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Comment by De_Delph | Hacker News Reader

So it turns out Ulrich is not a terrible drummer at all!

I think he is still a terrible drummer. Hs style, whole somewhat unique, lacks technique by a whole lot. As a drummer, Metallica's songs are pretty easy to play even for intermediary players. There are far better drummers, one of my favorites being Priester: https://youtu.be/rZCm1Kz1PVY

This has been discussed to death, but I'll just add that in my opinion this is like saying one painting is worse than another painting because of the technique of the painter. Never mind that one was sold for $10 million and the other for $100. Sure you can rate something on technique but outside academia hardly anyone does. It is not like most people buy albums based off how good technique the musicians have and after all the better entertainer is the one who entertains the best.

I have also walked the halls of geeky academia where people wrinkle their noses and call these musicians average (at best) while they themselves have wet dreams of being half as celebrated. I think for many it is jealousy. They would more often than not rate musicians on a scale from Great to Bad that is completely aligned with Great Technique to Bad Technique and funnily also completely reversed from Unsuccessful to Successful. Also see “Wine experts”.

I don't like to mix popularity with ability or capability. Lars as entertainer, or even song writter? 10 out of 10. Lars as a drummer? Meh, at best. Any good drummer is entitled to wrinkle the nose when he has to read "Lars is a top drummer", when they really mean "I like Metallica a lot, and their drummer is called Lars".

It is just the GenX version of defending Ringo Star's drumming.

Had more to do with luck, knowing the right people and having the right look than anything to do with drumming ability.

When it comes to any kind of art, beauty is entirely in the eye of the beholder. I love some music with really complex harmonies and rhythms like jazz or progressive rock, but also love a lot of EDM made with simple 808 beats and the simplest melodies.

How popular something is, or how much money the artist makes, doesn’t even enter the equation.

People like what they like. Whether other people also like it seems beside the point.

From the artist’s point of view, hopefully they are making the art that they love. Trying to do something because you think it will sell is business, not art.

He's not very technically strong, and a lot of their songs are very easy to play.

But is that all there is to it? Should not the drumming serve the song? I don't believe a lot of Metallica's music would be improved by making the drumming more technically impressive (at least for their earlier stuff, I have my gripes about the drumming in their last couple of albums). Their style is simply one which benefits much more from the unique but easy grooves rather than highly technically impressive drumming. And IMO, this simplicity is one of the things which distinguishes them from most other metal bands. I love myself some Slipknot, but I would not love that kind of drumming on Metallica tracks.

If I wanted to claim he's a terrible drummer, I would point to his inability to keep up live, how he has a habit of simplifying parts and missing timings in a way that sounds bad.

I think this is really the key. “Metallica was a great band, and they had a drummer named Lars” is a perfectly reasonable take. He did what was needed for the songs, most of the time. If people want to extrapolate from that take to “and therefore he’s a great drummer,” that’s a bit more of a stretch. He’s not known for being a technical guy like Peart or Kollias or Adler. And we know he can’t play songs like “Dyer’s Eve” in one take, live, when I could go to a local death metal show, wave my arms around and hit three sixteen-year-old kids who could do it cold. Supposedly he couldn’t even do it in one take in the studio. But he puts the drums where they need to be. He can do enough of the standard “heavy drumming” to get by (“One”), but he can’t really push it too far (“Dyer’s Eve”, “Damage Inc.”)

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