Quote:
Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis
Depends on how you want to view impressive. It's technically extremely fast drumming, but the drumming pattern itself isn't overly complex. Dave Lombardo for instance says drumming for Fantomas is more difficult than drumming for Slayer, not because it's more phsycially demanding (it's not) but because he has to drum more with feel and touch and not just balls to the wall speed metal. Lars drumming style is indeed based more on physical challenge than technical challenge.
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As someone who has played drums and guitar for more than a decade, metallica is not physically demanding. Lars is always sweaty because he's out of shape and or an alcoholic depending on what time you are viewing one of his performances. Metallica used to write good songs when they had Cliff Burton. Good songs that just so happened to be metal, now they don't have Cliff Burton so they kind of suck. That being said, the drumming was never hard, it is what you'd give a beginner to learn because it's so easy. I love early Metallica, some groundbreaking and memorable stuff, but not hard to play unless you are trying to play the fight fire with fire guitar solo or anything similar.
As for the Kirk vs. Dave debate, consider that the night Cliff Burton died he drew against Kirk for the top bunk and lost when he drew the ace of spades. Could've been Kirk who died and Metallica would have remained the powerhouse they were. People always forget that it was Cliff who wrote the backbone of the songs, he came up with the structure and general idea for a song and the rest just played along with him. He practiced 6 hours a day and the first 3 albums are really Cliff and friends (that begged Cliff to be in their band because without him they were nobodies).