[metalhead72]

Who do you think is the best drummer is

Lars Ulrich or Nicko McBrain

For me Lars is the best, As fellow christan I should be going for 'Nicko' but for raw grit and expertise Lars is the best !!

[karkus30]

If I had to choose one or the other as there are plenty better it would be Nicko. Far more fluid and more of a groover (which IMO is the esscence of drumming), chops are good, but groove is essential.

[krish]

Nicko without a doubt!! (imho ) though I am a fan of over 20 years of both groups

[Refused]

I'm gonna go for Nicko as well! Not only for drumming, but he's a rather entertaining guy as well. Lars just makes me cringe half the time he opens his mouth.

[Matt_C]

As a drummer for the past 12years, I have to say, for technical ability, Nicko wins hands down. In terms of being a "better drummer" - he simply is.

BUT! Lars is my "preferred" drummer. Back in the day, Lars (and also Matt Sorum, at that time, of Guns N Roses) was what got me into becoming a drummer, and who I based my style and playing upon. To this day I still use character traits you see in Lars playing as I have adopted them, and modified them into my own.

Being the drummer of my favourite band of all time, Metallica, Lars is still my favourite drummer, but I am not blinkered so much as to know he ins't the best drummer by a long shot. I know this, he knows this, as do many many other people - Lars will be the first to tell you he isn't remotely great and NEVER expects to see himself in Modern Drummers Hall of Fame...

That aside, I do adore his playing, and what captivated me is his raw determination, his energy, the level of dedication he puts into his playing.

Nicko tho, is a superb drummer. One of the few I would liken to a modern day John Bonham. He shied away from double kicks and double pedals when everyone around him was employing them, instead developing his own technique. One that, even with just one foot, embarrasess many younger drummers who use twin kicks/pedals (as I do myself). I have had the distinct pleasure of meeting Nicko twice now, and both times he is the utter gentleman - even with queues of people to meet, he still has so much time for everyone, and never "ushers" you away till YOU leave HIM, not vice versa. 2nd time I met him, he was in one of the artist bars at a drummers convention type thing, and I managed to wangle my way in. Plopped down beside him and we preceeded to have a good old fashioned chat for a good half hour, before I had to leave to see another drummer play. True gent, and all round "top geezer"

Not managed to meet my idol Lars yet tho - maybe one day

[Matt_C]

Originally Posted by karkus30

If I had to choose one or the other as there are plenty better it would be Nicko. Far more fluid and more of a groover (which IMO is the esscence of drumming), chops are good, but groove is essential.

different style of playing tho! Metallica's music could never have incorporated a "groover" style of playing....

Whats great about Lars is he never over plays the music. His playing is short and to the point, he does what is required for the music, never trying to out do it, and never drawing away from it. Sure his fills aren't the best in the biz, and sometimes he is rather repetative - but so is Mike Portnoy, who is considered to be one of the true greats of our time! Even Neil Peart's playing can sometimes be described as stale or stock!

[karkus30]

Originally Posted by Matt_C

different style of playing tho! Metallica's music could never have incorporated a "groover" style of playing....

Whats great about Lars is he never over plays the music. His playing is short and to the point, he does what is required for the music, never trying to out do it, and never drawing away from it. Sure his fills aren't the best in the biz, and sometimes he is rather repetative - but so is Mike Portnoy, who is considered to be one of the true greats of our time! Even Neil Peart's playing can sometimes be described as stale or stock!

Well, if you list the things that drummers should do in order of priority, then number one is to keep time.......Lars does that. As you say, he does not overplay, something that gets on my wick with bands like Mastodon.

Im not sure that Metallica couldnt use a groove drummer TBH, it produces a different feel to the music, something Cliff Burton managed and never really appeared in their later stuff after his death.

Funny how you find some drummer that gets you into drumming and the style sticks with you..........mine was Carl Palmer.

[Artie Fufkin]

Lars' performance at The Freddy Mercury Tribute was one of the best examples of live drumming I have seen...he was, as they say, in the zone.

[FeisalK]

can i have examples of "overplaying"? (by anyone, not necessarily from these two)

[rio1981]

I still think Lars is a really unique drummer - as pointed out it's not about pure ability, it's just about feel.

Bob Rock put it better than I ever could, in that Lars always ALWAYS played for the song.

[Matt_C]

You can say the same thing about Pantera's Vinne Paul - always played for the song, never tried to show off or be over flamboyant. But Vinne is an AMAZING drummer, and for technical ability, absolutely walks all over Lars - and many other drummers aswell.

Overplaying can also be overflamboyance - fills for the sake of filling when they aren't needed, etc... To be honest, you can hear a little of this in Lars playing in a couple of the tracks from ...And Justice For All. People like Danny Carey, Neil Peart, Mike Portnoy (one of my personal fave drummers), and others can be accused of overplaying.

Whats interesting there tho, is the drummers listed above, play in progressive bands. So really, the incessant time sig changes, playing in different time signatures to everyone else in the band, extra fills etc, can be considered AS playing for the song...... But to many it's considered overplaying.

