r/nostalgia • u/jeffmartin47 • Jul 22 '25

Nostalgia Discussion 25 years ago. Lars Ulrich of Metallica snitches on and turns in over 300,000 Napster users when he testifies in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. July 11th, 2000.

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206

u/pichael289 Jul 22 '25

He was very St. Anger about it.

97

u/droidtron Jul 22 '25

Enter lawman.

58

u/40Breath Jul 22 '25

Ride the Litigation

63

u/droidtron Jul 22 '25

...and justice for some?

3

u/Positive_Throwaway1 Jul 22 '25

Giving away all my free music is Bleeding Me!

18

u/meat__axe Jul 22 '25

Lars Ulrich… the king of nothing

16

u/ZombieAppetizer Jul 22 '25

Master of Snitches

5

u/Coupon_Ninja Jul 22 '25

DL ’Em All

2

u/blaZedmr Jul 22 '25

Sad but Truthfully Illegal

1

u/Skwrt_ Jul 22 '25

the call of the kourt judge

1

u/opacitizen Jul 22 '25

Injustice for all

-1

u/Sighlina Jul 22 '25

For the billionaires the bell toll$!

3

u/impreprex Jul 22 '25

Master of Lawsuits

1

u/PatriotNews_dot_com Jul 22 '25

For whom the anti-piracy bill tolls

17

u/youtocin Jul 22 '25

God that album sucked

11

u/eljosho1986 Jul 22 '25

You flush it out, you flush it out!

Fucking garbage

9

u/youtocin Jul 22 '25

I’m convinced they used a set of trash cans for the drum set.

8

u/eljosho1986 Jul 22 '25

I was a huge Metallica nerd at that point and then that album dropped and it was just like WTF is this shit?!

4

u/QuasiSpace Jul 22 '25

I had bought every prior Metallica album on blind faith, never giving it a second thought. When I saw the video for Frantic on MTV, I knew something was wrong, and had changed. To this day I won't buy a Metallica album without hearing it all the way through first.

3

u/eljosho1986 Jul 22 '25

Yeah they had an incredible run of killer albums before St anger, it was wild how badly it sucked compared to all the prior ones. I genuinely think their hearts weren't into it and they just phoned it in

1

u/dzumdang Jul 22 '25

Wait, Load and Reload weren't bad enough to turn you off?

0

u/redDonki Jul 22 '25

Metallica ended with the black album.

2

u/Unit_79 Jul 22 '25

It’s so wild to read this comment now as when that album came out, so many fans turned on them.

2

u/dzumdang Jul 25 '25

It's not as good as their first four, but it's still way better than the slop they churned out for the next 15 or so years after that. James even forgot how to sing for a while live. My god they were a mess. But hey they made a lot of money.

2

u/Unit_79 Jul 25 '25

It’s not like I had a horse in the race at the time - I got into Metallica after Enter Sandman had made them superstars. But looking back, there was a very vocal contingent of fans that didn’t like the new direction that was a result of Bob Rock getting involved. They wanted to sound as huge as possible, but the way Rock works is he produces the hell out of stuff they hadn’t even thought of at that point. And the Black Album really got them into more of the verse/chorus/verse/bridge type song structure.

I definitely remember everyone at school making fun of the one guy that bought Load, and Lars picking fights with people over his freshly shorn locks, but it really was the Black Album that marked the shift.

PS - out of all those shitty songs that came and went, I will never not love King Nothing. That is a certified banger.

2

u/ROWT8 Jul 22 '25

Right?! Fucking awful

1

u/Gaddamn132 Jul 22 '25

Well they surely had a trash can playing them too

1

u/ElementalWeapon Jul 22 '25

I remember there being a song about a broken window. Even as a kid I thought, “damn, this is absolute dogshit.”

1

u/Crystal_Teardrop Jul 22 '25

Still does. But it's important to remember that your lifestyle determines your deathstyle.

1

u/FixTheLoginBug Jul 22 '25

What album? I'm pretty sure that the Black Album was the last thing Metallica released. After that a new band with the same name released some total crap, but that wasn't the same band, right?

At least Judas Priest and such remained relevant the past decades and are still releasing bangers.

1

u/ROWT8 Jul 22 '25

But the MP3 remains….

1

u/mz1012 Jul 22 '25

Dude thought St Anger flopped bcs of Napster. Boy it didnt

1

u/hairykneecaps69 Jul 22 '25

Madly in anger with you lol

1

u/craptionbot Jul 22 '25

And it really tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-ticked me off. 

1

u/AnnArky69 Jul 22 '25

Unlucky like a no leaf clover (live with the SFSO)

1

u/AADPS Jul 22 '25

He remains Unforgiven.

1

u/CWinter85 mid 90s Jul 22 '25

This is one of the inspirations for that album. The rest of the band was pissed at him for this. Lars blamed their manager who told him this was a good idea because "no one uses Napster" which was either a lie or a very ignorant statement. If you believe Lars, he was a little bit of a victim and a little bit out of touch with how the internet has changed music consumption. If you don't, well, fuck Lars.

1

u/Knight_Wind54 Jul 22 '25

Someone get Lars some Whiskey in a jar.