Dave Lombardo, de oorspronkelijke drummer van Slayer en tegenwoordig werkzaam bij Mr. Bungle, sprak zich in een interview met Speak N’ Destroy uit over de drumkwaliteiten van Lars Ulrich en herinnerde zich nog goed de allereerste keer dat hij Metallica aan het werk zag.
Hoewel Lombardo erom bekend staat dat hij geen blad voor de mond neemt – denk maar aan zijn vernietigende commentaren op The Black Album of zijn ex-collega Kerry King – was hij opvallend lief voor de drummer van Metallica. Het feit dat Ulrich een vrij middelmatige drummer zou zijn is immers een eigen leven gaan leiden op het Internet. Lombardo is het daar niet mee eens, en hoewel ze een verschillende speelstijl hebben hamerde hij op het feit dat een Metallica zonder Ulrich niet hetzelfde zou zijn.
“The band would take on a different personality if anybody else would be behind the kit, and that’s why I wouldn’t change Metallica for anything.
I mean, Metallica is who they are, and it’s commendable that they’ve maintained their lineup pretty much intact – well, obviously not with the bass player changes and the passing of Cliff [Burton].
I think Lars is a good drummer. He’s a good arranger. He arranges… Without Lars, there wouldn’t be a Metallica. So you have to give him credit for what he does for the band.
It’s very important when you have chemistry within a band. There’s four members of the band. When there’s chemistry, like, a special interaction between musicians, if you take one musician out, it’s not the same.
“If you take Lars out of the equation, it won’t be the same.”
Lombardo herinnerde zich ook hoe het was om Metallica voor het eerst aan het werk te zien. Dit was nog helemaal in het begin, wanneer McGovney (basgitaar) en Mustaine (gitaar) nog deel uitmaakten van de band.
“We played at a very, very small club, maximum capacity of 250-300 people. It was Metallica and Slayer, Ron McGovney was on bass and Dave Mustaine was on the second guitar.
Dave Mustaine would sometimes sing some songs, and then other times [James] Hetfield would sing, but the person that would talk to the crowd I remember was Mustaine.
I remember standing in the front and they were fucking tough as rocks. These guys, I think, had been already touring and they looked mean and they were just vicious on stage – it was awesome.
And I believe they inspired us in a lot of ways because then we got ahold of the demo [1982’s ‘No Life ‘Til Leather’], and we were influenced definitely by them.
I mean, if you listen to ‘Hit the Lights’ and you listen to ‘Aggressive Perfector,’ they have almost the exact same structure.
There’s an intro that is very similar, you know, it was almost a carbon copy of ‘Hit the Lights.’
Slayer did pretty good in the beginning, but yeah, listening to those, they have very similar sections. Although the riffing obviously isn’t the same – but yeah, you can tell that we were influenced.”
