Dream Theater played Metallica's entire album, Master of Puppets, in 2004
Former Dream Theater drummer, currently playing in Sons Of Apollo, Mike Portnoy, spoke in an interview with Speak N' Destroy about Metallica's career.
“That’s an amazing thing about Metallica. As much as they are the greatest metal band of all time and they’ve made some of the… I mean, the Black Album, Master of Puppets, and Kill 'Em All, those are the greatest metal albums of all time, but they’ve also made mistakes. It’s crazy. Never has such a big, huge band had so many [criticized releases]. I mean, Lulu – oh my God! The fact that they made an album like that, or what they did on St. Anger, or, in my opinion, with Load and Reload, so they’re not invincible. They’re not like the Beatles, where everything they touched was perfect, classic, and gold. They’ve had mistakes, but that never seemed to stop them.”
“There’s no doubt, [St. Anger] is an incredibly strange album. As much as I liked many of the elements they brought [to that album], I also remember sitting… Dream Theater was making the Train Of Thought album at the time, and we had just played all of Master Of Puppets [at a show]. And I remember that while we were making the Train Of Thought album, St. Anger came out, and I remember sitting in my car and calling Dream Theater’s guitarist, John Petrucci, to listen to some of the songs… And it was… I don’t remember… maybe in the middle of “Invisible Kid” or “Dirty Window,” that strange part with just screams and moans, and James [Hetfield]’s vocals… [I was like], ‘What’s going on?’ And the sound of the snare drum […] there’s no doubt that there are some really hard things to listen to on that album. There were moments when I was like, ‘Oh my God! What are they thinking?’” But then there were other moments [where I thought], 'Wow! This is great!'. It was a mixed album for me.”.
In an interview last year, Mike Portnoy spoke about Lars Ulrich: “I’ll defend him to the end. I say: you don’t need to be a great drummer to be the most important guy in the band. And that’s what I learned from him .” Read it here .
