St. Anger

Some things are such easy targets they render the exercise of humiliating that product silly. We're talking about an album with lyrics like "It's my world - ya can't have it !" - "C'mon shoot me again, I ain't dead yet" - "Frantic, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tock", interspersed with the old generic "ooh-wah", what seems to be a perpetual stream of heavy rock guitars with little discernible detail and the famous trash can snare. The songs are all interminable and the album is over an hour and fifteen fucking minutes.

Instead of taking a shit on Metallica, it'd be more interesting to try to understand what went on here. First off (and this needs to be pointed out), the sound is just excruciating: the production is the worst it's ever been in the band's discography, and not as a matter of mere taste. The drums often feel behind the guitars, like there's some sort of malfunction with the speakers during spurts. The vocals sound way too dry, almost like this is all some sort of a live raw recording in the studio with Hetfield's voice mic right in front of all the instruments. To flatter it, it's rustic; but really it's probably incompetently mixed.

The album both sonically and musically comes across as loud, bordering on the obnoxious. It's not "artistically" loud the way a deliciously rusty industrial record would be, and the attempted loudness effect seems more a bad imitation of current trends around 2003 than anything legitimate in its own right. It's more like it's loud because this is a midlife crisis and the guys are looking for a fountain of youth through the release of a new record and first in the 2000's era. It's loud and fatheaded like your loud and fatheaded uncle trying himself at courting that young waitress at the diner. It's unnatural and just a pain to go through - that persistent feeling there's so much better that could be achieved during listening.

It feels like noise to drown out a disturbing silence the band may be avoiding at all costs. Not to be funny but this album is akin to something like plugging one's finger tips into their ears and yelling "la la la la la LA LA LA LA LAAAA !". It's so far from the poised composition from 80's Metallica, and it doesn't even have that honesty from the previous 'Load' and 'Reload' mediocre affairs. Despite its ridiculous hook 'Frantic' has a few good things going for it and so does the title-track 'St. Anger' and so this is a case of putting the two "good songs" at the start and then giving up on any rigorous effort from then on. They're selling a sound here, remember - not good individual songs. It's just that sound is the sound of boredom.

I can't stand it when folks label certain albums as 'trash' just because it's the cool thing to do. St. Anger often gets the brunt of it, like it's the number one album you're supposed to hate. Well, sorry, but St. Anger is actually a fucking great album. Period. What truly sucks is people being closed-minded and hating on it just because they were told to. I'll admit, I wasn't a fan when it first came out. But, a few years down the line, I gave it another shot with an open mind, and it's not as bad as people make it out to be.

I was a metal newbie back in 2003, just dipping my toes into the magical world of heavy metal. With only a couple of years in the scene, my exploration was mainly guided by the Greek Metal Hammer, which, I must say, has remained superior to all other metal magazines I've come across—be it in Greek, English, or German (and that includes other countries' Metal Hammers). My journey also involved catching some metal shows on TV and, of course, taking risks by blindly buying albums from the local store with my friends. This was a time when the internet was still finding its feet, and massive downloading wasn't really an option. Even Metal Archives was relatively new. My point here is that, being young and inexperienced listeners, such as myself and others during that period, our musical tastes were heavily influenced by the metal media and the perspectives of older people in the scene.

I kicked off my musical journey with Iron Maiden, Helloween, Ozzy, Gamma Ray, and some other basic, traditional metal-sounding bands. Nu metal, modern, and alternative metal were huge no-gos for me at that time. Why? Well, because that's what I'd been told was the real and true metal, blah blah blah. So, when St. Anger came out, I distinctly remember laughing at Metallica and my friends who were fanatics about them. I was firmly on the Maiden side, proudly championing my band's new album, Dance of Death. Did I actually give St. Anger a fair listen? Hell no. Just a couple of spins, watched the video clips on TV, and that was it. I had already made up my mind anyway—the album sucks, and Metallica are nothing more than multimillionaire sellouts.

Fast forward to 2007-2008, armed with a lot more metal experience, having delved into a vast array of music, both metal and non-metal. I'd explored a significant portion of the metal map, from classics to underground. Thanks to a friend who wasn't a metalhead but somehow liked the album, I decided to give St. Anger another shot. The first couple of listens, I thought, 'Okay, it's not as bad as I remembered, but it's definitely not a standout.' However, over time, I found myself playing the album non-stop, all while refusing to admit that I might actually like it or that it's a killer record. Then, at some point, I had to face the truth—I absolutely love it. Since then, it's been a regular in my playlist, and I still enjoy it from start to finish. In fact, I consider it among the best Metallica albums. I'll delve into why in the following paragraphs.

The band aimed to craft an album with a raw, garage-like feel, adopting an old-school approach despite the music not fitting that mold. The timing was interesting, given it marked their most controversial era. They had just ventured into a musical territory vastly different from what made them famous and dropped what I consider their worst album by far – Reload. The band seemed utterly adrift, making the decision to part ways with their bassist, seemingly without a concrete reason. At that point, Metallica was on the verge of breaking up. The documentary 'Some Kind of Monster' vividly portrays a fractured band and individuals who appeared spoiled and profoundly lost.

Regardless, in their minds, St. Anger served as a sort of return to their roots, a call-back to the garage days. The music is undeniably aggressive and energetic, a stark departure from their previous two albums. While it doesn't quite fit the thrash metal category, there are discernible thrash elements. Broadly speaking, the music can be labelled as a blend of heavy and groove metal, incorporating stoner, thrash, and nu metal elements. All of this comes packaged in a raw, in-your-face philosophy with an old-school attitude. It may not seem to make perfect sense, but that's a rather accurate snapshot of St. Anger.

Now, let's dive into the positives of the album. Setting aside the fact that it might be a bit too modern and 'nu' for the traditional metalhead, the songs themselves are downright addictive. Seriously, there's not a single filler on this lengthy album. One of its strengths lies in the genuine garage attitude and philosophy infused into both the music and the production. The songs are groovy, they stick with you, and they never leave the listener uninterested or bored. Sure, there might not be many solos, but there's a plethora of heavy riffs to make up for it. The music is undeniably heavy, raw and exciting, and that's a big positive.

James truly pours his soul into this one, and you can feel the desperation, pain, and anger in the way he sings. I also appreciate Lars's drumming; it really does justice to the songs. In general, the tracks are brimming with energy, grooviness, and a headbanging aura. Another undeniable positive, something I believe even those who despise the album can agree on, is that St. Anger saved Metallica. It was a massive wake-up call that ultimately made them confront who they are, find their lost way, and emerge stronger than ever.

On the flip side, the negatives are glaringly apparent. Firstly, the album's length is undeniably on the longer side. Personally, it doesn't bother me much, as I don't consider any song or even parts within the songs to be fillers, maybe just a very few. However, a slight trim in the length of some songs could have positively impacted the overall outcome.

The second glaring issue is the criminal absence of solos. This remains one of the most puzzling aspects of the album. Why? Whose idea was that, and who signed off on it? I don't inherently have an issue with songs without solos, but releasing an entire album without a single solo just for the sake of it seems, well, stupid, arrogant, compulsive, and obsessive. By the way, does this mean that Kirk didn't play on the record? Many of the songs seem to desperately scream for some well-placed lead parts and melodies.

Another major point of contention for many people is the production of the album. It's often criticized for being too raw, as if it hasn't been mastered and is simply a garage recording. But hold on a second... isn't that exactly what they intended to achieve? In my opinion, this raw sound complements the songs and aligns with the idea and vision they had. Sure, I get it—the snare sound is quite special. For most people, it's akin to a peculiar, trash-can-like sound, but personally, I don't particularly mind. I believe it fits the overall sound and production. It is what it is, and in the end, I find myself liking it.

However, I can't help but imagine what St. Anger would sound like with a different, more conventional metal production – a great sounding snare, the exact same songs but a little bit shorter, and with solos. No doubt, this could transform it into an absolute metal masterpiece. Both the bonus DVD and other live versions of the songs also support this theory. Nevertheless, the album still stands as great in its current form.

I genuinely love all the songs on the album, making it difficult to single out favourites. However, if pressed, I must admit a particular fondness for "Frantic," a track that stands out as possibly the most popular or, at the very least, the least despised. The band occasionally features it in their setlists. "Some Kind of Monster" is another standout with its infectious groove, boasting a riff that effortlessly combines danceability and headbanging appeal. "My World" captures a beautiful atmosphere of despair, both musically and lyrically. I'm also an absolute sucker for "Sweet Amber." Additionally, the relatively recent inclusion of "Unnamed Feeling" in live shows has further solidified its place as one of my favourites from the album.

Closing, if you hate this album, it's likely that your opinion won't easily change, perhaps due to deep-seated prejudices, external opinions and a closed-minded perspective. It's unfortunate because, in my view, this album offers very enjoyable music, and the undeserved criticism it receives has even led Metallica to downplay it in their live sets. St. Anger holds a significant place among all their albums for me, far from being their worst. I highly recommend giving it a listen without any preconceived notions or closed-mindedness. Just embrace the band's honesty about where they were, particularly mentally, at the time. It's worth it. You're free to continue rejecting St. Anger, but passing up the opportunity to enjoy this exciting music might just leave you standing alone as a closed-minded clown.

20 years ago, I was living the life on the last month of my first backpacking trip ever, enjoying all the wonders of the Catalonian capital, Barcelona, from the architectural wonders of Antoni Gaudí and the splendorous alleyways of the Barri Gòtic, to the crazy Barceloneta nights of endless partying and topless chicks dancing on the bars of the beach nightclubs. Despite all this cultural life-enhancing bustle, the fact that Metallica, my favorite band in the whole world back then, were releasing a new record wasn’t lost to me. So, the minute I could I went to purchase the curiously titled St. Anger, the bonus rehearsal DVD version no less, to some CD store at El Rabal neighborhood. To this very day… I haven’t seen the fucking DVD, ever. Such was the monumental disappointment I experienced once I listened to this nefarious waste of people’s time. So yeah, I was one of the morons that purchased this based solely on brand, without caring for a preliminary sample, contributing in making it a chart success. Never again.

I misinterpreted many of the signs, for sure. The new Pushead cover artwork was sort of iconic, and the re-designed Metallica logo seemed to embrace back their metal aesthetic, as opposed to the simple-lettered logos of their late 90s. The song lengths were enticing… had they been a return to the prog/tech thrash of …and Justice for All. But I was SOOO fucking wrong about that, I discovered it too late. I encountered a washed-up band trying to contend with the trends of the day, the Linkin Parks and Limp Bizkits of that, thankfully, bygone age. I was utterly appalled by the band’s sound on St. Anger, like anybody possessing a pair of normal, healthy ears. Lars drums here have been discussed ad nauseam, so I’ll just briefly say that the tin can drumkit has never been a good thing, in any genre. Sure, the experimental drum sound on …and Justice isn’t everybody’s cup of tea as well, but this one’s the really poor man’s version of that, minus the technical chops and unexpected, stimulating rhythms. The drum patterns are unbearable, painfully monotonic, and the bass drums sound really weak.

But the band as a whole should get the blame. James’ voice sounds ok, but he’s not singing anything remotely interesting. The lyrics are total garbage, simplistic, faux-crisis rants aimed at angst-ridden teenagers and tough-guy monologues, instead of the richer narrative they used to have that impacted long-time fans, many of whom discovered Lovecraft and Hemingway through the band. This process of lyrical degradation began right at the dawn of the 90s for them, but preceding works like The Black Album and even Load and Re-Load at least retained some expressive finesse and immersive lyrics that touched upon a myriad of themes. Sure, we all know James wasn’t in the best of places mentally and emotionally, as shown in the more valuable 2004 Some Kind of Monster documentary, but the lyrics are just too plain and dull, with many of the lines repeated so many goddamned times it becomes an endurance test, one I wasn’t able or willing to withstand.

Despite the flawed production, the guitars’ tone is not entirely horrid, but the riffs themselves are as boring and generic as they come. This whole thing feels like an hour-and-a-quarter-long rehearsal by an average garage band, rather than a well-constructed and thought of record (let alone one by one of the most influential metal acts ever). It’s an ode to the alternative metal riff, whose only intent it to sound distorted, but it cares not for complexity, musical brilliance or rhythmic excitement. I’m more than sure that some stellar soloing by Kirk would have not saved this album from failure, but the fact that are exactly 0 guitar solos found here just makes it all even a more excruciating experience. Bob Rock’s bass lines are totally disposable and not even clearly audible, as has been the problem with this band in several records. It was pretty sad that Jason had to go, but if there’s one silver lining after all these unfortunate events, is that Robert Trujillo became the band’s new bassist, and he felt like a natural fit since day one.

Highlights, there are none. I’d say that the least despicable track is “Dirty Window”, but there are literally thousands of songs I’d rather listen to, and recommend to listen to, instead. I’m actually just revisiting this one since its 20th anniversary matches the final days of my first experiences in Europe two decades ago, so the two will be forever entwined. For my 200th review I wanted to choose something meaningful, even if the album itself is meaningless in terms of quality. St. Anger certainly comprises a justified factor or cause to hate Metallica, for those inclined to do so for whatever reason. For the die-hard fans, it’s just a nigh impossible task to justify its value. For me personally, it’s a black hole in Metallica’s discography, which, however uneven, never again reached such a low level of pitifulness. This is a void place I don’t see myself venturing more than a couple of times again in my life… if at all.

It’s weird how something that’s so consistently controversial can age so differently in a nearly twenty-year span. It’s even weirder to think that it’s been almost two decades since Metallica’s St. Anger hit the scene. After many years of acknowledging such repugnant production, painful drum/guitar tones, and horribly cringe lyrics, it became increasingly harder to figure out what the general idea here was. In almost every case, I can overlook the aforementioned traits to some degree, but it is extremely tough to do in this instance. I do think there’s a little more to it, however.

By that, I mean that the worthwhile parts of this are shadowed out by more than just heinous toppings. Nearly every track on this record has some sort of ring to it to make it memorable, even if it isn’t exactly good. To put it scientifically, most of the songs have something that I find myself humming along to or getting stuck in my head. The real crux of the matter is that everything around these parts are usually unnecessary or poorly arranged. Ridiculous levels of repetition that stick around for far too long is the disc’s worst crime. Opener “Frantic” can be loads of fun, but even as a shorter number, it drills in the same rhythms way too much, as well as that annoying fucking “tick tick tick” nonsense. On the other end, I rather dig the flow of “All Within My Hands,” but there is no way this needed those levels of repetition, adding up to over eight minutes. “Some Kind Of Monster” is neat for about the first third of its length, until it teeters off into irrelevant, basic riffs with no redeemable quality.

In other areas James and co. look for spots to utilize suspense in a similar vein that they did on their earlier thrash records. The difference is, it really doesn’t land at all on St. Anger. More often than not, this tactic is fused with the aforementioned repetitive ideas. The piss poor attempt at the intro of “Dirty Windows” leaves so much to be desired due to such a flat start moving into an overwhelming delivery in a way that invokes headaches. The transitions between whiny vocal-focused areas into explosive heavy eruption is unflattering in nearly every instance. The only song that I may give a full pass to is the title track, as I admittedly enjoy nearly every part of that one. But the likes of “The Unnamed Feeling,” “Shoot Me Again,” and just about everything else need to be significantly shortened. Thus, the entire album should maybe be thirty-five minutes, not seventy-five. The obnoxious delivery would be a hell of a lot more bearable.

Haters like to call this “nu metal,” apologists like to call it “progressive,” but the fact is that it’s neither of these. Bad tones and 2003 don’t make something nu metal, and (attempted) suspense doesn’t make it progressive. This was simply a stab at bringing Metallica’s old ferocity back under a new umbrella, by forcing jarring transitions and repetition in place of solos and speed metal roots. Sure, the horrid production, tones, and lyrics stomp on what’s already a pretty weak return, but there are worse sins out there, many of which are present.

Making this review feels a bit odd; years ago I wrote a review on Metallica's Master of Puppets, pretty much bashing one of the "holy grails" of metal music, and now I'm here reviewing probably the most controversial metal album ever, by the same band, and giving it more rating than I gave MoP. While my opinion on the aforementioned album did change since then (although it's still not very positive), my opinion on this album is one I don't think I'll ever really change; this is a rather awful, yet peculiar album, which I hated listening to as much as I got a certain degree of enjoyment out of it.

St. Anger went wrong in many levels, yet Metallica managed to make a release that somehow doesn't truly manage to be all bad, but it basically just blue-balls you all the way through it by never breaking the barrier of being actually enjoyable, but also never becoming something completely unbearable. The music itself is this weird mix of groove/nu-metal, hard rock, some thrash and even some metalcore, the riffs are rather heavy but not in the way the band's old riffs were, but more in that "though guy chug" style. The album tends to switch between these heavier parts and some melodic choruses and sections which bring some catchiness to the music and makes the chorus of the homonymous track be stuck in your head for a bit. There are still some remnants of '90s Metallica in the music, with their '80s sound almost totally lost, being replaced with a more alternative approach to songwriting which was more in line with what used to get radio play during the early 2000s.

The music feels somewhat odd, but at times it can definitely get you engaged at least for a few seconds, be it because of a catchy guitar lick, a nice blast beat, or a groovy section which reeks of Pantera or Drowning Pool. The work on the 6-strings manages to be both interesting and baffling, and the total lack of solos or lead guitar licks makes the album feel noisy and repetitive as fuck. The guitar tone is certainly bad and it lacks a proper body in my opinion, and the good old drum snare sounds like it came from a goregrind album, which together with the virtually inaudible bass, and the rather lousy mix, makes the record somewhat annoying. The vocals aren't much better; Hetfield was never a good vocalist in my opinion, but St. Anger is something else, as all its 11 songs are filled with a rather bad attempt by James to sing like a nu-metal vocalist but just managing to bring a harsh-esque hard-rock-ish voice and several cringe-y shouts and voice cracks.

While I'd argue that listening to a single song off the album while shuffling a playlist might be mildly enjoyable, listening to the entire 75 minutes of this album in one session can certainly give you a headache; the repetitiveness of the riffs, the unnecessarily long songs, the awful snare, the mix and the total lack of lead guitar work makes the album feel dense and boring after the first 30 minutes. A few songs such as "St. Anger" and "Some Kind of Monster" are fine-ish individually, but by the time you get to "Invisible Kid" you probably don't even realize you're listening to a different song than any of the previous 4 tracks, and you still have two thirds of the album to go, which is also an issue I found with MoP and other of Metallica's releases.

Even if St. Anger is rather bad, I can still give it a few points just for managing to be interesting at times, and also because the band didn't really give any fucks when making this and decided to pretty much experiment with their sound. This album is never going to be good, but it will also never stop to be a peculiarity with a few good moments, and a record that will be permanently engraved in metal music's history due to its infamy rather than by its musical merit.

Oh boy, OH BOY, if it isn't a big one...

'St. Anger' is often being regarded as the one of the worst metal acts ever put to date, alongside other infamous releases like 'Illud Divinum Insanus' by Morbid Angel, 'Turbo' by Judas Priest, 'Risk' by Megadeth, any part of 'Graveyard Classics' by Six Feet Under or even 'Lulu', which Metallica made in collaboration with long-gone Lou Reed. And for a good reason, even though since 2003, this album somehow gained a cult following.

Fans makes statements such as "It's an misunderstood masterpiece", "They create what they want, they don't have to appeal to everyone", or even asking to watch some on-the-nose documentary to understood the band's situation. No, nothing can excuse a band for not only making such a shallow and empty record, but also CHARGING OVER 15$ for this piece of garbage. 15$, which I could spend on whatever other album I could think of. Heck, even if it was given to fans for free I would felt robbed of time I wasted on this record.

Like, where do I even start? The production, everyone knows how this "album" sounds like. The guitars felt more like a background rather than forefront, they also sound pretty muddy. Joking about drum sound is pretty stale at this point, but even then I can't survive 2 songs without receiving a migrane. It's like listening to Tara Strong's take on Harley Quinn, since they both JUST. WON'T. STOP. Band like Metallica should really have someone who could step up and say "No guys, this sucks, let's do it the other way". Since apparently Lars was the one who wanted this specific snare sound, he should've been talked down by manager/any other guy with big position in a band, instead of letting him have a free-for-all. Bob Rock is simply not a metal producer.

