During Episode 19 of The Metallica Report, found here, drummer Lars Ulrich revealed one of the band's he has spent a lot of time listening to in recent months is Warrior Soul.
Ulrich: "Warrior Soul is underappreciated. The record that I go back to - but a lot of their early stuff is all great - there's an intensity and a vibe around The Space Age Playboys album that came out, I think, around, what, '94, give or take a year, and songs like 'Rocket Engines', 'Let's Get Wasted', 'The Pretty Faces', 'Rotten Soul', 'Fightin' The War', 'The Drug'... all these songs are incredible. There's a sound and a vibe on that record that still perseveres close to 30 years later, and there's an energy in that record and right in that zone between hard rock, heavy metal, but a lot of punk attitude and a lot of kind of not giving a shit and the two-finger salute and really kind of rebellious contrarian energy that that record in particular sounds as fresh today as it did a couple, three decades ago when it came out. I started going down the rabbit hole of YouTube live videos and found a clip from London where they were playing in a big club theater where they were playing... the last one I was looking at was 'Let's Get Wasted', which is such a great track. The sync was a little off, but the music and the energy was definitely much appreciated."
Check out the interview below.
Speaking to the Metallica fan magazine So What! back in November, Ulrich discussed 72 Seasons and how he feels about it after the “honeymoon period” while also remarking how their previous album, 2016’s Hardwired…To Self-Destruct has “aged really, really well.”
When asked about the rear-view perspective on the making of 72 Seasons and if it seems like some faraway crazy dream, Ulrich responded:
“I think every Metallica record has its own journey, its own story, its own path forward. They’re all unique, and I think you accept all of them. The one common thread between all the Metallica records is that they’re done with the best intent, the purest intent, and always an attempt in that moment to write the best songs to create the best collection of songs.
“Then there’s a set of practicals that play a role in that at some level. So obviously, now with 72 Seasons being out a couple, what, four or five months, the record’s still very fresh to me. I like what I’m hearing. I don’t listen to it very often, but just six weeks ago, when we started the North American run in New York, there were a couple more songs that we wanted to learn. So I listened to those songs and listened to the record. I don’t think I’d heard it in six weeks, but it still sounded very fresh, weighty, and cohesive. You know, I’ve said this many times: there’s what I call the “honeymoon period,” which is when you make a record and finish a record, you put that record in your back pocket, and then you go off into the world. And at some point, you listen to that record again, and at some point, you start having some questions about the choices that were made. [For] different records at different times, that honeymoon period can be short, can be long, whatever. So, four to five months later, I still don’t have a lot of questions. I’m happy with what I’m hearing, I’m appreciative, and I like the choices that were made.
“The interesting thing about this record is also – and this kind of dawned upon me as I was doing interviews for 72 Seasons in the spring – that every record, through no choice of your own, is always related to the previous record. If you like the previous record, that affects where you’re going with the next record. If you don’t like the previous record, that affects where you’re going with the next record. So, in terms of the lineage of the records, the next record is always tethered to the previous record in some way, shape, or form.
“I have made no secret of the fact that Hardwired, certainly for the most part from ’16/’17 forward, has been a record that, in my ears, has aged really, really well. So, when we started the process of what became 72 Seasons, there was no radical attempt to alter the course forward because Hardwired felt like a really good jumping-off point. Obviously, the parameters were different in that we were in lockdown. There was a lot of uncertainty; the band was trying to figure out its place. And how do we pick the pieces up again? That’s already been talked about a little bit with ‘Blackened 2020’ [the track discussed by others previously in this series - ED]. And then, during that awful and unprecedented time in lockdown, how do we make music? How do we connect to our fans and to our friends and family out there? How do we make a difference as Metallica? And that eventually led us to start writing songs and to do the stuff remotely and through computers and Zoom sessions, etc., etc., etc. Then, ending up here at HQ, masked and under many Covid restrictions. Eventually, as things got more and more “along,” the process became more and more normalized, whatever that means in the context of making a record. So, in hindsight, now the record’s been out for five months, I’m happy with it. We’ve played eight of these songs live, [and they’re] super fun to play. I think all eight songs that we played live are connecting with the audience, with the fans, maybe a few of them slightly at a deeper level than others. We’re digging what we’re doing, and as I said, the easy way to sum it up is that there are no radical red flags.”
