How to handle online criticism: Master class by Lars Ulrich
During an interview with Loop Radio, Metallica’s drummer and co-founder Lars Ulrich was asked about how he handles negative comments on the Internet about himself and his group. Below is the transcript of the musician's response, posted on Blabbermouth.
"I usually laugh," he said. "It's not often that I go below that line, but occasionally when I do, it's more for amusement, and I'll just try to see, 'And today, let's see who can say the most ridiculous thing or the nastiest thing,' and it'll be, like, 'Okay, that person right there hit the rock bottom.'"
He continued: "The only way you can get through that is… I have almost like a third-person relationship with that. It's, like, when somebody says something nasty about Metallica or something nasty about Lars or James [Hetfield, Metallica frontman], or whatever, it's, like, that's not the James I know, that's not the Metallica that I know, and certainly the Lars that I see in the mirror when he smiles back at me most of the time is not that nasty person that they're talking about. You've gotta have kind of a distant relationship with that stuff, and that's how we deal with it. And most of the time, like I said, I just go for… when I go, I go more for amusement than anything. [You can't take] any of that stuff too seriously."
In November 2016, Metallica released their new album "Hardwired... To Self-Destruct". This spring, the band announced the European tour with Kvelertak as an opening act for this year’s fall, as well as winter and spring of 2018.