Also, bass is almost non-existant. And it's not because Jason Newsted is gone, so no one was there to record bass guitar - after all, Bob decided to record bass lines. Also, the guy who was responsible for mastering this record should been fired the first chance they get, as 'St. Anger' was brick-walled like hell. I know it's a thing since 90s, but I don't care. Loudness War shouldn't exist, but still some producers think cranking up albums volume up to 11 is a good thing. Just... Jesus Christ.

But oh, that's the point, right, dear fanboys? "It was meant to be a raw, muddy sound!". 'The New Order' by Testament has a great, raw sound, 'Vile' by Cannibal Corpse sounds muddy, which fit the album's mood. Even Embers of Euphoria's self-tilted debut is far from a perfectly clean sound, but it's leagues above this shit.

But, but, that's not the worst thing. Even with 2015's fan re-recording this album is horrible. The songwriting is absolutely abysmal for over 80% of the records' runtime. Well, maybe there is a one or two songs that stand above being boring. 'Dirty Window' is one of them, and with no remorse I can say, it's the only one I enjoy with no major flaws. Title track could also be good, if it wasn't for few gripes: one, the afwul Linkin Park-esque verses, which really kills the mood and two, those goddamn repeats. I swear, this song takes over 7 minutes, which could have been easily shortened to 5. Nothing gives the song any good reason to overstay its welcome (since Hammett's solos are not featured here), so it's just keep repeating sections we've heard already... Kinda like majority of modern Iron Maiden's discography.

The rest of the songs however, I wouldn't even listened to them at a gunpoint. All of them are convoluted mess. One of the finest example of this is 'Frantic', which at the end all of a sudden pulls off completely out of place riff that has no build-up. No one, even drunk or a person who never heard anything metal, would say that this last riff was made with 'Frantic' in mind. Even without it, 'Frantic' changes the mood way too often to stay consistent, so that last riff is basically just a nail in the coffiin. 'Some Kind of Monster' doesn't even wait until the end, its very first minute contain many riffs that just don't fit each other, and the rest of the album just keeps dragging, and dragging, and I just can't. Fucking. Stand it. Listening to those abominations makes me want to turn on any DragonForce album since 'The Power Within', because even those albums, that can't find their indentity, are less annoying than this dumpster fire.

Also, the state of Metallica at that point was absolutely dismal. Kirk doesn't contribute any solos on this album, although given the fact that he hasn't played any solo without wah pedal for last few decades, that might be a good thing. Or maybe not, since the band couldn't came up with anything else that would make the songs interesting. Lars, well, let's just forget it, as at this point I have no idea for any joke about his weak drumming that hasn't been told already. James is a compeletely different thing, since he used to be a fairly okay vocalist and quite tight rhythm guitarist, even providing some genuinely great solos, like on 'Master of Puppets'. But whatever the state he was in, the vocals are one of the worst I've heard. Even Robb Flynn or Toxic Avenger's vocalists are nothing compare to what James is doing on here. A lot of the vocals here are straight up annoying, and sometimes even incomprehensible, like the line in 'Dirty Window' being "and now I slam my gavel down", although it sounds more like "I slain my devil down", which made it even dumber at first. Both vocally and lyrically, Hetfield is stepping down his game here.

But EVEN THAT isn't the worst thing. A lot of people want to claim this is "100% authentic" album, that every thing that sucks on this album, sucks for a reason, it's about "emotions" the band was going through. If all of this was really sincere, then why do they charge OVER 15$ for this, on par with every other record available? I'll tell you why. Because it's not "100% authentic". This album is just a demo that should never see the light of day. But it did, because they wouldn't let go of all the sweet money they could get from releasing this album, and there always will be people who will defend it, no matter what.

"It's a good stress relief", you say? Just turn on anything Vader has in its catalogue, or any Death Angel album that isn't called 'Act III', you're gonna have a much better time. Or play DOOM. And no, just because Metallica recorded it, it doesn't mean it wouldn't be so "hated". A lot people wouldn't just bat an eye on this.

St. Anger has been out for almost 18 years, and people are still confused by it to this day. But before the album was released, Metallica was killing it in the 90s. Their eponymous album in 1991 officially brought them into the mainstream, and while "Load", "Reload", and "Garage Inc." were met with mixed reception from fans, those albums still sold well. However, things took a turn for the worst for the band at the start of the new millennium when the band, and especially Lars, sued Napster for alleged copyright infringement and made them not only remove their songs, but also banned 300,000 users from their site. But that controversy was just the tip of the iceberg. Their bassist, Jason Newsted, also left the band, accusing them of mistreating him. But the most damaging one was with James Hetfield. After returning from rehab, Hetfield acted like the more wise one in the band and got more personal, leading to several problems during the album's recording.

In fact, when you factor in the controversies with Napster, Jason Newsted, and James Hetfield's degrading personality, it's kinda amazing to see "St. Anger" not come out as a jumbled mess, but rather a fascinating mess. Not only did the band experimented in an alternative and even nu metal sound, but the way the album was composed overall felt more like it came from an amateur teen band that was just getting started rather than from mainstream professionals. But while some consider it a "so bad it's good" album, I personally find "St. Anger" as a "so bad it's bad" album. It has its moments, but for the most part, it sucks.

One notable thing about the album is the instrumentals. Now I'm pretty sure everyone is aware of the poor sound of the snare drums, and that I'm not the first person in the world to joke about how Lars was on a tight budget during recording, so he had to use garbage cans for the drums. But while the snares sound awful and feel out of place with the rest of the instruments, in retrospect, it's actually not the worst part about the instruments. That will have to go to the guitar riffs. An example of this would be in the first track "Frantic". The guitars play some nu metal-like riffs, but they sound very dull and tiresome. In fact, most tracks have the guitars play terrible riffs that felt like they were poorly stolen from other alternative/nu metal riffs at the time. What makes this even worse is that the poor riffs end up hurting the other instruments in the long run. The drums are having to beat in incoherent patterns and, of course, they sound even worse with the snares. There isn't even a bass guitar to establish a foundation, so the songs feel like they're disorganized. And don't even get me started on the composition and structure of the songs, where these poor instrumentals are dragged on for an unnecessary amount of time. This makes this one hour album feel like two hours instead. The instrumentals on this album are terrible, and this album still has one of the worst instrumentals in Metallica's discography.

James Hetfield's vocals are also affected. Now this isn't to say that the vocals are terrible. As a matter of fact, his vocals have plenty of good moments. In the track "St. Anger", Hetfield starts off with some melodic singing that sounds good and flows with the slow instrumentals well. As the track progresses, his voice gets more aggressive and the tone of the instruments reflect on his voice well. This good contrast between the vocals and instruments make "St. Anger" one of the only good songs off the album. However, even his vocals can have some poor moments. In tracks like "Some Kind of Monster", the production is poor to a point where it makes Hetfield's vocals sound quiet. These quiet vocals are very unfitting to the mad atmosphere of the instruments. And in the track "Invisible Kid", Hetfield's singing actually sounds awful, as his voice feels forced and unemotional, making the lyrics about letting go of fear feel unconvincing. The vocals on this album may be one of the better parts of the album, but it still has plenty of off-putting moments that end up hurting the tracks more than improve them.

And then there's the lyrics. Now Metallica may not be the most lyrical band, but the simple lyrics in most of their songs do offer enough detail to set the tone for the tracks. "St. Anger", however, does not do that. In fact, the lyrics are too simplified to impact the track. For example, in the song "Purify", this verse quotes:

Tear it down, strip the layers off, my turpentine
Old paint, old looks, cover up the past
White heat, white light, super white bones, bones of you and I

The first two lines on that verse are supposedly a metaphor of letting go of the past. However, the third line about bones end up ruining the metaphor. In fact, the main theme in "Purify" is inconsistent, and it makes the lyrics feel random, which won't be a bad thing if it wasn't executed terribly. The song goes for a more abrasive tone, and it makes the lyrics feel unwelcomed in the chaotic atmosphere. But "All Within My Hands" is easily the worst track in the lyrical department. Take a look at this verse, which quotes:

All within my hands
Squeeze it in, crush it down
All within my hands
Hold it dear, hold it suffocate

This verse is about Hetfield crushing the things he hates. The lyrics seem brutal, but Hetfield sings the verse, which makes it seem like he is crushing them very softly. The constant switching of the tone in the instruments and vocals make the lyrics feel worthless, since the listener doesn't know what Hetfield really means about crushing things with his hands. And that's not even mentioning the "Kill!" part near the end. Hetfield's annoying screaming makes these repetitive lyrics sound abysmal and unbearable. The lyrics are terribly written, and the changing atmosphere of the tracks make their execution sound atrocious.

But before I conclude my review, I gotta address those who defend this album. "St. Anger" has gained a cult following in recent years, and its fans are willing to defend it. The main defense I see for St. Anger is that the album's raw and inconsistent sound is a reflection of the band's ongoing drama at the time, making the album feel "authentic". While I can kinda see what they're talking about, at the same time, I don't agree with it. Take Mayhem's "De Mysteriis Dom. Sathanas" for example. The band went through more severe controversy that would've made Metallica's controversy look like child's play. However, the cold and dark atmosphere of the album reflects their problems well, and even without the drama, the songs have some memorable riffs and poetic lyrics that make DMDS worthy of listening. However, as I've stated earlier, the songs aren't that good by themselves, and all that rawness and aggression feels like an exaggeration of what really happened. Now I'm not saying the band members needed to kill each other, but a bassist quitting and James Hetfield acting like a smartass does not equal the album having these feelings anxiety and fear. Therefore, the chaotic atmosphere ends up making the album feel like an exaggeration instead.

So overall, "St. Anger" is a horrible album. The instrumentation is very generic and poor, and the lyrics were better off not being written at all. The only good thing that came from this album is the track "St. Anger", plenty of good vocal moments, and "Death Magnetic" being a massive improvement. But is that to say that St. Anger is the worst album ever? No. Unlike stuff like "Turbo", which makes my blood boil at the thought of a band intentionally changing their sound, I just can't blame the band for creating this. They were clearly going through a lot of crap behind the scenes, and the recording sessions of this album felt more like them letting out their stress and coping through one of the roughest times in their career since Cliff Burton's death. However, it probably would've been better if they had scrapped this album altogether, since all that did was further taint their image. Besides the second track, "St. Anger" is an album that you should avoid.

Evolution is a beautiful thing. Metallica is a band that has always evolved and stayed in tune with times, that's part of what made them maybe the most successful metal band of all times.

St.Anger is nothing less than a miracle. Metallica was a broken band and could easily break up prior to this album for various reasons: the Napster lawsuit, Hetfield battling with alcoholism, a natural burnout of being with the same people 24/7 for decades, the departure of Newsted, etc.

However, none of that could subjugate the band, and six years after their last album with original material, St.Anger was born. And thank god it did.

First of all, forget about everything Metallica has made before 2003. St.Anger is a complete reinvention of the band. The goal with this album was to deliberately create a raw, unpolished sound, which is 180 degrees the opposite from the refined production of their 90's albums. Instead of sounding like a million dollar hard rock band making the best sounding album possible, they opted to create a garage band vibe that just play live together and let the aggression come out. There are almost no overdubs on the vocals, the snare drum sounds like a trash can on purpose and there's an overall muddy quality to the final mix of the album which make it sounds more like a demo than an official studio album, which is exactly what the band wanted to achieve.

The musical direction reflects quite accurately the early 00's metal sound: more emphasis on rhythmic down tuned guitars, and less solos and melodic riffs. Forget about the 80's trash metal sound or the 90's hard rock, St.Anger came out in a new decade and as I mentioned earlier, the band always knew how to stay relevant with what's happening in the world.

Most of the lyrics are quite simple and straightforward. There's a lot of aggression and despair in the songs, which reflects the hard times the band dealt with quite authentically. There are no hidden messages or double meanings, not much depth as well, just pure aggression and raw energies that fits the crushing riffs superbly.

Even though that most of the songs feel quite simple and short, the average length of each track is almost 7 minutes, which is quite amazing. The title track is without a doubt one of the highlights of this album, and one of the most authentic songs the band has ever made. I can connect more with a person exposing his inner world and thoughts in the most direct and straightforward form possible, than someone who hides between clever metaphors and reveals nothing personal. The opening riff is very simple and to the point and is repeated several times with alternating drum patterns. The verse has a mellower vibe with clean guitars, and the pre-chorus and chorus are aggressive and catchy enough to bring this song to a truly great level.

'Some Kind Monster' is another great track. There are tons of catchy and rhythmic riffs, and even occasional semi melodic lead guitar in the intro which enhances even further the opening riff. The vocal delivery is very rhythmic and is quite close to rap in the verses, and goes back to more hard rock vibe in the chorus. I won't lie, having some flashy guitar solos of Kirk Hammet could only improve the song, but even in its rough form the song works very well.

I can understand why a lot pf people despise this album, it's not "pure metal" and sounds very different than the prior albums of the band. I simply don't care, I just enjoy this album very much. If 'St.Anger' was the debut album of a new band in 2003, I have no doubt this album could have gone to sell even more than the 5 million copies it did and it would probably wouldn't receive the hatred it did in some circles.

What made me like this album so much, is that it's just 100% authentic. I believe every word Hetfield sing, I feel the sincerity and raw emotions of this album in every riff and drum hit and it's just feel like the purest, most realistic representation of Metallica in 2003. Sure it's not as epic or sophisticated as their 80's albums, not as polished as the black album, and less varied than 'Load '+'Reload'. But it's different, and in a good way.

'St.Anger' is a courageous, unapologetic and deliberately rough album, created by authentic people for authentic people. Listen to this album with an open mind and you'll discover one of the realest albums ever made with tons of catchy riffs and overwhelming energies.

This album gets a lot of flak mostly because it doesn't live up to the standards set by Metallica. However, if you take this album on its own and divorce it from the fact that it was put out by the same band that put out Kill 'Em All twenty years earlier, you'll realize that this is a nice slab of amusing, thrashy pop-infused nu-metal.

It is clear that Metallica was following the trend of the time by down-tuning the guitars and experimenting with the drum sounds, and creating percussive rather than melodic riffs. However, the Load/Reload influence is still felt in certain areas, particularly in the vocal department, especially on songs like "Sweet Amber" and "Shoot Me Again." Although I'm not exactly the biggest nu metal fan, I can sometimes appreciate a good down-tuned, simplistic riff along with stream-of-consciousness vocals as a change of pace from standard thrash or death fare. That's another thing about this album; the lyrics definitely don't seem planned or well-thought-out at all. Rather, they seem to be impulsive, defensive reactions to a perceived hostile environment (and isn't that what anger is anyway?).

This is the type of album that is good to listen to when doing something very frustrating. Frustration might be the one word that I use to describe this album. How satisfying is it to hear "tick tick tick tock" or "kill kill kill kill kill" when trying to fix a stubborn piece of machinery or tool or cleaning out a drain? Something about the dull repetition of lyrics such as "We the people... Are we the people?" or "Shoot me again I ain't dead yet" and the trashy (literally) drum sound is conducive to such activities. I think there is something to be said for what this album conveys rather than purely looking at the tracks and comparing them to opuses such as "Dyers Eve" or "Fight Fire With Fire." The album conveys an overall feeling of powerlessness to deal with various ills, whether personal or societal, the resulting rage from this powerlessness, and the consequent release of this pent-up aggression through music. Maybe that's how people would describe metal as a whole, but I think what differentiates this album is that it highlights the irrational, unfocused side of anger. Metal (in many genres) is often very specific with its critiques of politics or religion, but this album is very vague and personal rather than making a political statement; that's even reflected in song titles such as "Some Kind of Monster", "Invisible Kid", and especially "The Unnamed Feeling." It's a clear reflection of where Metallica was at this time, and some would argue that this makes this record more authentic than say Death Magnetic or Hardwired, which could be seen as pandering to the fanbase. It is clear that with St. Anger, good or bad, Metallica did as they pleased.

With all of this analysis of theme aside, I must say that this is the type of album that I listen to just for memes. Sort of the same idea as System of a Down or Anthrax. It's not meant to be taken seriously (well, maybe it was, but don't). It'll almost certainly cheer you up if you're depressed because of how loony and unhinged James sounds on this album, or if you just picture Lars banging on a trash can while sweating feverishly, and Kirk sipping herbal tea as he watches them play, because let's not forget that he's basically as absent from the album as Jason was on ...And Justice For All, but not because of the mixing.

I mean, it gets pretty bad at points ("Sweet Amber" is probably the worst), but there are some pretty decent moments, such as "look out motherfuckers here I come!" on "My World." The riffs are fairly decent on many of the tracks, and the whole concept of this album shines through best when James sounds hoarse or unhinged. Many give this album scores ranging from 0% to 20%, but I think scores that low should be reserved for banal pop music. The fact that this is a metal album automatically earns it a score of at least 40%, and when you factor in the comedic value that this album has combined with the actual anguish and/or perplexed-ness James conveys on many of the tracks and some of the good riffs, I think 80% is a fair score.

Sometimes a band will put out an album that, although not being bad by any means, will eventually appear lacking when compared to the rest of their discography. Sometimes a band will pull out an album that will just sound mediocre. Sometimes a band will pull out an album that is simply pretty bad. There are also some rare cases where a band pulls out an album that is a complete abortion, an horror that should be eradicated from existence, something that should have never happened in the first place. That is the case of Metallica's "St. Anger".

I'll go straight to the point with this album. It sucks. It's just horrible, there isn't a single positive aspect worth mentioning about it, everything went bad. With this release, the band tried to go "back to their roots" while striving from them as far as possible: they tried to emulate the typical metalcore/nu metal sound that was so popular in the USA at the beginning of the 2000s, so they tuned down their guitars, they completely cut off the solos, they added breakdowns. The result is an album that tries to be as heavy as possible, but ends being just boring and uninspired.

Let's start analyzing the lyrics. What the hell were they thinking to while writing them? "My lifestyle determines my deathstyle" (Frantic), "I'm madly in anger with you" (St. Anger). The list could go on, each song is a display of completely immature, generic, ridicule and cringy lyricism. It's impossible to take seriously something like this. What about James Hetfield's vocals? Well, this is surely his worst studio performance ever. He often just screams, trying to reach pitches he was never able to reach in the first place. He sounds coarse, like a chicken that's getting slaughtered. Absolutely ridiculous.

Kirk Hammett's performance is easily forgettable: as stated above, there are no solos, and the riffs are completely generic and uninteresting. Lars Ulrich's drumming is worse than ever, and the fact that the production is awful, the bass being lost in the mix, the guitars sounding lifeless, and the drums recalling a bunch of pots that's getting hammered, makes this disaster of an album even more unlistenable. Want to talk about the songs themselves? Well, they are unnecessarily long (the album closes at 75 minutes), repetitive, uninspired, and boring. This makes the whole CD drag a lot; are you getting the reason why everyone hates this album so much now?

"St. Anger", as well as "Lulu", is one of those albums a band should never give birth to, something that should never have existed in the first place. It represents a big stain on the reputation of Metallica, something that later releases weren't able to completely delete. What else should I say? Stay the hell away from it, and don't waste your time and your money listening to this abortion.

That's what I think when one of the songs from St. Anger emerges out of the back of my memory and reminds me about this annoying collection of of musical blowouts and stumbles that involves having to endure the most painful and inept moments experienced by one of the biggest names in heavy metal. Get them out of my head. This thing is a legendary blunder and the music on display is pure people repellent. Metallica weren't really in the best of shape when this was being made as they'd just lost Jason Newsted and had to deal with producer Bob Rock as the bassist until Robert Trujillo formerly of Suicidal Tendencies would join midway through recording. James Hetfield was also stewing in frustration having just gotten out of rehab for alcoholism when recording started. According to the film Some Kind of Monster, everybody involved was stressed out, tired, and angry with each other and that doesn't really translate well into studio work if everybody is too pissed off to focus. All things considered, knowing what I know, I'd be surprised if this album didn't turn out a mess.

The musical aspects of this album are abysmal in just about every respect. The guitars are sloppy and often plodding. James' voice often sounds off-key and grating especially with his higher notes. The songwriting is either too off-kilter to follow or so plodding and tedious that you just give up on some songs out of boredom. The worst aspect of all are the drums which are often Lars Ulrich smashing the snare as hard as he can in a way that feels like a shitty old folk hiccups treatment, you know the one where you put a bucket on your head and get somebody to whack the bucket? That's what Lars' drums make parts of this album feel like. It also doesn't help that the production is so focused on his drums that he ends up drowning out the guitars and just leaving a weak, dazed James Hetfield singing his lines over a battery of trash-can snares. The lyrics to this thing are noticeably corny and immensely quotable just for the pure stupid factor they bring. There are a ton of stupid lyrics peppered throughout this thing like birdshot.

