Machine Head and was like, “Wow. ‘Space Truckin’ on Machine Head is three minutes long. Where did the other 17 minutes come from?” It had a sense of exploration.”
6. Diamond Head – ‘Lightning to the Nations’ (1980)
In 2017, Lars Ulrich told to Rolling Stone:
“At our first concert, I think we played four Diamond Head songs. We started out as a cover band and we sort of were in that grey area. We just went up and played the songs. We didn’t tell anybody that they were cover songs. But we also didn’t tell anybody that they were our songs. We just played the songs. I think it was the second or third show we played where we got a gig opening for Saxon, and their sound guy, Paul, came up and asked if we’d ever heard of a band called Diamond Head. I went, “Of course, we cover four of their songs.” But yeah, we basically started out as a Diamond Head cover band.”
7. Guns N’ Roses – ‘Appetite for Destruction’ (1987)
In 2017, Lars Ulrich told to Rolling Stone:
“What can I say about Appetite that hasn’t already been said? It’s one of the handful of greatest rock records ever recorded. Appetite is genre-less in a way, in that not only is it one of the best hard-rock records and metal records of all time. But it is also just one of the best records of all time, and it obviously shaped a generation and was the blueprint for literally thousands of bands.”
8. Iron Maiden – ‘The Number of the Beast’ (1982)
In 2017, Lars Ulrich told to Rolling Stone:
“To me, that’s Iron Maiden just literally at their peak. It has the best songs, the best production. It was produced by Martin Birch, who did a lot of the old Deep Purple records and a lot of the Rainbow stuff. It’s just where it peaked. “The Number of the Beast” is probably the best single that they ever released. Obviously, there’s the more commercial single, “Run to the Hills,” which became a big hit. There’s the super deep track, “Hallowed Be Thy Name” – that’s one of those metal epics along with “Beyond the Realms of Death” and “Child in Time” that are almost a blueprint for songs like “Fade to Black,” “One” and “Welcome Home (Sanitarium).”
9. Judas Priest – ‘Unleashed in the East’ (1979)
In 2017, Lars Ulrich told to Rolling Stone:
“This is Judas Priest at their early peak. With a lot of harder rock and European bands, there came a point where they wanted to crack the American market and started writing singles – shorter songs – and not necessarily in a bad way, but some started deviating from their point of origin. This is just Judas Priest at their absolute best in a live situation, before the hit singles.”
10. Mercyful Fate – ‘Melissa’ (1983)
In 2017, Lars Ulrich told to Rolling Stone:
“Mercyful Fate were obviously a significant, pivotal band on our radar. They were a big part of shaping Metallica’s sound, and for a lot of people in the hard rock underground, they were one of the bands that got their name around. This was their first proper album. It was a huge, huge, huge influence on a lot of the next generation of bands, like ourselves, and they were also great friends and became partners in crime. We rehearsed in their rehearsal studio, we did shows together, and we actually did a medley of all their songs for one of the “garage” albums. They had two guitars, lots of harmonies, and musical adventures – some of the songs are really long. There is a song called “Satan’s Fall” that’s gotta be at least 10 minutes long, or something.”
11. Motörhead – ‘Overkill’ (1979)
In 2017, Lars Ulrich told to Rolling Stone:
“I [Lars Ulrich] started hearing about Motörhead in the spring of 1979. I was in Copenhaagen, Denmark, and I went down through the local record store. And I asked if I could hear a couple songs from this Motörhead band, and then the double-bass drumming of Phil Taylor started the song “Overkill.” I had never heard anything that sounded like that. It blew my head off. And then that kind of energy continued – it was so raw. I’d never heard anybody sing like Lemmy [Kilmister], and it was this fusion of, like, punk and rock and metal, and it was crazy.
It just added to an energy to it and was completely over the top with these almost exaggerated, cartoon-like lyrics. And the consistency from “Overkill” to “Stay Clean” – I mean “Stay Clean” was a live staple for years – “I Won’t Pay Your Price,” “No Class,” which was almost straight out of a ZZ Top playbook, “Damage Case” which [Metallica] covered, and longer, deeper tracks like “Metropolis” and “Limb From Limb.” It’s just insane. Motörhead was the one band, where no matter whether you were into rock, prog, pop, punk, f****ng, I don’t know, ska … you could agree that Motörhead was just the coolest. And, to me, the definitive Motörhead album is Overkill.”
12. System of a Down – ‘Toxicity’ (2001)
In 2017, Lars Ulrich told to Rolling Stone:
“The first System record came out and it obviously had a lot of attitude. It was a new kind of sound, and Rick Rubin was doing it. You could hear that the music came from different roots and different influences, and I didn’t know they were Armenian at that point; you could just hear different things. And then when Toxicity came out, which was obviously the second record, when you heard “Chop Suey!” that was just amazing.”
13. UFO – ‘Strangers in the Night’ (1979)
In 2017, Lars Ulrich told to Rolling Stone:
“Strangers in the Night is that live album for UFO, and it opens with “Natural Thing,” and just goes through a few hits like “Only You Can Rock Me” and “Doctor Doctor.” “Love To Love” is also one of those songs that falls in under the hard-rock-ballad blueprint, and you’ve got “Rock Bottom,” which has, like, a seven-minute guitar solo from Michael Schenker.
For a lot of the metal guitar players, Kirk Hammett included, Michael Schenker is one of those unsung heroes that never quite penetrated to the outside world the way that Randy Rhoads or Jimmy Page or whoever did. But for musicians and peers, Michael Schenker is one of the all-time favorites for a lot of people. And there’s just a vibe on this album, you feel like you’re at the gig. Obviously, that’s the best kind of live album.”
14. Warrior Soul – ‘The Space Age Playboys’ (1994)
In 2017, Lars Ulrich told to Rolling Stone:
“Warrior Soul started off on Geffen Records and had the same management as us. We played a bunch of shows with them. They were dropped by Geffen, and this record came out independently in ’94.
If you put on “Rocket Engines,” it f***ing starts frenetic – it’s heavy, it’s punky, it’s energetic. Kory Clarke, the lead singer, spits out word after word, attitude after attitude, memorable lyric line after lyric line, and it never lets up for a f***ing hour or however long the record is. It just does not stop.”
15. Alice in Chains – ‘Dirt’ (1992)
In 2017, Lars Ulrich told to Rolling Stone:
“They [Alice in Chains] had a whole different look we’d never seen before with flannel shirts and it was cool. And their music was just so f***ing heavy and had so much attitude.
Then when Dirt came out, what, two years later, it was such a dark, deep record. At that time, we hadn’t been around a lot of drug abuse at that level; we’d just drink a lot and most of the stuff we did was in more of a social and party-like atmosphere. We were not super familiar with the whole drug culture, which was hidden in closets and hotel rooms. The guys who were really into the heavy drugs stuff weren’t very social, so I didn’t quite connect the dots in the beginning with this record. I didn’t understand all the drug references but as I started obviously getting to know the guys better and understand the records better, the lyrical heaviness of the record hit me.”
The post The 15 Albums That Lars Ulrich Named His Favorites appeared first on Metal Shout.
