Jason Newsted Reflects On Lars Ulrich’s Biggest Contribution To Metallica’s ‘Black Album’

Metallica’s former bassist Jason Newsted appeared as a guest on the Thursday Afternoon Monday Morning Podcast with Bill Blur and shared his thoughts on Lars Ulrich’s contribution to ‘The Black Album.’

Metallica’s ‘Black Album’ is their best-selling record with sales of 17.3 million copies in the United States alone. And it marked a major turning point in the band’s musical journey. ‘The Black Album’ indicated that Metallica moves away from pure thrash metal and they aim to reach a larger audience.

Some fans criticized the changing tone in Metallica and they blamed the band for turning into a commercial and mainstream one. However, ‘The Black Album’ is still considered to be a very powerful album. Jason Newsted also played the basses with Metallica for this album and he is a close witness of the recording process.

‘The Black Album’ has been celebrating its 30th anniversary nowadays and in the podcast, Newsted gave some unknown details of the album. He revealed that one of the most significant points of the album is the sequencing of the record. And for the sequencing, he gave extra credit to the drummer Lars Ulrich and told that Ulrich made a great effort during the recordings. Newsted noted that Ulrich paid strict attention to the sequencings, which makes him the actual hero of the album.

Here are Newsted’s words on Ulrich’s contribution:

“First off all, we’re gonna give credit to Lars for being so absorbed, engulfed in the whole thing, the sequencing of the record and the sequencing of all the Metallica albums as they’ve come out. The sequencing has become more developed and better and better like the second song has to be that and the seventh song has to be that and so and so. That’s why it’s appealing and listenable in that way, because of his meticulous attention paid to that. Still to this day, he is that guy. That credit should be there first.”

You can watch the full interview below.