Some particularly goofy quotes from St. Anger include:

• MY LIFESTYLE! DETERMINES MY DEATHSTYLE!


• YOU FLUSH IT OUT, YOU FLUSH IT OUT!


• GIT 'EM OUT MAH HEAD!


• Not only do I not know the answer, I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE QUESTION IS!


• LOOKOUT MOTHERFUCKERS, HERE I COME!


• Shoot me again, I ain't dead yet...


• KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL!

St. Anger also has a problem with being an extremely messy album in many senses. The first thing people will bring up is the production, and yes it does suck, which is weird because I love stuff like sludge, black metal, and crust punk. I normally like dirty production, but here it gets abused so badly by making the sound as thick and as pounding as possible while emphasizing those piercing drums over everything else. It sounds sloppy in a way that really hurts the album. That being said, even if the production was cleaner and more balanced, that still wouldn't have saved this from the abysmal songwriting. The only salvageable track on here is probably "Frantic" since you could make the song much better by getting rid of the corniest lyrics and dialing the drums back a bit.

Everything else is riddled with problems that range from James Hetfield's weak and sometimes grating vocals, to plodding riffs, to song structures that go nowhere, to builds in momentum that end up getting wasted, to songs with little to no progression being extremely boring and long, to wack lyrics that just sound silly. One example of lyrics ruining a song to the point where they need to be re-written entirely is "My World" which is pretty groovy, but also home to lyrics about "motherfuckers" getting into James' head and about how it's his world and you can't have it, SUCKER! Also, once you start getting towards the end of the album, you end up with a lot of the music falling slightly out of time like they just stopped caring. Hell, "Purify" sounds like it was made specifically to piss people off since it sounds like a cacophony. There is no other way to describe it than a cacophony, and that translates well to parts of the rest of the album. St. Anger is a mess of an album with almost everything somehow going wrong and it seems like Metallica wrote this just to get people to fuck off because they were all tired of, and pissed at each other. This album hates you and wants you to leave, that's the message I get from the mixture of poorly written songs, confused vocals, piercing drums, only sometimes in-time playing, and meme-worthy lyrics.

All things considered, this was probably going to turn out very bad no matter what considering this was made during a time of MASSIVE inter-personal stress for Metallica and it was during a time when heavy metal and hard rock had some of their worst acts at peak influence, among other factors. Still, that's no reason for such an assault on music to exist and come from a band this prominent and influential. This album was messy, it was obnoxious, and it was one of the corniest things Metallica had ever put out with some of their worst musicianship. It has gone down in history as one of metal's worst albums and for good reason. The combination of irritating sounds and lame songs on this album made it impossible to enjoy or take seriously. This thing deserves its reputation as a true stinker.

The infamous St. Anger. Legendary for being one of the worst metal albums of all time put out by one of the pioneers of thrash metal: Metallica. But how bad is it really?

Well, it starts off with some heavy riffage straight out of an old school metalcore song. It almost sounds like Integrity. We even get some decent lyrics. But then, James Hetfield drops this gem: "My lifestyle, determines my death style." The moment he says that, the song goes to shit. We get some bland riffs, weak singing and the quality of the lyrics take an incredible nose dive in quality. Something's off.

Actually, the entire album takes a nose dive in quality after that line in Frantic. The next track being one of the worst examples. The title track has a heavy System Of A Down influence, but this influence, instead of sounding left field or progressive, sounds like a hollow and cheap imitation with atrocious lyrics ("I'm madly in anger with you!"). What follows is a series of Pantera rip offs with some okay intro riffs and not much else to offer. Save for Shoot Me Again which has this cheesy nu metal feel. It's trash. It sounds like a 5FDP song and that is not good because 5FDP is shit enough. Why you would want to actively imitate garbage is beyond me. This has to be the worst Metallica song. I will say though that Dirty Window is pretty thrashy, the lyrics are the best on the album (not saying much, I know) and it's probably the closest to a good song on the album. The groove metal feel continues on the next few tracks. Which start off again with okay riffs and grooves but are destroyed by terrible vocals and lyrics. They also reek of more SOAD influence with some terrible drum performances.

Can we talk about the lyrics some more? They suck. It's pretty disappointing considering James has written songs like Fade To Black, One, For Whom The Bell Tolls, and Harvester of Sorrow. He's proven himself to be an amazing lyricist in the past. What happened? This is beneath him.

You know, this could have been okay, but one thing ruins what little this album had in terms of positives. The production is god awful. The mixing is terrible. The drums are so poorly produced. Half the time, they are too quiet. The bass is even quieter. The guitars and vocals are blaring. Everything sounds so separate. The worst is this one noisy guitar lead on Some Kind Of Monster that sounds completely out of place. It sounds like it was ripped from an early Black Rebel Motorcycle Club song and dumped in Metallica's Pantera cover. The production is so muddy and gross and disgusting in all the wrong ways. If they wanted a raw sound, they should've gotten Steve Albini or Kurt Ballou instead of Bob Rock, who is most known for doing hair metal like Motley Crue and Bon Jovi and wouldn't know raw if he was slapped in the face with uncooked meat. It sounds so unfinished, it's distracting.

Another huge problem is the drum sound. Lars' infamous snare sound on this album, it's terrible. Turning off the snares left the drums ringing way too much and it sounds like someone threw a basket ball at a trash can every time. And I know that Lars was never a very technically proficient drummer but his playing on this album sounds like an angry monkey banging on a bunch of scrap metal.

Another elephant in the room is the lack of Kirk Hammett solos. It really doesn't bother me that there is a lack of guitar solos on this album. It would have been nice to have them just to add more sonic variety, but they aren't necessary here. Kirk is not the greatest guitar player in the world. Besides, this style of metal isn't as built for solos as your average thrash sound. I'm not gonna dock them too many points for that. I can dock them for not having a whole lot of variety. Metallica records usually have way more variety. Throttling speed metal bangers, mesmerizing instrumentals, slower, heavier songs that are still bangers, sad, emotional ballads. Here we don't have that. Virtually every song is a banger with fast, slow and quiet sections. It all starts to sound the same after a while. On top of that, at 11 tracks in 75 minutes, this album is way too long. Many of these tracks are incredibly bloated and repetitive. Pretty much every song longer than 6 minutes could've been cut down and both the songs and the album as a whole would've flowed better. Sweet Amber and Dirty Window I'd say is probably the closest to good songs on this album. Shoot Me Again and St. Anger are probably the worst. Overall, it was too long, underwritten, poorly produced and just messy. This album fails on every conceivable level and has no reason to be. There are some riffs and breakdowns that are semi-okay but the muddy production, the ridiculous lyrics and the trash can drum sound pull away from anything this album could've had in terms of positives. This album had a very troubled production cycle with James in rehab, the lack of a bassist and internal struggles in the band and with the producer. It shows. This album does not sound like a focused project. It sounds like an overblown half finished mess that constantly rips off Pantera and SOAD. Avoid at all costs. You have been warned. 1/10

I should have been a librarian. I originally thought accounting was going to be my calling in life, then I realized how boring that was. Then I wanted to be a chef. That didn’t pan out. Since that point some would say I’ve become a professional dickbag and that very well could be true. But I should have been a librarian. It’s not because I like to read or anything but I have this obsession with cataloging and order. My 4000+ piece record collection is in alphabetical order, with an excel file listing every track on every record, you know, in case I ever need to find a particular track (which I never do). And I keep track of what I’ve listened to and what I haven’t. So cataloging an archive of media seems right up my alley. How does this have anything to do with the review? Well, it’s really the only way you would likely believe me when I say I finally found the positives in this album, 86 listens later.

Yep, that’s an eight and a six. 86 spins of St. Anger. And that’s not over the course of the last 13 years, that’s between 2003-2005. Or at least the sticky note on the inside of the cover that contains each tick mark from every listen actually indicates. Bob Rock likely hasn’t even listened to this album that many times. I’m sure that’s not a remarkable number for anyone listening to their favorite album ever. But for St. Anger, it must be. It didn’t take me that many times to enjoy the record but rather to finally admit that I did. Before that I would blindly nod and agree with everyone that it sucked but with no real backing behind that. Now, I can say in all honesty that I don’t mind it at all. That’s still the best I can do though. I cannot say, even with 86 fucking bludgeonings of my eardrums that St. Anger is truly a good record. But it’s not a terrible one and I’ve learned to accept that.

The real flaws of the record do not improve over the course of so many spins. Most of the songs are simply way too damn long. Metallica has zero concept of when to properly end a song. Never had, never will. The big difference is that the early years were so good that you wanted eight minutes. Now you long for just four great ones and get those four, then simply rinse and repeat again to double the length of the track. Some producer needs to have the balls to go into the studio and cut tracks to 4:30 and say “see how useless those last four minutes actually are?”

Then there’s the infamous drum sound. I can’t say on the 70th listen that I heard anything different than I did with the first listen. But I think I got used to them. Or I like them now. Honestly, it’s something that still baffles me. The snares no longer bother me and in fact are clearly one of the most memorable parts of the album. Not good. Not necessarily bad. But you can’t forget the sound as much as you believe you want to.

What the repeated listens of St. Anger did for me though was they got me to the place where I could enjoy the fact they tried something different. It got me really listening to the nuances of James’ vocals and focusing on each individual riff. They got me to really appreciate points like the one in “Invisible Kid” where the rhythm slows to a crawl and James’ vocals are almost off-key, the warbly-ass “enough’s enough” at the end of “My World” or simply the Korn-like qualities of “Shoot Me Again.” And how endearingly creepy/awkward is the repeating of “kill, kill, kill, kill…” to end the record? “Off-key,” “Warbly-ass” “awkward” – yes, they sound like negatives and at one point they might have been but for me they have become the reason I actually enjoy listening to this album.

Each successive listen got me really thinking about why a band like Metallica would attempt such an album. I can’t possibly understand the immense pressure Metallica was under trying to figure out how to make a relevant album at this point in their career. But when I started approaching the album with the mindset that St. Anger is Metallica simply trying to get themselves out of their own fucking heads, then it made a lot of sense at least. Metallica couldn’t simply make Re-re-load and will never make another Ride the Lightning. So instead of trying to appease the masses, they created an album for themselves. They went gritty and as raw as a multi-platinum artist in a massive studio with anything they wanted at their disposal could probably go. And they tried. While I realize that “try” isn’t really good enough for a band like Metallica, I can appreciate that they didn’t shit out the same record again. Here in 2016, for the life of me, I can’t figure out what Metallica fans want. Half of us want “And Justice…Part Deux” and the other half bitch that they keep repeating themselves. Really, at this point in their career, I’m certain they will never make another record that pleases the majority of fans. So even thinking back on St. Anger, I appreciate how this sounds like nothing else they ever did. And really, if you’re being honest, it really doesn’t sound like any other record ever made. Uniqueness doesn’t make it great but it does make it wildly interesting, for me at least. I would take all the awkwardness of “The Unnamed Feeling” any day over a recycled thirty-year-old thrash riff.

You could certainly argue that simply learning to “accept” a record is not good enough, nor is having to listen to it 86 times to get there. I can’t argue with that. But what I can argue is people reach different conclusions in different ways. I took the wildly long-and-roundabout way of getting to this point and that’s good enough for me. That said, I do not plan on listening to Lulu 86 times. Even I realize that sometimes suck is simply suck. St. Anger does not suck.

"St. Anger". This album is universally known as THE worst metal album of all time. Well, not everyone believes that. Even I don't. But a lot of people do. "St. Anger" is often used as an analogy when citing a certain band's work as their worst album. For example, Morbid Angel's "Illud Divinum Insanus" and Cryptopsy's "The Unspoken King" come to mind, as these albums are usually referred to as "the St. Anger" of their respective bands, although I quite enjoy the latter as many people know. Kind of like how when a band "sells out", the respective album is usually called their "Black Album". Kind of funny how that works out. Anyway, "St. Anger"...fuck it all and no regrets.

During the timeframe it took to record this album, Metallica was experiencing its fair share of personal and inter-band turmoil, as highlighted in the controversial "Some Kind of Monster" DVD documentary. Jason Newsted had left the band, leaving them without a bassist. James Hetfield had entered an alcohol treatment facility. Lars was still being a douchebag. The list goes on. Metallica had planned to begin recording this album in January 2001 but due to Newsted's understandable departure, the dudes had to put the project on hold. After the band recruited longtime producer Bob Rock to fill in on bass, the album's recording process began. We all know, as I said before, this was a time of great tension within the band. Everyone was dealing with a lot of crap and they had to hire a therapist to coach them through the process. "St. Anger" could have been a great album. It really could have been. Unfortunately, it suffered a lot due to these issues and of course, the production.

The guitars here have been tuned down a bit and actually, in my opinion, sound pretty cool. They are very thick and dirty. We haven't heard this raw of a sound from Metallica since the 1980s. Unfortunately, there were some huge issues with the production. In fact, these issues managed to bring my score of the album down so low, that I likely would have given it a score in the 70s otherwise. So, what's the biggest issue? The drums. Lars freaking Ulrich, man. This guy is definitely one of my least favorite people in music. It's not that he's not that great a drummer but rather his personality and how he managed to almost single handily screw this album completely over. The snare drum was turned off during the recording of this album and because of that, it almost sounds like Ulrich is using a trash can or a metal pot as a snare drum. It's a sound that occasionally gives me headaches and I'm not even exaggerating on that. "Dirty Window" is probably the biggest offender and I can hardly ever make it all the way through the song. The cymbals are also used a tad too much in my opinion, and the double bass parts sound fairly sloppy. I'm wondering if this was a one-take thing and Lars just said "sounds good to me!". That seems like something that would happen. There are drum lines that harken back to the band's thrash sound and I'm sure if the damn snare wasn't so offensive, these drum lines would have sounded far better. The drums almost manage to ruin the album but also, this album could have really benefited from more bass. That's the other issue I have production wise. It's not only boring and static to the guitars but it doesn't add anything to the dynamics of the music, which is what the job of the bass should be.

Guitar wise, there are some pretty cool riffs. Unfortunately, this is another problem with the album. Yeah, we have cool riffs in tracks like "Some Kind of Monster", "Invisible Kid", "The Unnamed Feeling", and "Sweet Amber", but these riffs are played far too much throughout respective songs. It seems James and Kirk only wrote a few riffs for each song and just stuck with them because most songs operate on two to three riffs. Another common complaint is the lack of guitar solos. There is not one guitar solo on the album, nor is there anything that even resembles one, aside from maybe a few sub-par leads. I honestly wouldn't have minded Metallica's sololess approach as much if the songs weren't so damn long. "Purify" is the shortest song running at slightly over 5 minutes and "All Within My Hands" is the longest, which almosts reaches 9 minutes in length. This was a huge gamble that backfired. With most of the songs being over 7 minutes in length, you'd expect a band like Metallica to throw in a good amount of varying riffs and a few solos per song. This doesn't happen at all. Instead, like I previously mentioned, we get about two or three riffs per song, maybe a few more, and no guitar solos. Plenty of bands pull off repetition quite well in genres like doom or black metal but Metallica fits neither of these categories, and they shouldn't have gone through with this. I get the no solos thing. That would have been fine if the songs were condensed to maybe 6 minutes tops. As with the drums, there are even a few thrashy riffs thrown in here but mostly things are uninspired and messy.

In terms of vocals, this has to be Metallica's biggest failure as well. Hetfield sounds so far off key in every damn song. One of the worst examples would be "All Within My Hands". The whole "KILL KILL KILL KILL" thing sounds pretty damn laughable as it is but his voice sounds like absolute crap. "Frantic" has some strange moments (yeah, I'm referring to the "frantic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tock" thing) where he just sounds uncomfortable. And because of this, he's very uncomfortable to listen to. I think along with the drums, this has to be the album's most awkward aspect.

I can't believe it took Metallica one whole year to record this. A year, for this? Even with all of the issues the band was going through, this is asinine. Sure, there are some cool moments here and there, but mostly, it's just a pain to sit through. This album could have been solid in my opinion but due to my documented reasons, it fails to. "St. Anger' is Metallica's worst album and thankfully they reignited their spark with "Death Magnetic". I can't wait for "Hardwired...to Self-Destruct" to come out. For now, this is my last Metallica review. I will not be touching "Garage Inc" because, while it is a pretty cool album, it's a compilation of covers, and I don't really consider it to be a full-length album. Until next time!

Let me get something of my chest first of all. Lots and lots of fine folks keep talking about the sound mixing on this record and how god awful bad that it is. I don't agree. While the mixing isn't great it isn't terrible either. Yes it's weird sounding especially the drum sound but the guitar sound is massive and clean. The important thing is the guitar sound with this type of music.

Now that I have got that off my chest. What we have here is a record that takes a long time to get used to. First and foremost that is the truth. You have songs with so much going on it can be really tough getting to the point and knowing what is going on with them. Case in point is the song Shoot Me Again. You have so many moving parts in the song itself. What do I mean by moving parts? I mean the guitars, drums vocals and everything that makes up a song have breathing room to do anything they want. It is very unpredictable and that unpredictability can be very moving to a person listening to the music recorded on the album.

Tracks such as Shoot Me Again, The Unnamed Feeling and Some Kind of Monster I really enjoy. I love the places I go when hearing them being performed. They all feature riffs well worth hearing. Granted Some Kind Of Monster could use some time being trimmed off of it. But still that track is well worth hearing. There is a riff in this particular track around the six and a half minute mark that just rules hard. It's not very aggressive on a very aggressive album and it still comes on strong and it's a feeling I just can't explain.

Songs like Frantic and Dirty Window feature very aggressive riffs but zero soloing. In fact the entire record is absent of them. This is the major problem with this album. To go from having solos on just about every song the band has ever done to having none at all is a huge gamble. A very bad one in the entire history of heavy metal music. This is the major reason I am giving the record a 63. Neither of these two songs are over long and that means very good things are happening in these two tracks. It is just to bad they do not have solos in them. Both tracks feature lyrics that at least make some kind of sense. The problem is though most of the songs on this record do not feature great lyrics but it ends up not mattering.

The lyrical ideas are secondary with records like this. And if you are like me you probably think the same way. With these type of albums it is all about aggression and even though the lyrics being sung aren't even close to being high quality you still have good to great riffing that gets the blood pumping and do not forget the bass. Bob Rock played bass on this album and did a great job. His bass can be heard in certain places and can be heard well and sounds great while being heard.

Then you have songs like Invisible Kid that wear out their welcome way to quickly. No way in hell does this song have a right to be over eight minutes long. It is literally just one maybe two riffs the whole way through. It is much better to just skip this track but if people insist on listening just remember the song writing here is sub-par.

But don't let that stop you because the very next song picks things up greatly. My World is that song and I like it a lot. The riffs are much more well spread out and there are more of them. That means more breathing room. Remember my mentioning that earlier? It's the truth especially here with this song. Great riffs with time changes galore that add to the experience not disable it.

Do listen to the record and make up your own mind. But do listen all the way through. I did and still enjoy the album many years after first listening.

Nothing can be said of Metallica that hasn’t already been said. To deny the band’s early work often sounds more like sour grapes than actual criticism. Metal fans are entitled to their opinion of course, but I believe Metallica were once masters of a unique blend of thrash. Cliff Burton’s pianist training gave the band a flavor that set them apart from their peers. Unfortunately, none of the elements that made Metallica great are present on this contaminated mound of garbage.

People often tell me that this album is simply misunderstood. Misunderstood say you? Simply put, this album is a musical abortion of excessive ideas, most of which sucked all hopes and dreams from the listener. St. Anger is about as appealing as herpes or testicular piercing. It boggles my mind that Metallica actually considered this album a “statement.” St. Anger is a statement of a dead band, worthy of pity and contempt from the fans.

A sickening, growing hatred will consume anyone within seconds of pressing the play button. “Frantic” kicks off the album with a muddy slew of filth. Bob Rock should have been executed by firing squad for allowing this album to be produced in such a fashion. The guitars sound like a mallcore kid recorded them in a basement, whilst being violated by a rabid hermaphrodite. Lars apparently wanted a different drum sound for this album. It seems Lars has suffered from a brain aneurysm, for the drums sound like a two-year-old beating his fist into a defective garage door. Hetfield miraculously lost the ability to sing on this auditory abomination. The very man that delivered the viscous “Fight Fire With Fire” now sounds like an emo teenager, who remains in a semi-conscious state of painful masturbation. The bass guitar sounds like fecal waste, and Metallica’s lyrical ability is nowhere to be found.

