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Spiritual brothers from the beginning but with vastly different personalities, statures and backgrounds, flagrantly theatrical Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich and corrosively intense lead singer/guitarist James Hetfield fought often, mostly over the musical direction of the band.
In actuality, the extraordinary creative dynamism and unending tension between Ulrich and Hetfield had led Metallica to numerous stellar peaks and more than a few troughs.
Somehow, the two had always managed to keep the ship afloat: partly through the meditative calm of lead guitarist Kirk Hammett's powerfully positive, dynamic influence, and exemplified most thrillingly of all in the life-and-death battle of the live environment.
Metallica often played legendary, gruelling 2.5-hour extravaganzas — more cathartic assaults than shows.
Ulrich, diminutive only in stature, positioned defiantly centre-stage, on a riser behind a vast array of towering cymbals and drums, with the comparative Neanderthal-large shadowy, looming presence of Hetfield, often perched violently over the stage edge, sporadically darting to all corners and stalking the audience as a lion would a wildebeest.
Curiously, the crowd seemed to enjoy the hunt even more so knowing they were the prey.
For those paying close enough attention, this was more than mere performance anyway — it was a battle of wills between the crazy Dane and the seemingly stalwart Hetfield for the very soul of the band.
These were two feverish, impassioned preachers, sermonising nightly from the pulpit of skin, metal and electrical cords to a few thousand devotees, many clad in old tour t-shirts, cobbled together with the barest of reinforced threads — the hand-washed kind delicately hidden away for years at a time at the back of a drawer — that had also become symbols of the kind of allegiance most bands spend their entire careers craving.
Further evidence of this would come directly from Ulrich himself, who frequently ended a marathon show and as many encores behind the skins, by standing up and shouting (often inexplicably without a mic), a somewhat rhetorical question to a seemingly endless sea of faces, like a veteran front man: "Who wants some more???!", as the rest of the band slowly sauntered off stage, spent.
A 10- to 20-minute drum solo coda would soon follow.
The new record: A Frankenstein from two egomaniacs
In the early days, panther-like Hetfield, outwardly the more subdued and clearly calculated of the two, would be more than up for the kind of challenge Ulrich would not so subtly place, but a third decade into their career and a recovering alcoholic, he often found himself in no mood to continue with any battle beyond the bottle.
Flash forward to 2016 and the release of Hardwired… To Self-Destruct, an album — if rumours are to be believed — nearly a full year in the making and coming an unusually long eight years since their previous outing.
The entire record — written exclusively by Ulrich and Hetfield — sounds like two rampaging egomaniacs, holed up for 10 months in one of the most expensive home recording studios in the world, fighting for control of a monster; a true Frankenstein of their own creation.
A huge and deliberately muscular beast, Hardwired is bookended by two deliciously old-school, essentially speed metal tracks: the titular song and the blunt-force-trauma of coda Spit Out The Bone.
Both numbers sound like open warfare, thrillingly displayed through the full frontal assault of Ulrich's thunderous, rat-ta-tat-tat drums and the ferocious return-fire strafe of Hetfield's Blitzkrieg-style call and response guitar/lead vocal.
Both a reminder of the warriors' lengthy roots and a potential precursor for what is clearly still to come, it is these tracks that most embody the glorious, ongoing feud between their two creators and its inescapable pull.
The proposition: Swapping roles possible in Copenhagen
When a comprehensive world tour to promote the new record was announced, small snippets began to leak out through promotional interviews — mostly with Hetfield — that an interesting proposition had been seriously discussed, predicated by the fact he had been learning to play a secret passion: the drums.
The idea of swapping roles with Ulrich had been jokingly thrown around for many years, with more than one keenly observant fan relishing the prospect of such an intriguing iteration.
But did either player even have the technical skill?
While few doubted the defiantly flamboyant Ulrich had the desire to lead (in fact many had suspected he had anointed himself in the very position some time beforehand), the question still remained: could he successfully sing and play rhythm guitar with this material, especially for an extended period of time?
And what about Hetfield? Keeping the beat was one thing, but when it came to the many speed metal tracks in their canon, there were surely few drummers in the world who could hold a candle to Ulrich.
As Hetfield recounts it, a full band practice with the reshuffle had already been attempted earlier in the year, with suitably comedic results.
Unsurprisingly, Ulrich took to the guitar like a duck to water, but had considerable difficulty replicating Hetfield's visceral vocal, and finally and somewhat dramatically came undone … after a single song.
Apparently, Ulrich was so enamoured with his new position up front, he had decided to employ almost every insane guitar move he could think of, prompting him to fall off the stage — not from lack of balance, but from pure exhaustion. Word at the time was that Hetfield was still practising.
Recently, the band decided to return to play Copenhagen, and current rumours heavily suggest the performance will feature — at least in part — the new iteration.
Fittingly Copenhagen — the spiritual home of global metal as well as the birthplace of Ulrich himself — seems a suitable locale for such a feat.
One can just picture it: Hetfield atop a riser, strangely towering above a vast array of skins and cymbals, madly flailing away, attempting to catch each song like a hobo does a freight train, while the diminutive Dane, decorated with a blazing white ESP axe screams at full throttle into a huge Universal mic, windmilling away at every opportunity.
Thirty years in, the battle for control continues.
Alistair Clout is a freelance writer and itinerant administrative officer, known to work within both the academia and film industries. He also dreams of writing and directing his first feature film.
Topics: music, arts-and-entertainment, denmark