During Lars Ulrich's appearance on The Eddie Trunk Podcast, he revealed that despite fans sometimes second-guessing the band, they've always stayed honest to themselves and their music throughout the years. Metalheadzone reported Ulrich saying, “We’ve always put out and written whatever was true to the moment for us at any given time. It’s never been about, 'We’ve got to force ourselves to satisfy these people,' or, 'The last record was this way, so now the next record we got to make sure and cover these bases.' There has never been that kind of thought or that kind of purpose behind it.”
He went on to say, “Every record, every song, every era has always been a reflection of what was our truth at the time, and of course, you can sit 15 years later and go, 'Hey, what’s up with the snare drum on St. Anger? What were you thinking?’ Or, 'Where is the bass on the . . . Justice album?' — or any of these questions that the whole community engages — including ourselves, obviously. But at the time when those decisions were made, they were truthful to the moment, and they were instinctive, and it was the right thing to do at that time.”
Lars Ulrich told us that the band prefers to approach recording in a much looser regimen than in the early days: “If we had to sit there and, 'Okay, boys, now you write for the rest of the year and then you spend the next year after that recording' — I would pull what seven hairs I have left, I'd pull those out and rather just stab myself in the eye with nails or whatever. I just, I couldn't do it. I mean, we love the position that we're in to be able to come and go between all these different projects. That's what keeps us alive.”
Metallica appeared on Howard Stern's SiriusXM show to promote the band's upcoming “Encore Drive-In Nights” concert, in which they'll perform a full concert set to be shown at hundreds of open-air drive-in theaters across North America.
The band performed three songs — “Wherever I May Roam” and “The Unforgiven” from 1991's “The Black Album” and “All Within My Hands” from 2003's St. Anger.