What the hell happened to the band’s technical ability? Production aside, Metallica sound like amateurs. The drum patterns are basic, lacking fills and character, while James and Kirk can’t seem to write a riff to save their lives. The title track opens with an awful rendition of Korn, followed by a semi-decent high tempo tease, that makes the listener think they’re in for some kind of improvement. All hopes are crushed when the main verse resembles the trash found on popular radio. Every song plods along; endlessly, prolonging the sheer pain of trying to complete this “misunderstood” effort. Guitar solos are nowhere to be found, lost in the same void that took Metallica’s talent for melody from our hearts.

It is almost impossible to distinguish between tracks-they all sound the same. The only reason St. Anger can muster such a “high” rating, is the occasional moment of decency; decency akin to shooting someone in the head after sticking nails in his scrotum. Metallica have reached all time lows with St. Anger, but ironically, this is not the worst album ever made.


Thankfully, Metallica make a recovery on their next effort.

I’m sure some of you are asking “Why review St. Anger out of all the Metallica albums?” It’s a controversial, unique album surrounded by stigma that isn’t as bad as you think. In fact, this album has some good moments despite the obvious flaws. Out of the blue, a co-worker of mine let me borrow this album and it brought back memories of how much I enjoyed songs from this as a teenager. Those songs, Frantic and St. Anger, are still just as good now as they were back then. That said, this is not the Metallica you grew up with from the 1980’s. I’m pretty sure a couple of these songs made it to rock radio, something a song like “Hit The Lights” would never do. Despite the simple approach, there’s more good than bad on this release.

You couldn’t come up with a better name than St. Anger for this album. It has an angry, angst filled atmosphere on the gritty side of things. The songs “Shoot Me Again” and “The Unnamed Feeling” are perfect examples of this. Speaking of which, the songs are all generally good, with a couple just not living up to the rest. Some of the songs are catchy, and that’s not a bad thing. “Invisible Kid” has catchy lyrics with memorable guitar riffs to complement it. The guitar riffs on different songs do sound similar, but the best tracks stand out. Get ready for a steady dose of influences from the nu metal, hard rock, and groove metal subgenres on St. Anger. Though there are still remains of the thrashy roots here. There are gallops throughout, and the chord strummed chorus on the song “St. Anger” wouldn’t be out of place on “Master of Puppets”. The vocals sound fine and add to the tough atmosphere. The music is downright simple at times, but the album flows together well as a unit. Despite the positives, there are legitimate reasons why this album is stigmatized.

St. Anger has a few problems that stand out. The songs are way too long, and the repetitive riffs you heard the first minute add nothing to the sixth or seventh minute. The riffs are simple and become repetitive in just about every song. The 75 minute time span could’ve been scaled back to 40 minutes. I can’t say enough about how bad the drums are. The sound could be a lot better and the drum rhythms are virtually the same on every song. There are no guitar solos on this album. Metallica has made some of the best solos in music history, and yet this release doesn’t contain any lead guitar work. This fact points to the mainstream rock direction Metallica’s been attempting for a while. This clearly is not the album you’ll listen to for months on end. In the end, the strong moments do make for some rocking music.

St. Anger is a hard-hitting album that seems to lack something. It has good riffs throughout, but you get the feeling with a couple changes, this album could’ve been so much better. Some songs like “Sweet Amber” are genuinely good songs. And then we hear the ultra repetitive tracks past the six minute mark. St. Anger represents the troubled time of the band Metallica, and the end result brought out some good aggressive music. This album’s bright spots do slightly outweigh the bad in the end. 60/100

Here we go... "St. Anger" by Metallica. Well, let's start with the fact that Metallica is one of the most legendary heavy metal band of all times for various reasons, no doubt about it. While being one of the pioneers of thrash metal and leaders of the entire movement in the 1980s, they also have managed to make many of the non metal listeners also curious about the genre. I'd even say they are one of the main bands which people tend to get into at first and eventually may become metal fans. This is mainly due to the "Black Album" which, while not being Metallica's best release musically, possesses many well known anthems. Then of course the band has come out with amazing "Kill em'all", legendary "Ride the Lightning" and "Master of Puppets" and "Justice" album isn't bad too. There is a lot to praise Metallica for. Then again, there are way more bands which overall have much stronger discography to show for and releasing something as terrible as "St. Anger" happened to be is quite rare also, at least by this well established bands.

Lars and James, the two leading members, didn't get along with each other at the time St. Anger was supposed to be recorded. Also their bassist Jason Newsted had enough and decided to leave Metallica. Bass was played by the producer Bob Rock. In that kind of environment things were bound to go wrong and they did - big time. Starting off from questionable album cover to the absurdly bad production, there is very little good on this album.

The lyrics of Metallica had become personal from the self titled release already, but were kicked up a notch here. You can mostly hear about James battling his inner demons, which was alcoholism problem at the time. Vocal effort by him is somewhat annoying and often too forced, but not the biggest issue of this album. But when it comes to instrumental part.... while it mostly sounds like hard rock or even stoner rock, riffing is so dull and uninspired. It feels like a random garage rehearsal, has no backbone and lacks of proper structure. It is, however, catchy at times and some songs have a little potential but another completely bland riffing part then comes up which kills it all. This leads us to the problem that this album feels as disjointed as possible. Really not something that you'd expect to hear from one of the biggest metal band in the world. What about the guitar solos? Oh yeah, there are none!

Then ridiculous drumming by no one else than Lars Ulrich. While even many of the hardcore Metallica fans would agree that Lars is nowhere near an excellent drummer, he has been decent on some of the early releases, most prominently on "And Justice for All...". But here, drumming is the worst aspect of this release. Not only is playing as amateurish as it was on otherwise superb "Kill em'all", but also drum sound is god awful and way too high in the mix. Snare sounds like hitting hollow barrels. Even cymbals sound incredibly annoying for most of the time. Yeah, Lars even uses double bass at times, but his generic style literally suffocates this album. There are no surprises, just one linear line of boredom.

And this leads us to the production, that is simply atrocious. The main problem is of course completely screwed up drum sound (That's probably what Lars wished though), but guitar sound is nothing good either - it just lacks the punch needed at times. On the other hand, guitar sound could be much more precise and cleaner. That's not always needed, but considering everything, it wouldn't hurt. And there's no reason to comment bass guitar too, it's inaudible and played by Bob Rock, so who cares. Vocal mix isn't all terrible, but as said, could be much well performed.

"St. Anger" is one of the biggest missteps by one of the metal superstars. Even much bashed "Illud Divinum Insanus" by Morbid Angel, Cryptopsy's deathcore album or Megadeth's "Risk" had a clearer vision of what these albums were supposed to be. Generally these are all experiments which did go horribly wrong, while I personally don't think Cryptopsy's "Unspoken King" was all that bad. Nevertheless "St. Anger" had much blurrier identity than these three. It's poorly written, dreadfully produced and doesn't feel like a whole. Instead, it consists of pretty random and generally poor and repetitive riffing, alongside which we can hear even worse drumming. You can feel that the entire record is too forced and none of the members were actually into the recording process. Maybe few years later things would have worked out a little better. Somehow Metallica was able to put out an even worse piece of crap called "Lulu" feat. Lou Reed, but that still is no salvation to "St. Anger".

The bottom line is that Metallica has put out some great records in the past and for that they shall always be hailed. "St. Anger" or "Lulu" can't erase the classic Metallica releases. However, it is a shame that Metallica has put out very little stunning since "And Justice for All..." Even though it is largely subjective, I'd suggest for newer Metallica listeners to skip this album for good and check out some of the stuff from the 80's, the black album or even "Death Magnetic". There are many people who claim that they like "St. Anger" and that's fine, but this reviewer just can't find any appeal to it.

6/100

Before I start this review I'll spit off that I am a complete Metallica fanboy. I enjoyed all of their 80s albums, I loved the Black Album, Load, Reload and S&M. I even bought their movie the day it was released on Blue Ray. In fact there are only two Metallica releases that I abhor, this and Lulu.

This right here is just bad. There is nothing I can say that hasn't been said before so this might as well be a rehash of what has been said over and over. First off the guitar work is half assed, every song is just one riff done over and over again. There aren't any solos to break the monotony either, the band has two guitars but they both play this monotonous riff. The tone of the guitar is also gratingly annoying. The combination of monotony, the tone of guitar and the length of the songs makes listening to a track front back comparable to running a marathon. The riffs themselves have blunt force power, but this comes purely from the production, its loud and the tone is crap so these riffs literally sound like blunt force, yeah its heavy, extremely heavy but it gets way too old way too fast. It could be really fucking awesome but instead its a pile of brute force that pounds against itself and the fabric of the music itself.

Next comes the drums, which can be summarized by comparing them to pounding on a trash can, let me tell ya, it gets old real fast. I guess as far as drum work goes this is better then some past efforts but that damn trash can sound kills any possible interest I could have in the percussion department. It goes between fast parts and slow parts but that could go for most past Metallica drum work. It doesn't do anything particularly flashy and unlike past Metallica records it just keeps time instead of going that extra mile where it digs its way into the melody. It drowns everything else out, yeah even that overly brute forced guitar sound gets drowned out and I can't tell if that's good or bad.

The bass mimics the guitar part, Cliff is probably in heaven trying to slit his wrists from hearing the bass on this album. Its drowned out on most of the album. It doesn't seem to really add anything sound wise, just kinda there because metal albums are expected to have to a bass to round out the sound, but this bass doesn't round out the sound, it doesn't add any layers, its simply just there.

James singing is at an all time low. Those singing classes he took in the late 80s and early 90s, yeah seems like he completely ignored them when recording this. He doesn't use his range very much at all. He sounds angry though so I guess he nailed that part. Too bad the lyrics are crap though. Just like the guitar they seem half assed, seriously ‘tick tock tick tock tick tock', honestly if it were any other band these lyrics probably wouldn't bother me at all but damn I know James could do so much better and still express the angsty angry feeling that the album is so obviously meant to deliver.

Finally is the bad production, it doesn't make the album sound raw, it just drowns everything out beneath that damn trash can lid. There are plenty of great low fi albums out there, I guess Metallica just can't pull that sound off anymore. This is the first low fi they've released since their pre Kill Em All demos.

So yeah, sure, this is the heaviest most blunt force thing Metallica has made, in fact most things, even some death metal, grindcore and deathcore pale in comparison. The writing, the production, all of it is just... frustrating. Songwriting has gone completely down the drain.

Metallica’s “St. Anger“ has been reviewed so many times, so what’s the matter to do this all over again? My reasoning is simple. Usually, this controversial record is hated by many and adored by a few. There seems to be nothing in between and this release still divides the masses as only few metal albums will ever do. My point is that I initially hated this album but I adore it a lot today.

Let me explain. When I got into metal music back in 2005, I stumbled over many great current records of the most famous bands. When a friend introduced me to “St. Anger” I thought it was stupidly aggressive, annoyingly noisy and endlessly repetitive. This album didn’t include anything I was looking for back then. I was looking for a catchier single, some emotional guitar solos, an epic or progressive surprise here and there, a touching ballad or maybe a song with sophisticated lyrics. This album includes none of these things. I decided to listen to other stuff from Metallica and I found many records quite mellow as well. For me, Metallica was the most overrated metal band in the world. When I gave the band another chance after the release of the solid “Death Magnetic” in 2008, I started to dig some of the band’s earlier records but I didn’t listen to that “St. Anger” abomination again because I only had bad memories of it. It’s only back in 2011 when I coincidentally listened to that album again when I introduced a friend of mine to the metal world. At that point, I knew much more about the tensions in the band prior to the release of “St. Anger”, my English had become better and I spent some time to analyze the lyrics of this record and my personal tastes had expanded and become much more open-minded towards extreme (sounding) metal. Suddenly, something had changed and I started to appreciate “St. Anger” to my own surprise.

This album transports so many extreme emotions that go straight in your face: it’s full of anger, black humor, cynicism, fear, frustration, pain, pressure, social criticism and spite. It’s an unvarnished drain valve, an authentic still life, the handle after the last straw. It was an uncompromising make it or break it release created with tons of burden and pressure six years after the band’s last release. It was an album that would see Metallica die or survive. It was the kind of album that the band simply had to do no matter what while the previous records had always aimed for a mainstream audience. The band didn’t give a damn about the question if this album was going to please the critics and fans or not at all. All these negative emotions the band gathered over the years culminated on this release which makes this record absolutely authentic, gripping and unique to me. This album absolutely has to sound raw and dirty. Guitar solos are too beautiful for the negative lyrical topics on here. The repetitive, down-tuned, chugging riffs perfectly represent the never-ending hell the band was going through. The tinny, dirty, annoying drum sound is perfectly in context because it’s as annoying as ripping headaches and negative thoughts that won’t ever leave you. The aggressive and sometimes out-of-tone vocals and the respective lyrics feel like the desperate rant of an insane mind. Yes, this album has a very special atmosphere and it sounds completely unique. It’s an album for special moments when you simply feel mad about something and want to reduce your aggression or when you are in need for some uncompromising and straight music. People tend to compare “St. Anger” to other stuff and cite nu-metal bands (pejoratively called mallcore by the closed-minded elitists) like System Of A Down or Limp Bizkit. Those who say so just didn’t understand “St. Anger” or they simply don’t want to. Both bands never wrote eight-minute long repetitive and desperate rants with down-tuned instruments and extremely raw productions anyway. It took me more than half a decade to realize this and respect this raw diamond.

It’s really hard to pick out any song on here because “St. Anger” really works as a whole. Let me just say that I started to love the songs I really hated in the beginning. “Some Kind Of Monster” had always sounded way too long, repetitive and unnecessarily brutal to my ears when I was young but today I literally feel the menacing main riff and dig the angry lyrics. Another good example is “My World” which sounded aimless to me in the beginning but today I definitely understand this track that perfectly represents the spirit of Metallica back then. It’s their world and it’s a mad world and if you don’t like it and want to dig in the past, than get along, suckers! The extremely aggressive “Purify” felt like pointless brutality to my ears when I was young but today I consider it as maybe the most concise song writing on this record where Metallica literally try to purify itself.

Note that the songs that I initially liked have become even greater as time went by. I might cite the pitiless opener “Frantic” where the vocals sound like a ticking time bomb and where the tinny drum sound and simplistic riffs perfectly introduce us to what this record is all about. The desperate “The Unnamed Feeling” that mixes hysterical passages with menacingly calm and almost mantra-like parts is my favourite song on the album. It feels like the individual that tells the story desperately tries to keep control but in the end completely looses it in the middle part of the song.

Everything about this album suddenly works. The riffs are chugging and simplistic but that’s why they work so well. The raw drums that were mixed in the foreground represent that hammering in your head that is suffering from a severe migraine. The drum play is straight but incredibly effective. Metallica’s drummer gets regularly criticized but I think he did the best job of his career on this album because and not despite he lacks diversity, elegance and technique. It simply fits on this particular record while his drum play might slightly spoil other Metallica records. The vocalist simply sings his heart out with slightly hysterical and imperfectly perfect vocals. Yes, there is a lot of “uh!” and “yeah!” on this album and these elements sounded out of place and mildly amusing on other albums but on here, these initial flaws have become strengths as they sound unpolished, natural and honest. The singer doesn’t think about how he should perform, it feels as if he just lets himself go and that’s what was needed for this release. Oh yes, there is also a bass player on this record but he wasn’t really needed on here and that’s why the unimpressive bass play simply doesn’t matter to me even though I usually adore this instrument. This is James Hetfield’s, Lars Ulrich’s and Kirk Hammett’s most personal record. Jason Newsted is a nice guy but never really fitted into this band anyway and session bassist Bob Rock was just there to fill in for the least important spot in the band.

If I had written a review for this album back in 2005 or the years after, I would have given this album an utterly bad grade. Today, it’s close to perfection for me. I only cut off a few points because the record doesn’t work in all situations as you have to be in a very particular mood to get into this and because “Sweet Amber” is the only song I never got into on this release. It sounds like the rest but in a less convincing manner as it’s neither outthought enough to grab our attention nor straight enough to conquer us by all means.

In the end, I would like to suggest you to give this album a fair chance from time to time. Maybe you will be going through the same experience as I did and deeply appreciate what you profoundly hated one day. Just listen to this record once or twice every two or three years. If it doesn’t work, put it away and try again two or three years later. Maybe you need a special event in your own life to dig this vulgar negativity of an album like the loss of a job, the death of a beloved friend or a complicated divorce. Or maybe you are just like me and you will look beyond this album and empathise with the band and its particular situation back in the days so that this record suddenly makes sense. Anyway, such a timelessly controversial album should be known by any metal fan. If it’syou’re your case, discover the madness right now! Even if you hate it, your listening experience might be more interesting than the discovery of many so-called classics that didn’t age so well.

Few albums in the world of music get as frequently criticized and as much maligned as Metallica's St. Anger. Released in 2003 to mild critical acclaim, the tables swiftly turned and those that had previous been praising the album for its return to the angry style that Metallica had mastered throughout the 1980's were now claiming it to be a tragic attempt to go back to their roots minus any of the creativity. It was seen as Metallica jumping on yet another bandwagon, this time tapping into the nu-metal craze of the early 2000's. Combining simplistic down-tuned guitar riffs with no soloing whatsoever, then added to the drum sound that resembles all the cutlery in Lars Ulrich's kitchen being rattled around and some of the most pathetic attempts at lyricism to be spewed from James Hetfield's mouth, it could be said that this album was destined for disaster.

The first song on the album is entitled Frantic, and displays all that is wrong with this album, but also one of the positives that can be found. The riffing is simple chugging, with heavy use of playing open strings, and the drum sound will stick out straight away. Another album attempted this sound beforehand, the album in question being Death's The Sound Of Perseverance, except that on that album the rattling sound achieved by Lars turning off the snares on his snare drum is far more irritating and clear on here, having been done with considerable more taste on The Sound Of Perseverance. Also noticeable is the absurd and very childish lyrics written by James Hetfield, containing lines such as "My lifestyle determines my deathstyle" and "Fran-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tock". However, the aforementioned positive is found in that the band is clearly playing with genuine energy again. Far from the abomination that was Lars' drumming on the previous three releases, with over simplified patterns, he here thunders away at his drum kit, no matter what impact it has on the listener. The guitar work is incessant, and James utterly bellows his lyrics with a passion unheard from the band since ...And Justice For All. The music is by no means brilliant, but the rage that accompanies the chorus to this song and the intensity generated from the angered men playing it is more than enough to be considered a positive.

The genuine anger behind this album stems from the back story of it. The band was in turmoil following the release of Reload, having lost both their singer and bassist in the space of five months. To begin with, Jason Newsted left the band for supposed physical damage he had sustained over the years of playing metal music. The real crippling blow came in July 2001, when James Hetfield entered rehabilitation for being an alcoholic. The sound that one hears upon inserting this album into their disk player is the sound of a band playing with real hate for what they had done to themselves over the years. The lyrics, ridiculous though they may be, are James venting his fury at what he had become and using them to overcome his past life. Lars is crashing away at his drums with a passion almost unmatched in the entire music scene. This Metallica was a very different band to the one that had pressed out thrash masterpieces consistently in the 1980's. Musically inferior though they may be, the emotional performance here is still enough to make for a decent enough album to listen to.

The songs that are the best on here are Frantic, My World and The Unnamed Feeling. The former two are two raw, pissed off, unadulterated numbers that definitely merit a listen, despite the appalling sound quality and clear lack of creativity. Frantic is the most straight up aggressive number on here, whereas My World is a much more refined form of anger, until the second half, with the refrain "not only do I not know the answer, I don't even know what the question is" spewed from the mouth of Hetfield with a tortured shout that reminds us of the broken man he has become. This is outlined more so in the latter song, The Unnamed Feeling, in which James takes us through the story leading up to this album in a personal manner, providing one of the best vocal performances he has ever unleashed, with a decent enough instrumental to accompany this. These songs prove that Metallica are still a competent enough band and should be taken more than seriously, rather than the joke the media would have the listener believe.

