Lars Ulrich explains why Metallica is “richer” than Anthrax, Megadeth and Slayer

Despite the success of various metal bands over the past few decades, Metallica has always been the biggest band of its kind – commercially, at least.

Although a lot of people do not care about that – like the band members themselves – drummer Lars Ulrich was asked about it in a recent interview for the OMR conference.

At the time, Ulrich had been asked if he had any theory as to why Metallica had reached a much higher level of commercial success than its Big Four colleagues – Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax.

The drummer initially pointed out that he did not want to offend any of his friends. “Of course all these bands are our friends, co-workers, and I have a lot of respect and affection for each one of them,” he began.

Read what he said:

“But in my opinion, I always thought that Metallica was autonomous and present in our ‘own world’, that we were misfit and never felt that we were part of a scene.”

“So we just made our own way, as they say. We are strongly independent, and this is related to everything we do, which is not trying to lock yourself up in different ways of doing things or hitching on specific trends, fashions, business styles or whatever.”