He just has an unusual penchant for intentionally playing off-beat and drawing attention to himself. Just off the top of my head, examples would include Escape where he forces in this quick snare fill at the end of each measure, or Disposable Heroes where in the intro he changes the beat emphasis to play off of the guitar rhythm, or Blackened where after the solo he completely changes which beat he's playing on. The fills on their own merits are easily identifiable as uniquely his as well; there's some guy on YouTube that intentionally parodies various drummers' styles for other artists' songs, and whenever it's an "Ulrich does X" video it's clear which fill was derived from which particular moment in a Metallica song, unlike a "Lombardo does X" where it's big-tom-fill-1000 or "Benante does X" where it's high-school-marching-band-snare-roll-1000. The only song I've ever heard that really sounds Ulrichian is Angel Witch's Confused, which was probably intended to be a little weird to begin with. Voivod's Time Warp actually does the Escape thing as well although it's not really the entire song. I get how people could hate Ulrich or say he's a bad drummer by whatever standards exist of good drumming, but at his peak he was totally unique and played up the songs rather than playing for them. Especially in a world where objectively-sloppy guys like the Possessed guy and Steve Flynn are worshipped for their spaz-factor, all the Ulrich hate reads like people trying to get those YouTube comment upvotes. I'd still take Hoglan, Away, Zonder, and a handful of others over him, but Ulrich is an absolute artist and masterclass of metal outsider talent.
