METALLICA's LARS ULRICH: 'The Best Thing In The World Is Those Two Hours Up On Stage'

In a brand new interview with Newsweek, Lars Ulrich spoke about METALLICA's reputation for being a band that tours often. He said: "Not only do we tour a lot on the back of records but we also tour even when there's no records. Touring is obviously an important thing for us — to get out and run away with the rock and roll circus, and increasingly now, with more of the far corners of the world opening up in terms of infrastructure and production elements. So there are more places you can play and more countries you can visit.

"You can play your own shows, you can play festivals," he continued. "We kind of found a way to do it in a way that's tolerable. We do it in two-week increments so we never leave home for more than two weeks and no one goes off the deep end or loses their mind. You minimize the risk of the whole thing derailing into the black abyss. We managed to get a functioning, balancing dynamic. We never feel like we're away from our domestic situations for too long. It's working for us. For me, getting out there, I'd say in my day the two hours onstage is the safest place. There's no one to bug me. I'm the captain of my own ship up there and the best thing in the world is those two hours up on stage."

Ulrich also talked about the fact that songs from METALLICA's mega-selling 1991 self-titled album are well-suited for a big stadium performance. He said: "I mean, generally, without being too black and white here: Simpler sort of songs have a tendency to play better in bigger places, so the more progressive, introverted kind of stuff gets lost when you're playing to 75,000 people in a stadium. So we have a tendency to be a little more adventurous with the setlist and go into deep cuts and so on when we're playing smaller places. When we're playing stadiums, you want to try to cast the net wide to the so-called, I say this word cautiously, hits and the songs that are more on the toe-tapping side."

METALLICA is touring in support of its tenth studio album, "Hardwired... To Self-Destruct", which came out last November, eight years after "Death Magnetic".

METALLICA is currently on a short break from its first North American tour in more than seven years, which resumes on July 5 in Orlando, Florida.