However, it is songs such as the title track and Some Kind Of Monster that prove the mishaps that occurred with this album, and drag this album down quite a bit. Both were enjoyable enough listens in their radio edit forms, but on here both exceed seven minutes and twenty seconds, dragging on far too long and using the same repetitive instrumental that has been heard thirty times already on the song. This is the worst aspect of the album, where many of the songs just reuse the same idea that has already been heard to the point it is stale. The shorter cuts on this album are, for the most part, the better songs, and even they clock in at over five minutes without ever really needing to. This was grating enough on ...And Justice For All, despite the fact that that album had enough musical ideas and creativity to save it. However, there is no excuse on St. Anger for having a running time of seventy five minutes, with around fifty minutes of this being rendered completely unnecessary due to the over-usage of the same ideas.

This album certainly deserves the hate that is thrust upon it, for there is enough to despise about the album, from the repetition of the same three-note riffs to the lack of solos and the excruciatingly long running time. None of this is helped by the fact that the lyrics are as immature as can be and the ear piercing drum tone. However, there are a few redeeming features, with three or four of the songs being entirely listenable, and some of the others being tolerable for a while. The fury on display here is a force to be reckoned with, and any supposed Metallica fan should give this a listen simply for the significance it has to the band themselves.

Originally written for Sputnik.

The year was 2003. Jason Newsted had left the band. I, like the many other die hard Metallica fans, was disappointed by this. Jason was a great bass player, and it is a shame he never got to show his full potential in Metallica. Listen to the last two Voivod albums to see what I mean. His live backing vocals also gave more power to even the most lack-luster of Metallica songs and he had an amazing stage presence. As soon as Jason jumped ship, I knew this meant trouble, BIG trouble. If this wasn't bad enough, they didn't get a new bass player right away. Instead they had their producer, Bob Rock, play bass, while the band searched for a replacement and trying to record this album. When this disc was released, the album was met with very mixed reviews but since when is this new for Metallica? I had to check it out for myself.

At first glance, in spite of everything I mentioned above, things looked promising. Updating the logo that hearkened back to the days when they were truly great, plus the positive initial reviews, brought a false sense of security. Was I wrong or what? Now the purpose of what you have read up to this point was to back up the fact that I do not hate Metallica. In all honesty it is very much the opposite. I am a die-hard fan, although not to the point of blind allegiance, and had practically grown up with them. This band was my gateway to metal as a whole. That being said, I really wanted to like this disc. But after listening to "St. Anger" all the way through a few times, I could not bring myself to like it, much less tolerate it. Musically, it is not good in any way. It doesn't matter what genre you try to fit it in; it's simply not good. It's not pleasant, thought provoking, exciting, or stimulative of any of the emotions music is supposed to invoke. Any shred of the Metallica of old has been lost completely with "St.Anger". This album was not a return to form as promised, but a cheap attempt to get fans who had long abandoned Metallica after the "Load" era, to give the band more money and another chance. You can't blame the band for trying, but almost everything about this album is just wrong. The concept behind the album honestly isn't all that bad. "St. Anger" for the most part, is an exploration of James Hetfield's inner demons. He was fresh out of rehab, after all. So conceptually the album isn't bad, but musically it's one of the worst things I've ever heard.

My main complaint is that the songs sound unfinished and production is horrid. My first issue is the songs are lacking guitar solos completely. Kirk actually wrote solos for the songs, but Bob Rock saw that these were totally removed from the final recording. He must have lost his mind. Metallica and scorching guitar solos just go hand in hand. Kirk helped pioneer single note solos, and you knew right away you were listening to Metallica due to the solos alone. Hetfield's vocals, although rougher and angrier ("Kill em All" days), are dry, cracking, and sometimes straining. The guitars have no unity or coherence and due to the down tuning just sound muddy. They are also completely buried under the drums at almost all times. The worst part about the production is the now-infamous drums (the snare in particular). Seriously, it sounds like a friggin' trash can lid. Every song on this disc is annihilated by the drums. Drums are not supposed to screw up the song or give the listener a headache; however in this case they do both. While I am happy to hear Lars is using double bass again, this does not make up for the rest of his performance. Another major production flaw is that it sounds like they just hung a microphone in someone's garage and jammed on half-assed ideas for an hour. The production, however, is not the sole reason this album fails. It is one of many major reasons this album fails. You know things are bad when "...And Justice for All" seems like a good production job. The difference here is that "Justice" was a metal masterpiece despite the bad production. St. Anger is just abysmal. The worst part is that they spent millions of dollars on the production for it to sound this way on purpose. Hell, even the "No Life 'til Leather" demo sounds better than this.

The lyrics are another major complaint I have. They are uninspired as well as immature. It sounds like something a 16 year old would write in a notebook at school or like they came from motivational posters at an AA meeting. Lyrics such as "my lifestyle determines my deathstyle" are an example of the great songwriting you will find here. All four members of the band are in their 40's, so there is no excuse for this. Cliff Burton, had he not been cremated, would be rolling in his grave. Even though he did say in an interview once that he could see Metallica playing softer music, that means yes, "Justice", and the "Black Album" would've happened, he would not have stood for this. I was, and still am, so disappointed by this disc and it is really hard to believe it was Metallica who put this out. This was no longer the band I once loved and supported.

To be honest, on rare occasions I have gone back and listened to this album a few times since my initial listening. Very rarely, I will find an album I couldn't stand the first couple times around actually grows on me. This, however, is not the case with "St.Anger", as it fails to change my opinion each and every time I hear it. The only song it is possible to suffer through is "Frantic" as it is easily the "best" song on the album. This isn't saying much, as it only serves as a forewarning for the garbage ahead. If you have been able to listen to the album entirely, you would know the songs get progressively worse. By the end of the last track, you will probably be searching for something to kill yourself with. This disc is the James and Lars show. Period. Some songs start strong, such as "Some Kind of Monster" and "Dirty Window", the latter sounds like a Motorhead song in the beginning; however, as soon as James sings, everything but his voice and those annoying drums fade to the background. I can't even make out a decent chord progression. It is just a wall of unintelligible garbage invading your eardrums. If they would have sought a tighter, crunchier sound, allowed Kirk to keep the solos he wrote, engaged the snare, and not looped the hell out of each song, this album could have lived up to what it should have been.

Looking back at the album six years later, the album actually sounds worse now than it did then. This, I would say, is due to the release of "Death Magnetic". Also, because the album mainly dealt with the band's issues at the time, it feels very dated. The only reason I give a 15%, is because with the release of "Death Magnetic", Metallica showed us (or rather assured us) that "St.Anger" was not a permanent stylistic shift. Rather, it was a brave, albeit horribly failed, experiment.

Right, honesty time here. I used to absolutely LOVE St. Anger. It was my first ever Metallica album and my bible for ages upon ages, but after a year or 2, I collected the rest of their albums and St. Anger fell out of favour. When I decided to dig out St. Anger again for this review, I was sceptical. I was going to listen through it then just give it a 60% rating on the basis that "It's pretty poor, but I like it for some reason. It's Metallica, it's good. End of." But something unplanned happened. I began to recall just how good this album was and it climbed in percentage with nearly every song and I've remembered why I loved this album in the first place.

Now, the above paragraph is tantamount in the metal community to saying that Bruce Dickinson sucks big fat ones and that Trivium are the greatest band of all time, with Atreyu second. It will most probably get you lynched. The derision for this album is unreal. Imagine Cold Lake, Swansong and The Unspoken King wrapped into one big fat package of hate. Then times it by a million. This album was being hailed as "a return to their roots" and when the previews hinted at 8-minute long epics, people started comparing it to ...And Justice For All and Master of Puppets. The first couple of weeks were positive, with Number 1s in Charts all over the world and mostly Positive reviews. But then something happened. I don't know what but SOMETHING did happen. Everyone turned on the album. Critics who had hailed it as a return to form started panning it, the fans were decidedly unpleased and the album withered away.

But why? Well, where do we start? There's so many tired-old excuses raised about the flaws of this album. But the main one is usually about the production. It's not very good, and not in a Darkthrone kind of "not very good". It's just not very good. They've certainly succeeded in achieving a "raw, garage sound", and it is a good production to an extent. But it's TOO raw. It's too rough and muddy, there is many parts during this album where the infamous "wall of noise" comes into play, where it's all just one big lumpen thrashy mess. It can be good at times, but not at others. It sort of depends on what mood you're in and it varies from song-to-song. The drums ARE REALLY FUCKING LOUD IN THE SAME WAY THAT SOMEONE SHOUTING IN YOUR EAR ALL THE TIME IS REALLY FUCKING LOUD. Well, it is for the first song or 2, but they are 2 of the best songs on the album. Also, there's the snare. It CAN grate very easily, but those with a patient ear will be able to become accustomed to it. They might not necessarily love it, but they'll come to accept it.

Another aspect of the sound is the guitar tone. I fucking love the tone on this album. It sounds so sludgy and doomy and well, raw. But it has a sense of pervading gloom hanging over it that is just mind-boggling. To try and describe it is hard, but I'd say, you know that ever-annoying question that comes up every so often when you run out of things to say about Metallica, "What would it be like if Load was more metal?". Well, this is it. It's got the tone of Load (Which I loved by the way) but with more crunch. The Bass is only audible sometimes, and James' Vocals are possibly the only thing clear in this mix.

The Guitars are another much-maligned part of this album. Kirk Hammett doesn't really need to play on this album at all. This is Hetfield's album essentially. There is no Solos, hell there isn't even any lead parts. That is not an overexaggeration. Hammett just copies Hetfield pretty much all the time throughout this album, the closest we got to a lead is on The Unnamed Feeling, but he just makes random noises. It's as much a SunnO))) lead as it is a Metallica lead. The Bass is fairly interesting, when you can hear it, which is very rarely ever, and it's in short bursts, but it is pretty funky and well done to Bob Rock. But most of the time, it just blends in, playing the same riffs as the guitars. The drums, once you get past the toe-curling sound, are actually pretty good. I've seen many a review accusing Lars of being lazy on this album, but I fail to see how. He's brought back the double bass (and very well, might I add) and he does some fairly interesting patterns throughout the album. Alright, so he's no Mike Portnoy, but was he ever a Mike Portnoy? Even on Justice, he didn't go over-the-fucking-top, ala DT. He did what was needed and that was that. It's hardly fair to expect him to buck the trend by now, is it? I personally believe Lars' performance on this album is exceptional and possibly the best thing on it. Hetfield's vocals are a bit out-of key but they show passion. Each song sounds like he's screaming his lungs out with rage, but also he sounds like he's having fun doing it, that it's not a drag or a chore that he has to do these vocals, it feels like he wants to fucking shout and scream and generally go "AAAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGGGH!!"

In terms of actual songs, it's a mixed bag. There is some absolutely amazing songs, Frantic and Dirty Window spring straight to mind, as being absolute classics. Two of the more thrashier ones, they just BLISTER along, unrelenting. Dirty Window sounds like so much fun to play, and that main riff is absolutely fantastic, I love it. These two songs are absolute classics and would make sensible additions to any Metallica setlist. Songs getting the silver medal include All Within My Hands, a monolithic sludge epic, which gets to the point where it's so fractured that it collapses around itself and dies. (The acoustic version reinforced this, adding more depth.) and Sweet Amber which is more brooding and dark than the other songs mentioned, but still has the quality associated with Metallica. The singles, St. Anger, The Unnamed Feeling and Some Kind of Monster, are all not bad, but not as good as the four mentioned before. The rest of the songs are also not bad but are all interchangable. Many of the songs sound identical and you'll get lost in the mire and they'll just fly by. And I now come to another point of derision on this album. This album is 70 minutes plus, with only 13 songs, that's roughly 5 or 6 minutes per song. Now this is the norm with Metallica, the average song by them is about this length if not longer. But the problem is that they are very drawn out. For example, St. Anger seems to consist of about 3 riffs for the whole song and it's about 6/7 minutes long. The radio edits cut sizeable chunks of the song out, and it flowed much better and didn't grate nearly as much as the album version. An example would be Some Kind of Monster, a song so drawn out that I have witnessed Autumns which last for a shorter length of time. On the SKOM EP, the video edit was considerably shorter and is favoured by most of Metallica's diehard fanbase. It seems that Lars went mental with Pro Tools and just pressed Ctrl+V a lot. The lowest of the low, though, has to be Purify. It isn't anything horrific on this studio version, but the DVD which came with this album consisting of rehearsal footage totally ruined this song for me, it's the broken-voice backing vocals of the chorus. Woeful. It's got some not bad ideas in it, but I just do not like it for that simple reason. But that's only because I'm harbouring a grudge.

In short, there is many flaws with this album. MANY, MANY flaws with this album. The drums ARE REALLY LOUD AND GO DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN ALL THE TIME. This album is way too long, they've taken the idea of repetition to the extreme, and there isn't much in the way of variation. There isn't any solos, or anything in the way of progressive riffs like on Justice. The production isn't very good, and Hetfield is out of key. These are all valid points, but the question must be asked: If Metallica were to re-record this with a better production, fixing that snare and re-working the songs so to add solos and trim fat, would it get a better reaction? Well, If it was released tomorrow, I believe it wouldn't simply because it's St. Anger. There's a stigma attached to this, it's an unwritten law that if you are Metal, you must hate this album. Fact. But if they had released this hypothetical "St. Reworked" album instead of the original album, would it have fared better? And, once again, the answer is no. Not only did they put solos into Frantic when they played it live, but they didn't sound very good and forced as a result of the fan's reaction. Regardless of their output, there will always be people who will slate this and shout "OMFG SELLOUT MALLCORE FAIL LOLZ KREATOOOOOR!" on Blabbermouth until they turn blue. There will always be people who regard Sepultura to have peaked with Morbid Visions, and that Kreator should just do nothing but play "Flag of Hate" or stuff off Pleasure To Kill over and over again. There will always be people who regard the heart and soul of Metallica to be Lloyd Grant and will slate this to death. Perhaps they'd give it a 5% rating, instead of a 0%, because Frantic had more of a thrash vibe to it.

Basically, what I'm getting at is that Metallica can do no right. Every move they make will end up in SOME people who'll view them lower than a holocaust-denying sex offender who once pissed on the constitution. If they decided "Right, we'll just go and re-do our 80s thrash stuff again", they'll get called "Sellouts" for trying to pander to the metalheads, but if they decide to do their own thing, they'll get branded "Sellouts who don't care about their fanbase". All this, despite the fact that Metallica are possibly one of the least sellout-y bands in the upper echelons of Metal. It boggles my mind as to why people call Metallica sellout. Do they release a live album every 3 weeks like Maiden or Testament? No. Do they put out endless compilations? No. Metallica offer good value for their fans through things such as Mission Metallica, Live Metallica and the Metallica Fan Club. All those people who call this a "business venture" are obviously not very business-savvy. The idea of making money in business is to give your customer fanbase something they want. If this was a money-making exercise for them, they would simply have rehashed MOP on every album, and not bothered with progressing or making new ideas. I would say a band like Cannibal Corpse, or Kataklysm would be more of a money-making venture than Metallica. I'm pretty sure that NO Metallica fan specifically wanted them to go in this direction. If I went out into the streets in 2001/2002 and asked hundreds of Metallica fans "What do you want from their new album?", I can pretty much guarantee you that they would not have said a description of St. Anger. The idea that this album is a business venture is like Mr. Kipling deciding his next "business venture" is to put bits of glass in his cakes, because he thinks they'll sell more.

If this had been released by any other band, it would've probably have done far better. If a band like Trivium had released this as a debut, they'd probably be more acclaimed by metalheads for being more avant-garde, and if a band like Evile or Gama Bomb had released this, or even just a new band in general, not necessarily a thrash one, they'd be praised for their vision and originality, and it would be hailed as a troubled classic. As a result of it being Metallica, it will never get the recognition it deserves. The fans' backlash against the fact that it wasn't MOP has become contagious to the point where it's illegal to like this album, the press (which gave it good reviews at first) have latched on to the bandwagon and now hate this release. The album's downfall doesn't lie with Metallica, but with it's fans. The fact of the matter is that this record is a perfectly good release with a bad reputation. The Napster scandal and the 90s output have alienated people to anything by Metallica (A point proven by the hatred emanating from certain corners of the metal world for Death Magnetic, a record designed with the 80s in mind).

As a purely musical object, this is 70/75%, but the no remorse, no relent aesthetic and Metallica's reluctance to pander to the baying audience elevates this album higher than most. This has heart, unlike recent Megadeth or Slayer releases which seem to be forced and going through the motions. As Hetfield himself says on this album "St. Anger never gets respect" and it is because of this that it never gets respect. An album with as much vision and individuality as this will never be seen ever again, it is a once in a lifetime album. In years to come, maybe people will relax their inhibitions about it and slowly begin to like it, but I doubt it. Metal Archives rules states that reviews aren't meant to be JUST about the music, but about the album as a whole. This album is about so much more than the music. The back-story of the SKOM film, the uniqueness of this album, and Metallica's sheer reluctance to do anything other than what they want to do are just some of the reasons why this album gets a perfect rating from me.

You will never hear another album like St. Anger, it is a wholly unique entity and for that, it should be praised.

It’s that time again boys and girls. We as thrash fans, as metal-heads, as sentient life-forms in general, find ourselves on the eve of a new Metallica album. With only a few mere days until the release, I’d just like to remind readers of what happened the last time we all got hyped up over the latest Metallica disc. Though I remain optimistic, it’s only because there’s one Metallica album that I’m positive Death Magnetic will be heads and tails above; their controversial St. Anger of 2003.

A lot of people having been constructing positive interpretations of this album of late. As such, many of your individual experiences with this long-awaited “comeback” album are probably different from mine, but maybe some of you can relate. My experience with St. Anger came in three stages.

Stage one was Confusion. I had heard the first single off the album (the title track) a few weeks prior to purchasing the album. It wasn’t magnificent, but hell, it wasn’t that bad either. Certainly not bad enough to discourage me from getting the album. I had to take a flight back from Denver to Philadelphia which was to last several hours, so I figured that the album would be an easy way to pass the time. About half-way into the first run through, I began to notice that something was amiss. There were no dazzling Kirk Hammett guitar solos to bring my senses to climax. Nor were there any trademark Metallica riffs. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything: everything sounded low-fi and sludgy. Listening to it on my sound system at home proved that it wasn’t the headphones: St. Anger just sounded shitty. Metallica wasn’t supposed to sound shitty, in fact, they were supposed to sound quite the opposite (an early magazine review of the album gave it a pretty favorable review too). As I struggled to come to terms with what I was hearing, I slowly moved into stage two: Denial.

Slowly but surely, I found myself convinced that St. Anger wasn’t nearly as bad as I initially concluded. In fact, some of the songs were downright cool. Hetfield’s frantic, screechy screams (found all over the place) seemed energetic, songs like “Shoot Me Again,” “Purify” and “Dirty Window” had heavy, pummeling riffs, and there were a nice batch of lyrical nuggets I found to my liking. I tried hard to find the good in the album and I succeeded: for a period of time I actually legitimately enjoyed the album. This wasn’t meant to be, however, and after much more scrutiny I moved into the third and most inevitable stage: Anger.

This wasn’t Metallica returning to form, they were merely pulling the same trend-hopping bullshit they pulled back with Load but with a nu-metal flavor. Metallica had sold out, again. Hearing the album as it really was, I became massively disenfranchised and completely pissed that I blew $16 on this fucking shitstorm. I shelved it in dismay, listening to it only once more at the request of a friend to find that it had only grown worse with time.

Was this the album’s true purpose after all? As an expression of Metallica’s own anger, was it designed to extend that feeling to their audience? Indeed, I sympathize with those that consider the album avant-garde. Such an intentionally vitriolic album would have the merits of an artistic masterwork. But I don’t buy albums to display as conversation pieces; I buy them to listen to. And if an album’s listenability is crippled in order for it to be artistically relevant…well…I’ll reflect it in my review.

But now listening to the album for the first time in years; objectively, disregarding all past bias and disappointment and generally not comparing it to past Metallica albums, I can still honestly say that the album is terrible. The song arrangements are notoriously basic, yet regularly drag on for 7-8 minutes. Hetfield sounds terrible when he tries to vocalize anything outside of mellow singing or a low snarl (he falls apart during the “Frantic” chorus, the end of “All Within My Hands”, etc.) and his guitar sound sucks (tuned to Drop-C, the same tuning utilized by System of a Down, but with a shittier distortion). There are no guitar solos and only a handful of spots where the guitars aren’t doing the exact same thing, so Kirk didn’t even really have to play on this album. Lars’ return to aggressive drumming is a major plus (parts of “St. Anger” and elsewhere), but as everyone knows, his kit was so poorly recorded (not just the snare, people) that it strangles the tempo. Rob Trujillo is a great bassist, but Bob Rock wrote/recorded all the bass lines (read: copied the guitar lines) and mixed them into obscurity. Additionally, the lyrics are infantile and angsty, which along with the low-tuned guitars and lack of solos, brings the album just on the periphery of nu-metal territory (only the drumming keeping a semblance of metal intact).

