In a new interview with Vulture, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich was asked to name the one song by the band he never wants to hear again. Ulrich revealed, “There's a song called 'Eye Of The Beholder' on the (And) Justice (For All. . .) album. Wherever I hear that song, it sounds kind of like — I guess we don't want to be super-disrespectful to it — but it sounds really forced. It sounds like you put a square peg in a round hole. It sounds like it's got two different tempos. There's kind of a 4/4 feel in the intro and on the verses, and then I think the choruses are more like in a waltz tempo.”
He went on to say, “It literally sounds like two different worlds rubbing up against each other. It sounds very awkward to me. I'm not a huge fan of that song.”
Ulrich was pressed to name his children's favorite Metallica song: “I don’t know if that’s ever come up. I don’t think I can answer that! The Metallica Guitar Hero game I guess was, what, ten years ago? They did enjoy playing that. There were some of the songs that connected; I think 'Sad But True.' They use words like 'sick' — 'that’s a sick song.'”
When pressed as to what he considers Metallica's most underrated albums, Ulrich admitted, “I can’t listen to these records without putting myself in the spaces I was in. What were we doing? What were the moods? What were the daily ups and downs? But if the most underrated records, i.e., the least appreciated records, are Load or Reload, then I would say I’m fine with that because I think those are pretty decent records. When I hear songs from either of those records, I’m pretty happy with what I hear. So that means that if the other stuff sits north of that, then that’s a good bar to have. I’m okay with that. I think the longer answer is, I’m pretty much okay with anything and any way people rate any of the things that we’ve done. St. Anger, maybe, is more of a polarizing record.”
Lars Ulrich told us a while back that Metallica credits its success to doing things on its own terms: “Metallica, over the years, we kind of float around in our own little bubble. We do things our way, and sometimes we take some chances, and sometimes we play it safe and sometimes we're on the frontlines and sometimes, y'know, we're on the second wave or whatever. But we kind of do it, y'know, in our own little bubble.”