Lars Ulrich doesn’t like listening to Metallica’s own music.
The heavy metal drummer admitted he doesn’t delve into the ‘Enter Sandman’ band’s back catalogue because he ends up overanalysing the technical side of the recordings.
He told Vulture: "I don’t listen to a lot of Metallica music. Part of it is because I’m sort of overly analytical [about the details].
"It’s basically almost impossible for me to listen to a Metallica song without going, ‘Okay, how are the sonics, how’s the mix, how does the guitar sound? The vocals are too loud, the bass is too boomy.’ It becomes this exercise in analytics.
"When you hear your favourite band — like if I listened to Rage Against the Machine or something, I just fucking let myself go. But when Metallica comes on it’s like, ‘Huh?’ "
Meanwhile, Lars chose the one song he could do without, and picked ‘Eye of the Beholder’ from 1988 album ‘…And Justice For All’.
He added: "There’s a song called ‘Eye of the Beholder’ on the ‘Justice’ album.
"Wherever I hear that song, it sounds kind of like — I guess we don’t want to be super-disrespectful to it — but it sounds really forced.
"It sounds like you put a square peg in a round hole. It sounds like it’s got two different tempos. There’s kind of a 4/4 feel in the intro and on the verses, and then I think the choruses are more like in a waltz tempo.
"It literally sounds like two different worlds rubbing up against each other. It sounds very awkward to me. I’m not a huge fan of that song."
However, Lars insisted the band "did the best we could" with every song, even if sometimes they haven’t hit the mark.
He said: "I guess the asterisk is that, to me, we did the best we could each moment.
"So of course, sometimes you sit down and go ‘Huh?’ or ‘That could have been better’ or ‘That was a little awkward’ or ‘That feels a little silly or easy’ or ‘That feels over-thought-out’ or whatever."