Metallica's Lars Ulrich says he still stands behind the controversial snare drum on the band's 2003 album, St. Anger. The sound has been described by fans and critics as "irritating" and other similar adjectives, however Ulrich said during an appearance on SiriusXM's Trunk Nation show on Wednesday (July 29th), “I stand behind it a hundred percent because at that moment, that was the truth.”
Ulrich explained the situation behind the sound saying, “I hear St. Anger, that’s a pummeling and a half, and there’s a lot of incredible, raw energy, and it’s, like, ‘Woah!’ It’s been slapped around a little bit. But the snare thing, it was like a super-impulsive, momentary . . . We were working on a riff. (James) Hetfield was playing a riff in the control room. And I ran up. I was, like, ‘I need to put a beat behind that.’ I ran into the tracking room and sat down and played a couple of beats over this riff to not lose the energy of the moment, and I forgot to turn the snare on.”
Ulrich said at that point he decided to leave the snare off for the rest of the sessions. He said, "It was, like, ‘Yeah, that’s cool. That’s different. That’ll f**k some people up. That sounds like that’s part of the pummeling,’ or whatever. And then it becomes this huge, debated thing. And sometimes we’ll kind of sit on the sidelines and go, like, ‘Holy sh**! We didn’t see that one coming,’ in terms of the issue that it turns into.”
These days, Metallica has been working on a new studio album, the followup to 2016’s Hardwired … To Self-Destruct.