i guess i understand the whole van halen esque fills that you trying to explain.yes you have to stay on time.
if you dont it might 'clip'...

as for the recording the drum part first,i suggest you try to talk to your band mate to record the guitar or bass first as a guide for you as it will do much help for you when you record your drum part,later they can delete the guitar and re-record the actual part that will come up on the ep's.this will help you save some$$$.
and try to look for a studio that charge per song/per project rate,rather than studio that charge by hour rate.

i am going to lay the drum track first.

Oh also I was wondering,,you know at the end of the song when drummers sometimes do a huge fill-that on face value has no tempo whatsoever? Like they'll do a 4 bar fill then like fill it with crashes,rides,double bass-basically they'll end with a huge noisy fill while the guitarists is doing a crazy finishing solo and everyone is going nuts?

Yeah,does the drummer have to follow the metronome then? I mean I hear drummers who go nuts and you know how they usually slow down at the song after doing crazy double fills then slow down slowly and the whole band waits for the final crash to end the song. So with all that havoc,does one still have to follow metronome?

Cause the last recording, I was doing this type of ending,where we had a big finish instead of a normal end to the song. So we were doin that crazy van halen style ending where all the musicians started going at it and doing flashy stuff and going to the end of the song my drums had to slow down to signal the end based on the "feel" of course, then ending with a crash(I hope you know what I'm talking about,sorry if I did not make it clear). However,I still had to follow metronome in that flashy ending. Is that normal? Like I had to literally slow down my drumming -not a constant slow tempo, but just like from fast to slow (not constructed but based on feel) to signify the stop WHILE the metronome was still going like 144.

yeah that's what i thought,,like the guitarist could play to MY drumming and ending since we get the "feel"=not tempo but when the feeling is right to end the song..the vid will explain it

and yeah I did ask the sound engineer but he said even the ending had to be following the exact metronome...like let's say 144. when our ending slowed down actually to 90? yeah,so it was weird for me. Needless to say,our big outro was NOT as we planned and seemed like a regular stop to a song rather than a huge flashy finish.