Asked if there are any new hard rock bands that he is particularly fond of, Ulrich responded, "I don't make a case in point of judging people to be better or worse than others. I think that in hard rock music, there's a not a lot going that I would say this is really… I think that a band like The White Stripes, to me, is really interesting just because it's two people, and that whole thing is really interesting. It seems like harder rock music's in bit of a slump right now. I think a few years ago when you had bands like Staind and Godsmack and so on, there was kind of something exciting going on there, but it seems like it's a little bit of a low right now — the Nickelbacks of the world is not all that interesting to me. There's a couple of the more extreme things, I don't know… something like Lamb Of God and Satyricon or something like that, that I think are pretty cool. And obviously you'be got a band like System Of A Down, who I think are probably about my favorite hard rock band of the last few years, and then a band like Audioslave, who you also can't deny, but other than that, it's pretty slim pickings out there, man [laughs]. Pretty slim."

Help needed:

Some friends of mine in the band "Desspo" is trying to get a important gig here in Norway. They need more votes to be on the By:Larm2004 festival, so could you please do the following: 1. Go to www.bylarm.no 2. Find "Desspo" in the top20 list and click "Stem!" to vote for them. 3. You may click on the speaker to listen to the song. Thank you very much.

Discuss this story and more in the message forums