But however marginally it may appear, Metallica’s chemistry is nonetheless still present on the album. Once the shocking disappointment fades away, the album’s critical problems become limited to these three: the drum production, the lack of guitar solos, and the low-tuning. The drum production is the worst of the three: this is the reason the album feels so sluggish. Had even this alone been addressed, I could realistically see scoring this over 50%, as several of the songs would then become quite solid. Maybe then the final stage of the St. Anger experience is really Complacency: acceptance with what the band attempted to express to their listener has come with time. But it is the way they chose to express it that continues to trouble me, hence this single-digit slap to the face.

Perhaps Death Magnetic will indeed redeem this long misguided band. We’ll find out shortly, but until then, Metallica in my eyes remain unforgiven.

I remember the day St.Anger came out; instead of studying for an exam that was on the next day I caught the bus to the nearest record store and upon finding out that buying the cd would leave me with no money to catch the bus back I bought the cd and walked the 12 or so kilometres back to my house while the wind howled and the rain poured (it was winter down here.) I put it on and I freakin’ loved it.

And, in a sense, I still like it. Despite listening to it now and being surprised at just how many mediocre/bad/horrible moments there are crammed into this album I just can’t bring myself to really, genuinely dislike anything that my man Hetfield has put out. Unfortunately, the (obvious) reality has been sinking in pretty hard of late; I guess I’m just going to have to face up to facts and admit that this release just isn’t very good. At all.

Well, I still maintain that this record has some pretty good, maybe even excellent moments; occasional glimpses where the unhinged fury we were promised is actually delivered in a listenable, even enjoyable format. Like glittering diamonds in a lake of poo, the beauty of these moments is accentuated by just how rarely they come up. When Frantic’s otherwise awful TICK TICK TOCK-isms are stripped back for a bit in the bridge, a fairly good riff is finally allowed to blossom for a few seconds and it’s a beautiful thing to behold. Purify’s bridge is absolutely furious; it’s not the best song otherwise (in fact it’s pretty horrible) but in terms of straight forward heaviness it’s one of the heaviest songs Metallica have done, just dripping with aggression; although it takes a bit of skipping to get to the better parts. Likewise, skipping past the first 6 or so minutes of the aimless, almost nu-metallish Some Kind of Monster reveals a rather heavy, slow beast of a riff that unfortunately only pops up for about a minute or so. Five or so tracks later, Sweet Amber is probably the only song here that manages to stay good throughout it’s duration; it’s relatively short and catchy and has a sort of carefree vibe; certainly not a word that I would use to describe most of Metallica’s studio recordings. It‘s an enjoyable, galloping, vaguely thrashy and quite rocky song that given better production would probably be up there with Metallica‘s better 90‘s moments.

At the same time, these little moments don‘t mean much; for every moment that I can safely say “Metallica did it right here” there’s a huge amount of other moments where you’d be perfectly in your rights to go “This part blows”. All of the title track, for one; it's poor semi heavy riffing mixed in with extremely awkward, ill fitting cleaner/melodic parts. Shoot Me Again has many cringe inducing nu-metallish parts and annoyingly cliched, simplistic riffing (although ‘All the Shots I take/I spit back at you’ is a cool lyric). Dirty Window, for one, is a perfect argument that this album has some serious, serious flaws. The horrible song name, the horrible DUNDUNDUNDUNDUN DUN DUN DUN POOOONG intro riff/main riff, the lyrics, the unimaginative I-III-IV chord progression (this progression dominates almost every song, but here it’s particularly annoying) - basically all elements of it are truly awful. It is the only Metallica song that I can genuinely say I hate; one has to wonder why no one near the band (or in the band) mentioned something along the lines of “Hey guys, this song is no good”.

The trouble is compounded when you realise that these moments of crappiness just keep on stacking up, they’re in (almost) every single song and they occur with a lot of regularity. The lyrics are always dire and while I’m normally a huge fan of Hetfield’s voice I really can’t say his barking old man persona in this album is good- and let’s not go near his off key bit in Invisible Kid, either. The guitar riffs are mind numbing death by pentatonic stuff; slow and childish, in a sense, they take no effort to play and even less to write, and they repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat. I have no trouble with repetition whatsoever, but only if the riffs are worth repeating, and most of the riffs here aren’t even worth recording. Everywhere you look there's just a heap of aimless, sloppy sort of groovy riffing that brings to mind, well, old men trying to write a thrash record, and it leaves an extremely sour taste in one’s mouth.

The sour taste lasts for a long time after the album has stopped playing. This album certainly raises some troubling questions. I appreciate that Metallica were having a rough time when they were recording this- but does that mean that they had to throw all aspects of quality control out the window? Had they surrounded themselves with sycophants and yes-men to such an extent that no one was willing to suggest an alternative approach? Why didn’t they at least make the songs quicker- shorter and sharper if you will, which would enable them to make things heavier/faster, more cathartic (and perhaps most importantly) more listenable? What was Bob Rock, who has for much of his career spent his time capturing amazing rock guitar/drum tones, thinking when he recorded this? Is Lars really so lazy that he won’t spend five minutes a day tuning his snare drum up? Why didn’t Hetfield tell his bandmates “Y’know, I think I’ll write all the lyrics for these songs, as you guys suck at them”? Why didn’t Kirk at least write some other guitar bits? And perhaps most importantly, will Metallica ever recover the magic of the mid 80’s, or even their solid mid-90’s form? Do Metallica still have the motivation, the fire, to write good music?

We can only hope that said questions get positive answers on the next Metallica album. It’s funny, originally I was going to just go “meh”; give this a 50% and count that as good enough, but fact is that this record just isn’t worthy of a mark anywhere near that high. There’s maybe 10, 15 minutes of good stuff in this album, a few riffs scattered around that entertain you for a bit, maybe a moment where the raw emotion that admittedly pervades most of this record finally meets up with some genuine song writing skill, but said moments are far too rare. Sure, there’s an integrity to this- this record is commercial suicide of the highest order- but the fact is that there’s hardly any good music in this, so said integrity counts for nothing. Nope, this is pretty terrible all round, really, though I hate to say it. The fanboy in me tells me to like this, but the plain truth is that this just isn’t worth listening to.

This album is like an unprivileged autistic child. Truly brilliant, yet so different from its fellow children, to the extent where very few understand its brilliance, or even sense any speck of wit beneath the difficult-to-penetrate surface of unlikeness. Everyone notices the child sticks out like a sore thumb among its peers and cannot but compare it. Because this child was unprivileged growing up it never had the chance to develop expressing its true cleverness in ways easily perceptible. The child never had a piano or computer they could dazzle skeptics with their aptitude of using it, or a guitar on which it could learn classic 80s Metallica solos for that matter. So it had to learn to express itself on its own terms. It expressed itself in a language few could read, and so only a handful of people understood that the child was truly a saint.

Most of you are likely familiar with the fact that Metallica has changed a great deal since it first rose to fame in the early 80s. The band evolved a great deal in that decade, but this evolution was largely accepted by their fans, partly because standards of what metal should be were not as set in stone at that point. With an even greater change in their sound, 1991’s more rock-oriented Black Album was their first album to draw a great deal of backlash, and each album since has drawn more backlash, and multiplied the uncountable amount of times they have been accused of “selling out”.

St. Anger is often negatively pointed out by old-school fans as the epitome of what can result if a band “sells out”. But in the metal world, “selling out” usually refers simply to a band changing their style from what they defined themselves as when they became popular. In reality, they were probably largely in it for the money from the time they made “Kill ‘Em All”, and certainly were by the time they signed to Elektra in 1984 - not that this negatively impacts the quality of the music at all. Furthermore, I would argue that St. Anger is actually a much less accessible album than their 1980’s efforts. What Metallica accomplished in the 1980’s was taking thrash metal and smoothing it out, writing/playing it in the pristine calculated way of mainstream rock music – they were the first (and arguably only) band to make serious thrash metal truly accessible to the masses. Their later 80s albums utilized even more accessible pop-like song writing, but managed to do this within the rules of serious thrash metal, which is the other reason why these albums were still accepted by much of Metallica’s old-school fan base. In the 90s, Metallica decided to make albums which actually were rock - instead of metal that was written and played like rock - and this was deemed unacceptable.

The backlash behind St. Anger is for different reasons though. This time Metallica attempted to reincorporate elements of the thrash metal which made them famous, but because they had already evolved their sound so far from that, the end result was completely different. But what was particularly unusual is that this album ended up sounding different from not only their 80s material, but from any other metal recording.

In “Some Kind Of Monster”, the documentary about the making of this album, it is made clear that the members went through an insane amount of emotional turmoil during the making of this album. They had so much difficulty working together that they even had to a have a psychologist with them in the studio. The breed of anger which they were experiencing during this process was so intense and extreme, it transcended the emotional spectrum of traditional thrash metal and could only be expressed in an entirely new kind of metal. The reason this album is so unique is because no other band has ever made an album under such circumstances. Any other band would have simply given up, broken up, and not made an album. But, for reasons financial or otherwise, Metallica knew they simply HAD to make this album and went to the greatest lengths (such as having the shrink in the studio) to ensure that it happened.

Most of the album is in drop-C tuning, creating a much lower guitar sound than Metallica’s earlier works. This tuning and the fact that it is more groove-oriented have caused some comparison to the alternative and nu- metal genres, bands like Mudvayne and Hatebreed also heavily utilizing drop-C tuning and groovy syncopation. This comparison has generally been negative because many people who are intensely into traditional thrash metal cannot understand metal which has evolved to a direction so drastically different from theirs. While there is some similarity to these sort of bands in the guitar sound and in the general feel of certain songs like “Shoot Me Again”, this album does include a few riffs which are quite thrash-based, often played at faster tempos than they would be in groove metal. Riffs from “My World” and “Frantic” come to mind. However, there are also many songs such as “Dirty Window” and “Sweet Amber” which are based around bluesy rock riffs, the sort one might find on their rock albums Load and Reload. But playing these in the downtuned style and mixing them with thrash and groove metal elements make the whole thing sound like a whole new subgenre... anger metal? Alright, not the best name...

The drum production is also something many people have reacted to negatively. The drumming itself is solid, not very technical, but composed with a primal brutality effective in keeping the angry guitars in time, and it does contain several interesting patterns, such as the opening to “Frantic”. But the sound of the drums is extremely innovative. The snare sounds like a very tonal tin can which many fans of traditional metal production find obnoxious and weird, but if you listen with an open mind you may find it creates a unique atmosphere and even works as an unconventional countermelody at times when the snare is prominent. The other drums are also triggered unconventionally to make the whole thing sound more primal and raw. While most metal bands would simply underproduce the album if they were going for a rawer feel, Metallica, as previously mentioned, have always made metal from the perspective of rock musicians. They don’t think like the average metal musicians. So instead they heavily produced the album to give it a completely unique aesthetic which evokes those feelings in an unconventional way.

Like I said before, St Anger is actually much less accessible than any other album band has ever made. The strange production contributes to this greatly, as do other elements which differ from the pristine quality of their 80’s pop thrash work. The vocals are often crudely performed and out-of-key, which adds to the aesthetic of the album but is deemed unacceptable by their fanbase because it is imperfect according to convention. The songs are structured to have an extended length and a repetitiveness which is not broken up by any solos. Solos were another pristine characteristic of their earlier work that would have simply detracted from their expression of “The Unnamed Feeling” they were experiencing, this extreme strain of anger few have ever known.

The relentless repetition reinforces this expression, and like all the other unconventional elements, work perfectly to one who knows how to take in – how to enjoy this album to its fullest. However, I believe that this album sounds to the average metalhead similarly to what metal sounds like to someone to doesn’t listen to metal, and this is precisely where the brilliance of the whole thing lies. Every aspect of the album reflects this, with vocals that are considered grating (just as people who don’t listen to metal often cite to the vocals as being too listener unfriendly), repetition that is considered unnecessary, a drum sound that is considered obnoxious, and a guitar sound which is considered too heavy (frankly this is what the detractors really think). Basically, this album is too much of a BEAST for most people to handle, even for those that listen to heavy music. While most music listeners don`t even understand metal, most metal listeners don`t understand this album. So this is like metal squared, because in addition to the regular level of tolerance required to enjoy any metal at all, this album requires an additional dimension of tolerance.

Based on what I’ve heard about the members and their interactions in “Some Kind Of Monster”, as well as listening to the techniques they used in all their earlier work, I think it is safe to say that spitting in the face of convention this stingily was not quite the band’s intention. Birthing an autistic child is not the average parent’s intention, and Metallica do not seem like they would be interested in making their music avant-garde. If somebody with a Mike Patton sort of reputation made this album, it would be interpreted quite differently – though I’m definitely not saying that this fits in the niche of something the average Patton fan would enjoy. It`s a very different kind of avant-garde. I think these guys simply wanted to express an anger which consumed them to the extent that it became holy to them, hence the album title. And the result was an extremely unorthodox album which yields many rewards for those who happen to know how to listen to it.

I once had a friend who I used to debate music with a lot. I'm older and (I like to think) wiser now, and I rarely do this now as I think music is a subjective thing - you either like it or you don't. But he said something which, to this day, I still can't get my head around: he actually criticised bands like Metallica for being "too precise". Not "too shreddy", which I would have understood completely, but "too precise". Apparently it was a bad thing to play a song with too much skill as doing so automatically detracted from the quality of the songwriting. It seems to me that he must have had something to do with St Anger as it was his flawed philosophy that ruined the whole album.

The Black Album was, for me, Metallica's last great album. Although my favourite album is Master of Puppets, the Black Album was in my opinion better on the whole than ...And Justice For All. I say this as a guy who loves thrash metal but doesn't listen to it exclusively, therefore to me the Black Album was still good despite the change in direction. However, it was certainly ominous, and Load and Reload were pretty boring affairs from a band that had cut their hair and grown out of heavy metal, but even these albums had a few excellent tracks - they were just inconsistent. I really love The Memory Remains, Fuel and The Unforgiven II. Still, Metallifans still longed to see Metallica grow their hair, drink a bit more, pump some iron down the gym and get back in shape for a spectacular return to form as true titans of heavy metal.

Oh how wrong we were. It all sounded so promising, didn't it; "Metallica are going back to their roots" and "the new album is raw and heavy" dominated the news articles we read about the album in magazines. Then it came out and we were sorely disappointed.

I don't particularly care about the poor production, the apparent the use of Pro Tools or the fact that Lars' snare drum sounded ridiculous; Kill 'Em All had awful tinny production but I love it all the same because the sheer quality of the songs shines through. I'm also not especially bothered about the absence of guitar solos - I like Kirk Hammett's lead work but I had already heard that there were no solos and I made a conscious effort to listen to this album with an open mind; besides, I listen to plenty of bands that incorporate little or no soloing and still manage to sound great. No, the problem with this album was the lack of any really decent songwriting or musicianship to speak of.

You see, this is what happens when you take the doctrine of simplicity, as espoused by punk and some grunge bands, too far. I rarely listen to punk because I find its strict prohibition on anything remotely complex or technically demanding counterproductive; rather than making the songs sound more raw and exciting - or raising the quality of the songwriting as my friend asserts - the musicians in the band are so restricted in what they can do in songs that they become boring to listen to for more than one or two songs. This is what seems to have happened here. Metallica falsely assumed that they could reinject aggression and passion into their music simply by swearing and forgetting how to play their instruments. Many bands manage to make their songs sound interesting without solos but Metallica didn't manage this on St Anger, and as a result the album is an extremely monotonous affair that you just get bored of very quickly. There are a couple of decent riffs here and there but that's about it. I really wanted to like this album and I listened to it again and again but it really is unadulterated cack. Bands like Slayer, Pantera, and even Metallica on their older material have consistently dispelled the myth that skillful musicianship and raw, heavy songs are not mutually exclusive.

I love Metallica for their awesome live show and the strength of their older material; if we judged them purely on the classics then I'd consider them one of the best - if not the very best - metal bands ever. As it stands though we have to accept that, in a career spanning over 20 years, Metallica were bound to run out of steam sooner or later, and to be fair this happened long before St Anger. I just don't think they're into what we would call "proper heavy metal" anymore and as such they're not going to put their hearts and souls into that kind of album. For this reason I'm not overly hopeful about the new album because it sounds to me like they're just trying to reclaim credibility after the negative response to St Anger, but on the other hand, Lars did say that they were getting back into thrash after having played a mostly old-skool set of late, so we'll see. Maybe the knackered old heavyweight can make a comeback after all.

I'm not one to tell you Metallica has 'sold out' and become a bad band. I can appreciate all of their stuff, and mostly, I can joyfully listen to it. That said, I understand what St. Anger is about. Having watched Metallica's 2004 documentary "Some Kind of Monster" several times, I can totally understand and appreciate the album for all it is. The problem is, as much as I respect the album and everything the band has gone through to put it out, that doesn't redeem the album. St. Anger is an uninspired, annoying and ultimately disappointing record from a group of successful, artistic musicians.

Speaking of what led to this album is useless since you can write books about that long, painful process, but you can sum it up in a nutshell. The band, on the verge of splitting up, decides to take the couch and hire a psychotherapist to help them confront their problems, within themselves and with each other. Part of the process was to let everyone contribute whatever they wanted and ending up using every suggestion that came up. Needless to say, that's a pretty bad idea. Take the best musicians in the world, and they'll come up with some bad ideas that won't make the final cut. And that's the problem. Every riff, every drumbeat, every lyric was used, and the result sounds like a miscalculated mess.

St. Anger is more metal-oriented and way faster than Load and Reload, and indeed, the album is intense. It might be a good stress reliever, but even if that's what you're looking for, there's a ton of other stuff you could try. From the very first noted of opener "Frantic", it's apparent that St. Anger is nasty-sounding. The guitar tone is low and the bass is barely audible, but one thing that is completely unforgivable is the abysmal drum sound. Lars Ulrich has never the most impressive drummer on the earth, but his uninspired, terrible-sounding drumming on St. Anger is beyond nauseating.

The titular St. Anger does seem to display some good ideas. "I feel the world shake, like an earthquake, it's hard to see clear, is it me, is it fear?" sings Hetfield in one of the album's only good moments. Unfortunately, the riffs are mediocre and the lyrics and melodies passable at best.

Unfortunately St. Anger's one bright spot is a rare case throughout the album. The album continues beyond this song to bland, overlong songs that incorporate mostly forgettable riffs and weird, sometimes downright-illogical lyrics. On top of that, there are no guitar solos whatsoever, and the entire album just reeks of copy-paste patterns. Some would blame the use of ProTools. I'd say it's complete lack of inspiration.

Other than the chorus from St. Anger, other parts of the album also tend to pull their head up and save the album from being a total coaster. There's the occasional nice riff or cool melody. The main riff on Some Kind of Monster is pretty damn heavy, and there are some cool moments in that song. Sadly, the song carries on for over eight minutes, overstaying its welcome by quite a bit.

There are two songs on the album that I'd consider decent, even good songs. First in line is Dirty Window. The song isn't too long, and it's pretty fun to listen to. The clean chorus is quite enjoyable and the whole song has a kind of groove to it. Second up is the downbeat The Unnamed Feeling. This is the best song on the album, though it does have Hetfield's most embarrassing vocal moment, with him switching between his dirty, aggressive sound and a squeak that would put Steven Wilson to shame. Speaking of vocals, Hetfield's performance on St. Anger is really uneven. At times he sounds good, other times he's very disappointing.

That said, these two songs don't save the album from songs like "Invisible Kid" or "Purify". Totally-weird lyrics, bad riffs and complete lack of interest are the name of the game on St. Anger, and these two songs are the best example of it.

So yes, St. Anger does indeed contain a few good ideas. In fact, had the band kept all the lyric-writing up to James and put a better screening process on all the ideas offered by different band members, then maybe those moments could have been made into truly great songs. As they are, almost all of the songs on St. Anger are repetitive, overly long and boring to listen to. St. Anger is most definitely Metallica's weakest effort, and one of the most disappointing albums of all time.

