(Credits: Far Out / Apple Music)
Sun 8 February 2026 16:16, UK
For decades, Lars Ulrich has been synonymous with the heavy metal genre. Although he may not have the most impressive pedigree behind the drum kit for Metallica, Ulrich’s love of all things heavy has led to him making strides for every group he idolises, including delivering an impassioned speech for his idols Deep Purple at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Compared to every other heavy rock act that came before him, though, Ulrich thought that one band stands alone as the embodiment of the genre.
When Ulrich was still figuring out what music he liked, he moved to California from Denmark. Once he landed on American soil, though, he was getting a cultural shock when hearing the music coming out of England, becoming enamoured with the bands of the new wave of British heavy metal like Saxon and Diamond Head.
Looking to form a band, Ulrich called up various people in the hopes of finding someone interested in metal, only to be introduced to James Hetfield, who formed the basis of Metallica. Although heavy metal may have been alive and well when the duo were first jamming, the genre was still relatively new in the late 1970s.
In the wake of the British blues boom, many bands were looking to make songs that were heavier than what had come before. Using artists like Cream and Jimi Hendrix as a guide, bands like Led Zeppelin could be argued as the first genuine heavy metal outfit, playing songs at punishing volumes while still keeping a firm sense of melody.
Although Zeppelin may not have fit the metal mindset from skin to core, other psychedelic acts from America, like Blue Cheer and the MC5, were taking rock into darker directions as well. Compared to the hippy movements that were storming the charts daily, though, four men from Birmingham were about to turn the rock world on its head.
Lars Ulrich powering away behind the kit. (Credits: Far Out / Kreepin Deth)
Inspired by the aesthetic of horror movies and a healthy dose of blues, Black Sabbath were responsible for ushering in the dark sound of heavy metal, complete with Tony Iommi’s furious guitar riffs and Ozzy Osbourne’s terrifying howl. While Ulrich had firmly entrenched himself in the sounds of Judas Priest in his early years, he knew that nothing defined heavy metal better than Sabbath.
When inducting them into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Ulrich praised Sabbath for pioneering the dark music that brought metal to the masses, saying, “I not only acknowledge but scream from every fucking rooftop that Black Sabbath is and always will be synonymous with the term heavy metal. No matter how you fucking slice and dice it, the words ‘Black Sabbath’ hover in the shadows fighting for pole position. On any given day, the heavy metal genre may as well be titled ‘music derivative of Black Sabbath’”.
Although Metallica may have cranked up the tempo of Sabbath songs to punk proportions when making their masterpieces, their riffs are still descendants of what Sabbath has done. Throughout songs like ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’, the guitar tone Hetfield dialled in has taken a few cues from Iommi, down to the main guitar lick baring a resemblance to the song ‘Fairies Wear Boots’. As Ulrich wisely confirmed, though, any metal band worth its salt that isn’t cribbing notes from Sabbath probably isn’t doing the genre justice.
What was Lars Ulrich’s favourite Black Sabbath album?
“I know for a lot of Black Sabbath people, it’s Paranoid or Master of Reality. To me, the fucking one-two punch of ‘Hole in the Sky’ and then ‘Symptom of the Universe,’ [on Sabotage] that’s where it peaked for me, and then the deeper tracks: ‘Megalomania’ is, like, a journey of just fundamental heavy metal. Side A, if you look at vinyl, is probably the strongest 20 minutes of Black Sabbath,” explained Ulrich when speaking to Rolling Stone about his ultimate heavy metal records. “And then ‘Symptom of the Universe’ – the simplicity in the riff, the down-picking, the chug – it’s obviously the blueprint for the core of what hard rock and metal ended up sounding like … up through the ’80s and ’90s.”
“The first Sabbath record I got was the one before this one, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,” he continued. “I got it for Christmas in ’73 when it came out. It was all scary. ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,’ the song, when it goes into that second part, ‘Where can you run to?/What more have we done?/ … Sabbath, bloody sabbath/Nothing more to do.’ Fuck. Scary, crazy shit. This record had a little bit more of what I would call an uptempo energy than some of the other albums, so that’s probably also part of the reason that it’s my favourite. Obviously, their sound got a little more advanced as it went on. There’s a simplicity to some of the earlier records, that I’m appreciative of, but sonically, Sabotage is the best-sounding record.”
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