When you get the guided tour of Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich's hilltop home, in Marin County, Calif., you can't help thinking of the opening line from Nirvana's "Serve the Servants": "Teen-age angst has paid off well." It's not just the indoor racquetball court, the home movie theater, the playroom with a pool table and a CD jukebox or the matching pair of very real and possibly working cannons that greet you at the front gate. It's the view, from Ulrich's outdoor patio you can see the San Francisco San area in all of its sun-kissed glory: Hlcatraz, the hills and streets of the city, a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean on the far side of the Golden Gate Bridge and — on a clear day, according to Ulrich — all the map to San Jose. You should see the other guys' houses!" Ulrich howls when teased about the fruits of his heavy-metal labors. Singer and guitarist James Hetfield has "the biggest hunting lodge in the universe, with dead deer coming out of every wall and rifles hanging everywhere," Ulrich saps. Lead guitarist Kirk Hammett's house "is just Kirk. lt's got these long corridors with the rarest editions of the Frankenstein movie posters illuminated with spotlights and big ceiling paintings of thunderstorms."

Ulrich, Hetfield, Hammett and bassist Jason Remsted ["he just lives out in the middle of fucking nowhere"] have come by their spoils honestly. Mettallica's first four albums — Kill 'Em All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets and ... And Justice for All — have each gone platinum-plus. The band's monster break-through, Metallica, has sold more than 12 million copies world-wide. But, sans Ulrich, the Year of kick-back time that the group enjoyed after its exhaustive 1991-'93 world tour [more than 300 shows in 37 countries] is over. Since last October, he and Hetfield, the band's main songwriters, have been doing 40-hour weeks in the studio, honing riffs and writing songs for the next album.

"We basically ran out of excuses," Ulrich says. "I'd done as much scuba diving as I could. As for James' hunting, I don't think there were any elk or deer left in the Western Hemisphere. It was time to make a record."

Metallica have also emerged battle-scarred but content from a legal collision last fall with Elektra Entertainment. When Robert Morgado, chairman of Elektra's parent, Warner Music Group, rescinded a renegotiated deal offering a joint partnership between the band and the label (and, importantly, giving Metallica control of their recording masters), the group filed suit to leave Elektra. The company sued back.

A nondisclosure clause in the final settlement (the band is back on Elektra) prevents Ulrich, an irrepressible motormouth, from providing any juicy contractual details. "I wish I could — it's burning inside me," he says, laughing. But, he adds, the band wasn't bluffing with that suit. "We were fucking prepared to take it all the way. They didn't understand that. We had the resources."

Born Dec. 26, 1963, in Copenhagen, Denmark, the son of Danish tennis pro Torben Ulrich, Lars Ulrich has always had that kind of bullish energy and scrappy attitude. As an aspiring drummer in Los Angeles, where his family moved in 1977, Ulrich networked vigorously with other metal fans in the city's anti-poodlehead underground, including James Hetfield, with whom he formed Metallica in 1981. It was Ulrich who made the pitch to Brian Slagel, a local fanzine editor, to include Metallica's first recording, "Hit the Lights," on Slagel's groundbreaking Metal Massacre compilation album. When Metallica issued their 1982 cassette demo, No Life 'Til Leather, Ulrich did the tape copying and mailing.

Today, it's Ulrich who most closely monitors the band's business affairs. "There's enough of a trust between us that I deal with most of the smaller things," Ulrich explains. "We spent every day of the last 14 years together. There's a point where I know that the issue is so big that I have to take it to James and the rest of the band."

At 31, Ulrich has come a long way from the early Metalliwars, when the band slept on floors while on tour and subsisted largely on a diet of hard liquor and Hamburger Helper. But he insists: "I really feel comfortable with this age thing in rock & roll. I don't feel like just because I'm in Metallica, it has to be a totally youthful thing. This unwritten rule in rock where you have to get out when you get old — fuck that. We can keep doing what we're doing without letting age get in the way."