St. Anger, Metallica's worst misstep to the date, has been a controversial album ever since its release, and perhaps even before. The awful drum sound, the overall intentionally bad production, lousy songwriting, and the ridiculous Some Kind of Monster "documentary" surrounding it have all influenced the opinion of metalheads, and even die-hard Metallica fans have been perplexed by the strange transformation of the band. The future will show what happens next, but so far, Metallica's career has been as cross-genre spanning as a used car salesman's lot next to a highway.

Kill 'Em All, with its juvenile drive and ambition resembled an old battered Mustang, painstakingly tuned by a zit-faced but amazingly skilled amateur mechanic, with a clumsy flame paint and a set of black furry dice. Ride the Lightning was a newer version of the same, but with professional polished paint job and semi-expensive low profile tires. Master of Puppets witnessed the conversion to a black '68 Corvette, and Justice for All became a brand new ZR-1, but unfortunately driven by a sales manager in his 40's, with money to buy one but lacking the balls to really burn rubber while doing donuts and incapable of testing any outer limits of the vehicle.

After Justice, the long slide down began. The Black Album turned out to be a hypothetical sports car manufactured by Oldsmobile for oxymoronic rebellious lawyers, and Load was a brand new Chrysler Voyager. Voyagers are so convenient for family guys with severely limited testosterone levels and a family to feed and transport, but to be fair, they even might have a handy CD changer and air conditioning. Reload was the same, but seven years old, and with the lousy 2.4 liter inline engine intended solely for the European market; why pay for a new car, when an old one will take you places just the same? And the story meets its end with St Anger, the rusty old '88 Jeep Wrangler, bought in the throes of a serious midlife crisis, just for the memory of the old spirit of rebellion that essentially amounts to a few deliberate rust spots, a Confederate flag sticker and a permanently empty gun rack.

Yes, the often-repeated opinion that St Anger is a product of a band suffering from a crisis is indeed a fact. But the crisis itself had nothing to do with the band's internal chemistry or the difficulty of creation; at least those are not the main issues, but more like symptoms of the real problem. It was all about a midlife crisis, both on the personal level of the band members, and on the whole band's level. The well had run dry, there was more than enough money for everybody, and the Loads had already labelled the band as almost-AOR. Everything had been done, there was nothing more to give. And yet, a strange yearning for the old days made the band enter the studio once more. In other words, it was time to go shopping for a car, and the longing for the old days made them choose a clunker. Had Metallica been a traditional rock dinosaur, they would have looked for an ancient Volkswagen Kleinbus to paint flowers on. But they were Metallica, the thrash band of all thrash bands, and they needed some roughness. Thus, an old Wrangler from the 80's.

There is no Wrangler engine block churning under the hood of the rusty clunker, however. Metallica's days of thrash are over, and while they tried, sweating, crying and cursing, the result is not a return to the roots. There's no furious, beer-fueled off-roading here, none of the kind a rusty Jeep suggests. While the vehicle may be mercilessly ugly and intended as a display of rude rage to a casual observer, it is still driven with the methodology of a family man behind the wheel of the trusty old Voyager. That is the great misunderstanding Metallica is guilty of: distorition, fast bonkbonkbonketybonking on a set of trash cans, and unpolished production do not equal the quality or thrashiness of Ride the Lightning.

To elaborate the point, think about the better - or rather, the less sucky - tracks on this sorry excuse for a thrash album. Take Sweet Amber as an example. Now, spend some time on the following mental excercise: try your damnest to imagine the song with the kind of performance and production it would have had on Load or Reload. Clean it of the clutter and intentional curbs in your mind, polish it with the soundboard in you brain, and you'll have a track off Reload in no time. That is the fundamental problem on the album: while trying to manufacture a metal album, Metallica forgot to throw away the jigs they had left scattered around in the workshop, and, from the songwriting angle, they accidentally welded together a crude Re-reload instead, simply bypassing the sandblasting and skipping the final layers of paint. With a few exceptions, the songs could be re-recorded with less artificial anger and polished, and they would be impossible to tell apart from those on the Loads.

The result is truly as sorry as the average opinions around seem to suggest. Honestly. The songs, not thrash in their essence, do not work as thrash songs, and the mellow beer-gutted rebellion is sadly confined to the bad production and pseudo-furious playing, glued articifially on top of the rock songs underneath. The credibility is on par with that of Blues Brothers 2000.

The unavoidable conclusion here is pretty simple and bleak: Metallica lost the control, attempted too much, with the wrong methods, after too long a break, and tried to return to the work they had spent a decade actively forgetting. Using a sledgehammer and several abrasive tools to force rock songs into a thrash mould, they created a Some Kind of Monster, but unfortunately, a monster of the oldest Hammer Films kind; ugly, but more content to hide in the shadows, weeping and grieving its sorry fate, rather than anything really scary.

If you have seen the "documentary", Some Kind of Monster, you have perhaps had the same thoughts as so many others: if making an album is so difficult, there's no real ambition to do that, and the band needs a shrink to get their asses into the studio in the first place, and so forth, why not forget the whole thing? Why not let the band die with some shreds of its dignity left, or settle for playing their old music as a stadion dinosaur? St. Anger amounts to a oddity rarely seen before, premature auto-necrophilia. Unless they can come up with something brilliant on their possible future album, this will be an embarrassing tombstone of a once great outfit. But there's no returning to Ride the Lightning; just buying an old Wrangler doesn't turn a middle-aged man into a young, eager and credible metal maniac. No, it just makes the listener blush, just like seeing an old, balding saggy geezer in a brand new biker leather jacket stopping to refuel a factory-fresh Harley Davidson. It would be better to do something else instead, and let the old days remain in the fond memories.

This album garners a lot of hate, much of it undeserved. It's not amazing, it's not Metallica's best, and there are ways to have a go at it. But it's a solid offering, and I can well believe a lot of criticism thrown at it is simply "going with the flow". While it could be a lot better, it could be a lot worse too, and ultimately what we have here is an interesting experiment, even if not always the best sounding one.

First and foremost, it has balls. Metallica have always been, and always will be, one of the greatest bands of all time because they have no fear of taking risks and doing what they want. They don't make music to cater for any particular group, they make music because they want to, and a great big middle finger to anyone who doesn't like that. St. Anger is most definitely not commercial, no one can say they're trying to make money with it (if Metallica release something that sells well it seems they did it for money, if not this argument is conveniently forgotten). Nor are they trying and failing to re-kindle their old sound, which could also be open to criticism. Instead, they are doing what they have always done, which is to play what they want, and challenging themselves with new styles and directions.

It's also worth nothing that this album can claim to be something only a very few other metal albums can: original. It is something new, something that hasn't been tried before. Yes, it is metal, that much in undeniable, and it's something I have never heard from any other band before. If I had to catagorise it as any one genre, there are elements of sludge, heavy metal, thrash, groove, hard rock, and other eclectic lesser influences. To try something new out in itself deserves some praise for the guts required and the lack of precedents to draw upon, and here it works well too. Of course, originality alone doesn't always make something good, but it does take some time to digest.

Now, on to the music itself: it's angry, it's raw, it's mad at you and the world, that's pretty much it in a nutshell. And not in an "I'm so oppressed, help me!" kind of way, but in a real "Fuck you" way. The music is pure aggression, without relying on typical cliched methods of expressing it. It has an honesty to it's anger, something raw and pure from the heart.

James' vocals are as powerful and roaring as ever, working both in angry growls and more groove-based parts, coming across as having gained experience from both the early thrash work and the later Load era, and the lyrics bear a kind of impressionistic, detached feel, not being direct or open but instead taking a more symbolic or figurative slant. The drums and guitars are, despite what many might insist, on good form too. No aspect overpowers any other, and the riffs are powerful in both the slow and fast-paced moments. At times it actually reminds me quite distinctly of Kill 'em All. Not in it's general sound, but in the feeling of letting go and going back to basics rather than trying for something epic.

Frantic and St. Anger itself had me thrashing along with the best of them, Some Kind of Monster chugs along like a modern day Eye of the Beholder. My World has some very nice lyrics to it, especially towards the end. Shoot Me Again and Sweet Amber each have a catchiness to them that has me singing along a lot, and the former also carries a certain dangerous feel to it, albeit a simple track at the core. The Unnamed Feeling is a powerful one, possibly the best on the album, with good thoughtful lyrics and such a sense of constrained power, fighting to get out. This sort of thing coming from a teenage voice trying to sound angsty wouldn't work. But from a seasoned veteran like Hetfield it really works and sounds true. Purify is perhaps the thrashiest of the lot, and it shows nicely the raw, wild power of this band just letting rip after such a long period of slower, more bluesy or rocky work. All throughout the drums are indeed particularly emphasised, but I find their style only adds to it. It might not work in other styles, but with this kind of music it works beautifully, really lending them an angry kind of power.

It's not perfect by any means though: some of the songs -are- overly long, such as Invisible Kid. There isn't a lot of variation, a point that is often missed while people hurry to yell out all the common criticisms without any thought. The sound and attitude is maintained pretty much throughout, and perhaps the biggest flaw with the album is this lack of variety. It's always been one of the band's strengths that their songs trigger different emotions and work on differing levels, keeping each album interesting throughout. St. Anger is potentially Metallica's most samey offering.

Also, while a lot of the lyrics are thoughtful and honest, they're not the best the band has come up with by a long way, and it's very apparent that the song-writing took on a more open, organic style with this album, with all the band members throwing something in. As with the whole album, an interesting experiment, but not always a successful one. Another problem is the lack of solos: I wouldn't say, as some do, that it ruins the album or anything, but we know Kirk is so good at them that it's disappointing not to see that, and they would help pad out some of the songs greatly.

Metallica are not about something so simple as thrash metal, they never have been. They are about pushing boundaries and doing something new and special, and thus St. Anger fits perfectly into their catalogue in it's core meaning, just look beyond the basic aesthetics. All in all it's an good piece of work, and I don't see what all the hate is about. It's not as complex, and it is a very raw piece of work certainly, and nor is it a patch on their 80s work overall. But that by no means makes it worthless. Metallica take a big risk with this, and while the experiment still stumbles and doesn't work so well as the Load/Reload albums, it's still a worthwhile addition to their catalogue. St. Anger isn't what I expected from the band, and in a number of ways wasn't what I wanted from them, but it continues their legacy with the passion and openness I have come to expect and appreciate so much.

Finally, after years of making news with everything except their music, Metallica released “St. Anger”. The chaos of this album nearly perfectly sums up the chaos of the band. From the departure of longtime bassist Jason Newsted, to the stint in rehab for James Hetfield, there was quite a bit of this chaos, and surely enough to go around for everyone.

The most evident feature is its lack of complication and how the message of the album is made to hit you immediately and not let you soak it in. “St. Anger” has one of the most self torturous moods ever put to record, as it seems most is written as a view of a band as a broken unit. “St. Anger” has very little of the usually themes that one might find in a Metallica album, there is very little social commentary, none of the issues of religion, and none of the impending doom. “St. Anger” provides its lyrics as though the doom is here, the personal demons have caught up and now are destroying it as they speak. This album from beginning to end is one harsh slab of self-loathing.

As for the band itself, there seems to be no band, just three men who aren’t sure what to do. This is very much James Hetfield’s album, most lyrics seem to deal with his problems. His vocals are raw, sneering and jagged. His rhythm guitar is the focus for most of the album, and as that there are no solos, he takes much of limelight. As for Kirk Hammett, his contributions are slim to none, though it seems not through his own doing. Gone are Kirk’s solos in favor of a rhythmic sonic assault. Also, instead of a unison guitar attack, Kirk and James rely on a tag team of sorts, each handing certain guitar parts over to the other. Provided the percussive backbone Lars Ulrich sits back and takes over with the some of the most powerful drumming of his career, to bad it seems his drum set has be taken and replaced with some old pots and pans, along with an old metal garbage can.

And what for the songs on “St. Anger”? They’re a sonic assault which represents the jagged edges of the band and their mindset. The album for the most part is driven by a thrashy groove, but has mellow part juxtaposed again those jagged thrash part which give more power to both. “Frantic”, the opener, is one of their thrashiest songs made in many years, however, do not confuse the fact that it is thrashy with it being thrash itself. The title track, “St. Anger” is a respectable piece of music, and while it is nowhere near classic, it rightfully deserves its Metallica namesake. Same goes for the brilliant “Some Kind of Monster”, while it will never live in the same area code of, say, “Master of Puppets”, it’s a raw slab of heavy fucking metal. “Invisible Kid” may be the one of the most moving pieces, lyrically, of the album, speaking of both alienation and depression of a young mind.

“St. Anger” is in noway a throwback, and it is not a comeback, it is however an expression of how Metallica was at that point and time. So for fans who have been jaded already, pick this back up and think of it as that, not as a return to form, and not as a comeback, you might just find a harsh, interesting insight into the band at that point and time.

Well here it is ladies and gentlemen, Metallica’s first album in 6 years, and they ended up exactly the way I thought they would. There is an old cliché where someone states that a situation quote “would be funny if it weren’t so sad”. You know what, Metallica has actually broken new ground for once in the past 10 years, as they have succeeded in reversing this cliché and created something so pathetic, so sad, and so horrible, that it is a full blown laugh fest. After spawning a whole generation of bastard thrash bands who all made their careers ripping off Master of Puppets, we are introduced to the new generation of Metallica’s illegitimate progeny, mallcore. And in usual form, after helping bring these atrocious bands into existence, the former thrashers are seemingly falling over each other trying to join ranks with them. But ironically there is a silver lining to this album that I will get to later.

Before I proceed to pick apart the garbled mess of riffs and random thoughts from this cesspool of amateur produced noise, I have to take a moment to mention the unbelievably misleading and pretentious hype that was injected into this album by the critical field. Apparently it was review day for the hearing impaired and legally blind when the various news outlets compared this release to the thrash/doom classic “And Justice for All”. All you have to do is read the lyrics, or listen to the words if you don’t have one, to understand how much of a far-cry this is from anything Metallica has ever released. And when you listen to the music, it sounds so contorted and ridiculous that you think your listening to a garage demo of Dillinger Escape Plan. Suffice to say, if I meet the idiot that thought to compare this with Justice, I’ll be checking for the hearing aid and/or the seeing eye dog.

And so we kick off this album with “Frantic”, and right away we know what is wrong, the guitars are a muddy mess and the drums are way too loud. There are actually some mildly interesting riffs in here, though they lie buried under a messy production. However, Hetfield’s vocals are god awful, and the lyrics are ridiculous, to the point that the mallcore accusations become inevitable. Also note that at several instances on this track the guitar tracks are not in tune with each other. The title track “St. Anger” follows and suffers from the same dilemma as the opener, although Hetfield’s vocal performance is slightly better, despite being way to loud in the mix and having equally absurd lyrics. “Some Kind of Monster” is a complete throwaway track, way too long (this album’s “The Outlaw Torn”) and extremely sloppy. This would have been a good song to keep Kirk’s solos in, because it would have softened the blow a bit.

“Dirty Window” has one riff in it, and although it’s half decent it’s barely developed, making the song seem longer than it is, and also plagued by terrible sounding drums and a lousy vocal performance. “Invisible Kid” takes my pick for the worst song; the lyrics are absolutely awful, making the likes of Fred Durst and Stinkin’ Park sound like poets. This song is also suffering from the Outlaw Torn Syndrome, only now Lars is banging on garbage can lids rather than a drum kit. The guitars and bass are an absolute muddy mess, but at least here they are a bit easier to hear, making this the second worst track on this lousy album. “My World” is another song with one decent riff, although here there is a bit more changes, over some more idiotic mallcore sounding lyrics. The vocal tracks, at moments, get so over-loaded with reverb that they completely drown everything else out, not what I call a great idea. Oh yeah, did I mention that Lars’ drums still sound horrible, to the point that he should’ve probably use his higher toms as a snare, as it sounds much better when he’s on them.

“Shoot Me Again” deserves special attention because it’s obviously aimed at Metallica’s growing number of detractors since the “Black Album”. I would just like to state that no one needs to shoot these guys, nor has anyone, they’ve shot themselves so many times that they’ve become as holy as a 120 year old Tibetan monk. James literally sounds even more like a rapping mallcore poser than Robb Flynn on “Supercharger”. One positive of this song is that the drums have actually been turned down a bit; of course this makes little difference as the song is about the most non-dramatic, non-powerful, and non-metal one they’ve ever released.

On a somewhat positive note, “Sweet Amber” has a very bluesy sounding riff to it, and despite having an extremely muddy tone to it, actually isn’t too bad. The fact that the drums have been seemingly toned down for the second half of this album helps this song greatly, in addition to being one of the shorter tracks on here. James’ vocal performance has less ridiculous moments, an additional plus that unfortunately is extremely rare on this album. “The Unnamed Feeling” is another over-long mishmash of random riffs, but thankfully the drums are still turned down. This song is highly forgettable, nothing overly horrible but nothing good, it’s just simply there, taking up 7 minutes of space. “Purify” is the shortest song on here, and for good reason, it’s slow as hell and drags any feeling of hope that this album has gotten any better since “Sweet Amber” down completely. The over-loud, annoying trash can sounding drums are back again, as are James’ stupid mallcore vocals. At this point they are literally killing this album until it dies from it.

The closing track on here “All Within my Hands” is one of the better tracks on here, but also probably the most inconsistent. The drum level varies from being the usual loud mess, to actually dying down a bit to let the better moments of this song shine. It’s way too long, James’ vocal performance is hit or miss, but it escapes “The Outlaw Torn Syndrome” by having some interesting moments during the middle of the song. Bear in mind the basis of comparison, of course, as this album is completely terrible.

For everyone wondering what the heck happened to Metallica here, I will state that given the circumstances surrounding the band and the lead up to this point in their career, this album is the best that it could’ve been. I can not recommend it to anyone unless you are so sick that you’re willing to listen to a band that is all but completely musically bankrupt try to sound heavy. If an album is bad, I tend not to bother with it, unless it’s done by a band I love. But don’t cry for these guys, express your outrage and pray that they get something in their heads rather than on them. People are not meant to be pitied, they are meant to be commended for getting off their asses and not letting the bad in life get them down. When they don’t do this, and refuse to even try, it is best to either ridicule them or ignore them. I have done the former, and until I see something much better out of these guys, I will now proceed to do the latter.

Later submitted to (www.metal-observer.com) on March 10, 2009.

So it’s January of 2004, and a 14-year-old kid steps into his local MVC outlet and casts his eye upon the bargain bin. Sitting in there is an album he’s heard much about, by a group who have hung in the periphery of his naïve conscience for quite some time. So of course, he’s drawn to it, and, seeing it’s only £5 with a free DVD, he buys it right up. Yes, that’s right. My first ‘heavy’ album was ‘St. Anger’ by Metallica. The shame will hang over my head forever.

Since that time, I’ve listened to this album TWICE – the first time was straight after I’d bought it, the second being for the purpose of this review. Likely as not I’ll do what I should have done long ago and sell it once this is complete. Even at that innocent and unassuming age, I could tell something was very wrong with this record within seconds.

I’ve never had many problems with any other Metallica album I own – after the quality of ‘Kill ‘Em All’ through to the ‘Black Album’ (don’t piss and moan, it’s actually quite good), so re-visiting ‘St. Anger’ is particularly painful, largely due to the fact that you can quite clearly hear the sound of a band trying to recapture the glory of their thrash days – the problem is that they seem to have completely forgotten how to write a song even resembling their old sound, and have gone about executing it in every wrong way possible. The front cover artwork serves as a perfect metaphor for the content within – clearly trying to recreate some kind of gritty feeling but ultimately coming across as polished and false (a damn shame considering some of Pushead’s prior work)

Now, if I’m totally honest, the album is not totally 100% shite (Barely). There are certainly a few interesting riffs floating around here and there, particularly in the likes of ‘Invisible Kid’ and ‘My World’, and the turn into angrier lyrical territory is perhaps more welcome compared to some of the sheer trash he’s come out with on ‘Load’ and ‘Reload’, but these are all meagre compensations when you consider the bigger picture – something that I’d really rather not do too often, so heinous are some of the flaws this record carries in abundance

Although it’s becoming a cliché to mention it, THAT snare drum sound was, is, and will remain the most irritating thing you will ever hear, with the possible exception of whatever spews out when Fred Durst decides to open his mouth again. There is one small way in which you can garner enjoyment from that awful 'BUNG BUNG BUNG' noise – simply lay back and imagine Lars ‘tubby tub-thumper’ Ulrich is beating himself around the face with a copper pipe. Go on, try it. Not getting much satisfaction from that thought? Well that might be because the crapiness of the rest of the album is distracting you.