I find younger metal bands do it a lot - almost like they feel they need to to get noticed....

[karkus30]

For me, overplaying is always pretty obvious. If I listen to a piece of music and it sounds like someone has turned on a pneumatic drill, the whole double drum pedal, metal thing is really bad in that respect (Trivium and Mastodon). Drummers seem to have gone more and more into the 'drum athletics ' camp, where faster is better.

I tend to think that its the space you leave thats more important than the bits you play. Less is more. You can outline the beat of music without using a drummer at all (Classical music manages this virtually all of the time), of course this becomes more difficult with a smaller group of musicians who are attempting to 'rock the house', but its far from impossible.

As a drummer (and not a very good one ) I try and reduce the impact that my playing has on the rest of the band, using space to create tension instead of filling it with drum roar. There are times for the fireworks, but I use these sparingly, infact I even try and avoid too many cymbal crashes and pare down to a minimum by using tom toms instead and working accents and displacement beats harder. No double pedals for me !

I dont think Portnoy, Carey, Peart overplay to any extent, maybe earlier in their careers, but now its just really clever adaptive playing that is a really strong spine for their respective bands.

[Matt_C]

I dissagree, sorry. Double bass is perfectly useable dependant on the style of music being played. I have played in many bands, ranging many styles - from rock n roll bands like Guns N Roses, to heavy metal bands like Metallica, Iron Maiden, White Zombie, Pantera, to black + death metal bands like Emperor, Deicide, Cradle Of Filth etc - and depending on what music it is, denotes how double bass is used.

Bands in the black and death metal genre use double bass a lot, and personally, I think it works in their style. Same can be said for Metallica, Pantera, White Zombie, Trivium, Godsmack, etc. Sure, maybe not start to finish constant double bass with no let up, but it's all about moderation and timing.

An awful lot of my playing incorporates double bass - it's just my style. But I know when to and when not to use it. But I don't consider overplaying to be just using too much double bass. Overplaying to me is using fills that aren't needed, trying to use overly complex beats/patters that don't benefit or even relate to the music being played. I mean take a Guns N Roses song, and play Mike Portnoy style fills in it - it just wouldn't work! Put Danny Carey in Green Day and tell him to play the same as usual and he'd be crap.

I do agree that Portnoy, Carey, Peart etc don't really overplay to much now - listen to early Dream Theater (Dream and Day Unite) and compare that to their latest opus (Octavarium) and the playing is INCREDIBLY different. Far more mature and controlled. Which is why I mentioned about younger metal bands tend to overplay, as it's kinda like they have something to prove......

[karkus30]

Originally Posted by Matt_C

I dissagree, sorry. Double bass is perfectly useable dependant on the style of music being played. I have played in many bands, ranging many styles - from rock n roll bands like Guns N Roses, to heavy metal bands like Metallica, Iron Maiden, White Zombie, Pantera, to black + death metal bands like Emperor, Deicide, Cradle Of Filth etc - and depending on what music it is, denotes how double bass is used.

Bands in the black and death metal genre use double bass a lot, and personally, I think it works in their style. Same can be said for Metallica, Pantera, White Zombie, Trivium, Godsmack, etc. Sure, maybe not start to finish constant double bass with no let up, but it's all about moderation and timing.

I'm not going to pretend I like the double bass barrage, but I am not going to ignore it either, like anything it does have its place. Trouble with bands like trivium is that I can almost count in the double bass attack without even hearing the song through. Its like one, two, three badabadabadabada..... Its rarely used to good effect in most of these younger bands, its so predictable..

Saying that it works for a style of music means very little, like saying you need a huge bank of guitar effects, an ESP explorer and a Mesa Boogie. It becomes de rigeur to employ a certain technique or sound. This is where we are with the growling vocals.........yes it works, but actually so does normal singing and the more you hear every single group employing growling, the less interesting it becomes. So with double pedals.

Of course I dont regard DB as the single source of overplaying, its just one very obvious source where many times I will almost shout at my HiFi speakers..........."you dont need it, its not big and its not clever".

[Divide by zero]

Nicko is much better.

Both drummers make it look really hard when it really isn't.

Drummer from Lightning Bolt would probably get my vote!

[quarry2006]

Lars is good, he's done some great little fills over the years, but my preference has always been for Nicko. He has a style not dissimilar to Phil Collins's "face-hugger" technique I think; he's definitely in the groove. Lars sounds too "mechanical" to me.

[karkus30]

Originally Posted by Slack666

Nicko is much better.

Both drummers make it look really hard when it really isn't.

Drummer from Lightning Bolt would probably get my vote!

Now you have gone off at a Tangent ! It was Nicko or Lars, you cant just wander in and mention some obscure band with an even more obscure drummer

Anyway I had to go looking for said obscure band, which lead me to Black Pus and hence to Bilge Pump, Quack Quack and Polaris (a drummer called Neil Turpin).