Lars Ulrich seems to have found what he’d like to do if his career with Metallica doesn’t pan out; scoring feature films.
For almost four decades now, Lars Ulrich has served as the drummer of Metallica, one of the biggest bands in the world. As a result, this has given him a wide variety of opportunities that most musicians would never get a chance to take.
In addition to participating in drumming competitions with Will Ferrell and Chad Smith, reading kids’ books, and having his own radio show, Ulrich was recently able to turn his attention to the world of film.
Speaking to Rolling Stone recently, Lars Ulrich revealed how he came to contribute to the soundtrack of Netflix’s recently-released film, Triple Frontier.
After being approached by director J.C. Chandor, Ulrich was asked to add his drumming skills to the film’s score, which was being helmed by composer Rich Vreeland.
“For the score I wrote a lot of rhythmically diverse music,” Vreeland noted, “But what we found we needed at times was a strong, steady pulse to glue things together better.”
“I think the word he kept using was ‘thunder,’” Ulrich recalled. “’I feel that your drumming has this thunder to it, and I would love to add some thunderous drums to the score.’”
Check out the trailer to Triple Frontier:
Triple Frontier, which features the acting talents of Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, and more, was released on Netflix earlier this month, though it wasn’t the type of movie that Lars Ulrich would’ve sought out himself.
“I must admit, I can be a little bit of a film snob, and action movies are not exactly my cup of tea,” Ulrich explained. “But this film had a depth to it, and a couple of what I’d call ‘unconventional layers,’ such as the dialogue. It had a different kind of creative energy flowing through it.”
“I started talking to Rich about it, and I knew it was going to be different. That’s what why I wanted to do it. To me, just repeating anything that I’ve done with Metallica or whatever would not be that interesting.”
While Lars notes that he won’t be leaving Metallica any time soon to began a career as a composer, he does say that he’d be more than happy to tackle this sort of music again soon.
“I started thinking what it would be like one day to make a score for a film only out of drums and rhythmic instruments,” Ulrich explained. “It would not have a score or any kind of melodic instruments — just rhythms and pulses and beats.”
“You can go so many places in how you manipulate the sound. It would be super fun.”