Over the stuttering riff that opens up ‘Frantic’, James Hetfield’s vocals sound just…awful. While it might be a delight to some to hear his old gruff bark renewed in full, it says an awful lot about the rest of the record when his vocals don’t even seem to fit in with the timing and full body of the song – and barring a few exceptions, this is how it goes for the ENTIRE album. The bass, meanwhile, isn’t even worth wasting words on. Handled by “producer” Bob Rock after Jason Newsted quit, the bass sound is largely inaudible throughout, as though Rock is attempting to hide his ineptitude by pushing the clanging drums and turgid rhythm guitar to the fore (if this sounds like the mix of ‘…And Justice For All’, please remind yourself that Newsted wasn’t crap). If only the sorry bastard would piss off back to Bon Jovi and stop fucking with Metallica!!!

But the worst and most terrible sin of all is without doubt what they’ve done to Kirk Hammett. Whether or not you like Metallica or not is a moot point when it comes to Hammett – it’s hard to deny that the man is a hugely talented player, and one of the best guitarists to emerge from the thrash scene in the 1980s. So with that in mind, the treatment given to him on this record is even more unforgivable. In the long and torturous time it takes for ‘St. Anger’ to finish, NOT A SINGLE SOLO IS PLAYED. EVER. And fuck only knows why Metallica have simply forced Kirk to stifle the creative flair and skill he’s displayed on almost every album so far and have him simply play behind the crappy riffs thrown out by Hetfield – quite frankly it’s hard to see why they didn’t just double what Hetfield was playing in the first place, they certainly had the damn Pro Tools for it…

Overall… oh fuck it; frankly I’m sick of writing about this pile of cow shit, I’d have thought you would have all got the message from the rest of this review. Now I’m off to find an axe, ‘St. Anger’ is about to get what’s coming to it…

I hope that before this review gets trashed because of its score and title, a little time will be taken to read why I feel this way about the album in question. I say this because St. Anger is incredibly progressive, not in the 'prog-metal' subgenre (a genre that generally rewards technical ability over creativity) but in music in general. St. Anger marks what has to be the fifth paradigm shift in Metallica's catalogue, leaving behind the alterna-blues metal of Load/Reload for a biting, nihilistic new sound, one that owes more to the abrasive ...And Justice For All than it does modern mainstream metal.

This album isn't commercial in any way. All of the singles from this album have been stillborn because they don't conform to rock radio, because of the incredibly harsh production job, because of the real aggression on this disc. This is no manufactured rage or desperate attempt to stay current, it is no more and no less than Metallica hardened and burned in the crucible of the ill-fated (and poorly thought out) battle with Napster and the alcoholic self-destruction of one James Hetfield. As illustrated on the powerful Some Kind of Monster documentary, Metallica has been ambushed from all directions; personal problems, record company politics, and the creeping (death) onset of old age that is the most brutal nemesis of any band that can stay together through the years. Thing is, rather than cower behind their legacy and stagnate like many other acts (Priest for example, although I have high hopes for the new album), Metallica has fired back with an album that is really like nothing they, or anyone else, have ever released.

In many ways St. Anger could be a look at the future of rock, or at least one of the myriad permutations it could travel down. This is an emphasis on stripped-down production (to a highly exaggerated degree), to a music world where picture perfect performances that often lack character are replaced by ragged, scarred-up sessions where raw emotion becomes the key characteristic. It is just as possible that people will find St. Anger extremely distasteful, clanging drums and strangled vocals clawing at long, (perhaps overlong) repetitive, and ugly metal, a new metal that isn’t nu, or if it is at least stripped to that sound’s core and scraped of it’s commercial, cheap, and insincere window dressing, revolutionary healing through bloody abrasions and blackened contusion.

However, regardless of how new and frankly exciting (and to be honest, vaguely distasteful) the possibilities, St. Anger is still an album and at that a Metallica album and I didn’t purchase it to hear progression at the expense of music; for that I’d grab Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. In my opinion, St. Anger is the worst Metallica studio album (I like it slightly less than Reload), but it remains touched by their unique magic, an album of imposing depth and an enduring feeling of size (like Load) but for the first time in years with a sense of fire in the belly, of a less than slothful drive to stay relevant.

When St. Anger is good, it’s very good. “Sweet Amber”, in my opinion the best song on the record, gives us a Metallica comfortable with all aspects of their career. It opens with a slow, bluesy version of its main riff which gradually speeds up into some of their 90’s-style speed metal featuring some extremely catchy melodies, lyrics based on the band’s insistence of keeping integrity in the face of pressure from radio conglomerates. Strangely here the albums notoriously wonky production manages to actually approach the warmth of normal music, each instrument pretty much crystal clear, drums sounding more like drums than trash cans, vocals forceful and clear. Even better, the band breaks into what has to be their first true thrash riff in years towards the end of the song, the only thing shackling it to earth and preventing it from soaring into the clouds (with the power of metal, yeah!) being Lars’s resolutely un-speedy drum beat, turning it into a stomping mosh instead.

“Some Kind of Monster” is reminiscent of Justice in that it has quite a few tempo changes and to put it kindly, rocks like a motherfucker. While the lyrics make very little sense (we seem to be describing how to put together a Frankenstein, put what the hell does the ‘we the people’ bit have to do with anything?) it doesn’t seem to matter because they fit the song, crunchy groove, and chanting alike. I can see this one (like “Sweet Amber”) just exploding on stage, because it does possess simple lyrics that just scream for a ‘scream-along’.

While this album isn’t going to give Darkane or Nile (or even Train of Thought) a run for their money in heaviness, there are a couple of seriously brutal numbers in this thing. “Purify”, “Dirty Window”, and “All Within My Hands” are heavy, reasonably fast, and bonecrushing, really evoking a sense of unease through non-obvious, loose playing and a slightly skewed view of metal on the whole. It’s almost as if the drums are the lead instrument, rattling like shaken bones on “Purify” or desperately trying to keep “All Within My Hands” from collapsing under its own weight (wait?) and ideas.

For sure, not everything works here. “All Within My Hands” is simply too underwritten and rambles on for too long, a four minute song excruciatingly stretched to nine, the parts barely fitting together and production somehow worse than usual to complement James being even more unhinged than usual. “Shoot Me Again” reeks of nu-melodies, a certain over-dependence of some quite frankly annoying vocal melodies with too many spaces filled by some really weak drum fills. Furthermore, the rehearsal DVD proves quite conclusively that the song just doesn’t work live.

A lot of these songs are simply too long, too many parts repeated too many times, with too little variation. I’m convinced that there is a good song hidden in “St. Anger” for instance, but that song just has a bunch of catchy, high-quality stuff (like the melodic pre-chorus) that is put together poorly and mixed with some frankly bad ideas (those ‘flush it outs’ make me wanna just go ahead and die), although the hopeless fanboy in me applauds the reference to early Metallica classics wholeheartedly.

Really, this album has a lot of flaws both intended and accidental. The production of course is awful, but it’s intentional. The lyrics are spotty at best, which is accidental. James is raw, but it’s intentional (and very welcome). The songs meander and have a lot of sections that aren’t really worthy of repetition repeated far too often, which is accidental. Well, not accidental, but bad in a way they seemed to think was good if you follow.

In any case, I really don’t want another St. Anger (Reverend Irate? Padre Enraged?), but I remain fascinated with what has emerged from the wreckage of this experiment. I look forward to the continuing evolution of metal’s (hell, rock’s) most dynamic and ever changing group, and I’m sure Metallica will not change their ways for me, you, or anything except for the passionate muse that drives them.

Stand-Outs: "Sweet Amber", "Some Kind of Monster", "Dirty Window"

I know what I hate. I don’t hate this. I hate stuff like Guns N’ Roses, who put out shitty, overplayed, overrated pop metal. I hate Axl Rose, who is the epitome of a worthless rock star asshole. I hate fruity flower metal bands like Rhapsody who feel the need to deny the power of the Almighty Riff with their faux-epic disease-ridden keyboards.

This, on the other hand, is just merely pitiful…not worthy of hate. My, how the mighty have fallen. Metallica were once the undisputed kings of the metal heap, dashing and full of creative energy; now the angst-ridden kings of fraternity-house blues rock. I first heard this about a year ago, hoping it wouldn’t suck. But it did…long and hard. To say I was extremely disappointed is an understatement of epic proportions. I couldn’t form a coherent opinion on it for a long time. But I think I finally have, and the opinion is that this is MEANT to be a pitiful, worthless album…an exorcism of sorts, as Pyrus commented. This is meant to wallow in the depths of misery, self-pity and angst. And as an experiment in that, it has no equal…it is in a class by itself. And thus, it is not metal. Metal is meant to be full of mad creative brilliance, to be crazy and full of energy, to play on 11 and not give a fuck. It is everything that is righteous, good, true, and “oh hell yes!” about the world.

St. Anger, on the other hand, makes me think of what might happen if an emo band had even an ounce of attitude and tried to be emotional without being COMPLETELY poppy and wishy-washy. It might have been interesting, but it comes off as disjointed, a mess, a complete musical train wreck. And since that is the point of the album, then I’d say it’s pretty damn good at what it does.

So what’s bad about this album? Most everything, really. And it’s all been said before, so I’ll try to be brief. The production, for starters. This has been termed as “raw” by some. Bullshit, I say. “Raw” is Motorhead – Sacrifice. “Raw” is Dark Angel – Darkness Descends. “Raw” is Venom – Black Metal. “Raw” is Hellhammer – Apocalyptic Fucking Raids. St. Anger is merely “greasy.” Amateurish, too.

What else? The performances. Debasing, awful, worthless. James’ vocals are anguished and pitiful. Kirk’s guitar skills are nonexistent. And is that Lars behind the drums, or a monkey rapping on a tin can?

What else? The songs. Some have their redeeming moments. For instance, when I first heard “Frantic,” I remember thinking “Oh goody, they’re back to metal!” Nope…I was disappointed within the next ten seconds. But the riff was there. And here, and there, scattered throughout the album. The songs are a complete roller coaster ride through the not-so-lofty heights of solid blues-thrash riffage through the abysmal depths of mallcore-riff and masturbatory guitar-noodling hell. As far as this train wreck goes, the best songs include Sweet Amber, for the afore-mentioned blues-thrash riffage; the Unnamed Feeling, for it’s grinding angst and basically out-emoing every emo band on the face of Satan’s green Earth; and All Within My Hands, for its kind-of-epicness, and maybe one of the “better” vocal performances on this goofy album. But on the whole, they are all pretty awful and worthless.

But on that note, I should say that that is what this album was meant to be…an exploration of feelings of worthlessness, angst, self-hatred, rage; things that are far too prevalent in the world today. It is a sort of timely commentary, is it not?

So yes, St. Anger is everything negative that people say about it. It is probably the worst “metal” album ever created. And yes, Metallica are more than likely lost to the metal world forever. But in a strange, perverted way, St. Anger is actually quite good at what it is supposed to do. That is just about the mildest form of a complement that I can give this. I can’t like it. But it’s not beyond me to give St. Anger a little respect.

It's been six years since Metallica's last studio release of original material, the substandard Reload. Okay, so Reload wasn't that bad, but it was certainly the weakest Metallica album to date. Thankfully, it still is. While this will certainly be one of the most hotly debated releases of the year, it is my opinion that Metallica returns to us in awesome fashion. Intense, weird, and perhaps slightly demented, St. Anger will rock you unforgivingly as long as you realize that it will not sound like a traditional Metallica album.

The sound on the album is very raw and unpolished. The guitar tones are big and fuzzy, even grainy at times. The bass sound really rumbles the place (kudos to Bob Rock). The drums are very hollow, though still punchy. Many have complained about the hollow snare sound, though I've never really had much of a problem with it. It is different, but I think it fits. And though there are some very nice studio touches, the album mostly contains a very live feel. I'll go as far as to say that Metallica hasn't sounded this live since Kill 'Em All.

Now, on to the songs. Not a bad one on the record, really. There are weaker tracks, but they are all listenable, and more importantly, all rockin'. Take, for instance, "Some Kind of Monster", which contains a riffs that are so huge and groove so hard it's almost scary. "Dirty Window" is all over the place and features an absolutely brilliant percussive chorus. "My World" probably contains the most rockin' section on the entire record. Heads will certainly bang. "Shoot Me Again" is the closest thing to nu-metal on the album, but if it is nu, it's nu done right. "Sweet Amber" gives us a beautiful bluesy thrash riff. I mean, do I really need to go on any longer?

The performances are good all around. In addition to littering this album with all these awesome riffs, Hetfield also delivers a great vocal performance. He does it all here, singing at times, screaming at others, and the infamous growl finds it's way on here a few times as well. Lars delivers some pummeling drum work, including some pretty fuckin' fast double bass work at times. Bob Rock is a very adequate bass player, and while I don't think I'd want him to be a permanent replacement, he fills the void here very well. Then there's Hammett. There are no guitar solos on this album, which is slightly disappointing. He does to a good job of adding texture to the album, however. This is in no way a one guitar affair, for there are often two completely different rhythm parts going on at the same time. Repeated listens allow for peeling back of the layers, and you see that these songs really are well thought out and well crafted.

I'm not going to say much about the lyrics. There are a few misfires, but for the most part they're quality. Still, they aren't your traditional 'tallica themes. Everything seems a bit more witty, there's some wordplay going on in places as well. This probably has something to do with the fact that lyrics were written by the whole band instead of just Hetfield. And that's really what we're getting here with St. Anger, a group effort. This gives the album a feel that is different from previous efforts, keeping everything fresh.

I'm going to have to pick "Some Kind of Monster" as my highlight of the album. It just does so much for me with is balls out riffage and interesting arrangement. One especially cool thing that runs through the entire album is the bands use of odd time signatures. Great to see them treading those waters again. In the end though, it's all gold. I really want to rate this higher, but part of me wants to wait and see how often I'm still listening to it a few months from now. So, I'm going to grade down a bit, and we'll see what happens in the future.

I wanna start out this review by saying this album is DEFINITELY not for everyone, and whilst there are tiny nods to the past (mostly in the drumming and the fact James' voice sounds more like the Black Album than the country twang on Load) this is not And Justice For All part 2 or anything of the sorts. It's something very new, perhaps the heaviness and rough production are similar to Justice but the groove is more Loadish or Corrosion of Conformity-like.

The beginning track Frantic is somewhat misleading. The guitar tone is quite thin, its relatively fast all the way through and its a very energetic song. However, it seems the energy in the studio isn't as easy to capture as it is live, the version from the Fillmore show does definitely sound better. The song after it, St Anger, is quite a different song. It's definitely the ideal choice for a radio single despite Lars' speedy drumming in places, its probably another good song to hear live but in the studio it's nothing to get wet over. However...

The third track, Some Kind Of Monster, is where this album REALLY kicks off. Huge chunky guitar riffs, mostly midpaced, a distinct COC and BLS styled groove and a massive "wall of sound" which just simply chugs along. This is probably the 3rd best song on the album, it's a brilliant song. The ending "industrial" sounding chant with processed vocals of "Ominous hide in us" just adds to the massive atmosphere. The weird ending to the song is somewhat unnecessary, but this song thumps along at a midpace and is definitely a fine track. Next is easily the weakest track on the album. Dirty Window. The main riff sounds something similar to Into the Void by Black Sabbath, but the drums are just way too bouncy and it's just generally too "upbeat". The clean "I'm judge and I'm jury" part sounds good, the main riff is good, but theres parts that just aren't like the "I drink from the cup of denial" part. It's heavy no doubt, but it's just not very good, the snare is mixed WAY too high. Personally I quite like the "pasta pot" snare, it dosn't bother me one bit, APART from in this song. After that another one of the weaker tracks, Invisible Kid kicks in. A low heavy riff that plods along, the baritone guitars get a work out in this one, where as usually it seems the guitars are tuned to a C. It's not a bad song, it's just got nothing that makes it jump out.

From here on though, it's plain sailing. My World roars through at a fast and groovy pace and is very much like the Black Albums faster moments. A brilliant song really, and the thrash out burst while Het literally yells "I don't even know what the question is!" is exploding with energy. Indeed Het does sound a fair bit more pissed off on this album than the Loads and it comes out pretty well for the most point. Shoot Me Again follows on. On the first listen I really didn't like this song, but the AIC meets Nickelback styled verse works surprisingly well and the chorus is incredibly catchy, not one of the highlights but it's still a solid track. Sweet Amber follows on with a very bluesy styled riff, it has a definitely Kyuss influence, as infact alot of the album seems to. Up next is my personal second favourite track on the album, The Unnamed Feeling. It basically just plods along, with some very good vocal effects on the "Been here before" line...which really does add an awesome touch to it. Basically this song has a plodding verse, a clean chorus that can be likened to No Leaf Clover and a faster part towards the end which sounds like an industrial band covering "One".

Up next is a total shocker, Purify. EASILY the best song on the album, it's just an absolute gem. It reminds me of Blind-era COC for the most part, it's just a (relatively) fast heavy metal song, incredibly catchy and very heavy. Great stuff. The ending song, All Within My Hands is somewhat similar to Outlaw Torn in the atmospheric sense in the length sense, and the thrash outburst during the "Love is control..." is brilliant.

Basically, the band are VERY capable of playing fast music, however on here they favour a more heavier "wall of sound" approach, which will NOT rest well with alot of metal heads. It does have a stoner influence in places too. The production is very rough, it does sound "garage rockish" in the production aspect. It dosn't bother me at all, but if you're a production-freak then it's gonna piss you off more than Justice did. Lars' snare is incredibly tight, and like I said it dosn't annoy me aside from in Dirty Window, but it's definitely gonna annoy some other people. There aren't any guitar solos, there are a couple of "guitar leads" of sorts but there not really worthy of being called a guitar lead giving that they're basically just riffs on the higher strings, but they do create a very stoner sound.

I love this album, and think it's the best this year. Others obviously will hate this. There's no denying it's a METAL album. Not a thrash album, it's just a plodding heavy metal album, and it is indeed a very heavy album. There are "nu" influences but they are relatively sparse, the verse in Shoot Me Again sounds quite nu, the intro riff to Invisible Kid does etc, but it's no way a "mallcore" album and it's never overbearing. But by that token it's NOT an "old" sound, it's definitely a contemporary sludgy metal album, so don't be expecting lots of flying melodies or solos cause you'll be sorely disappointed. But overall, I thouroughly enjoy this album, more so than the Black Album anyway.

Oh my fucking god, we've got a new Worst Album Ever. I thought that the single could just be an aberration, but ya know what, the whole thing is just as fucking bad. I mean Angel Rat is shit, and The Haunted is shit, but at least they have the decency to motherfucking STOP after a while. This thing just goes on and on... it's longer than Suckwater Park, and suckier. Oh the agony - my blood is bleeding, it's that bad after a while. I would rather amputate my own penis with a rusty tuna can lid and die of gangrene in my groin than endure this album ever again.

Bad parts? Everything! Awful songwriting and shitty production... very low guitar mix, and the drums are far too loud in the mix... and it's just clonk, clonk... Lars pretty much is beating garbage cans - that's what it sounds like. A very hollow, echoey sound, and it just doesn't sound fucking metal, especially not so damn loud in the mix. Sorry kids, but this is mallcore. Seriously, this drum sound WILL get on your nerves after 20 minutes.

The other really dumb thing is that the songs are fucking too long - somewhere in here there is a merely awful 30 minute album. Somewhere. But there is too much repetition - it's like they play the album twice. Also, most of this album is complete fucking mallcore - pretty much every song has some. And of course Hetfield's vocals lack all aggression...

Frantic - ya know what, the Frantick tick tick tick tock part is actually bearable. I thought so anyway. The parts that really suck are of course that dumb bass riff, and the stupid "keep searching, this search goes on" dumb part. But that is by far the highlight of the album, and the rest of it is just complete shit - especially that dumb bass riff, and the stupid guitar tone, and of course the whiney core interval.

St Anger - we've heard it all before, and we don't care. Almost the worst song on the album... but close.

Some Kind of Monster... okay intro riff except for those blasted full stops. Also the guitar tone is shit, did I mention? Also, those damn clangy drums. Dear fucking god, this whole album is just BONK BONK BONK BONK BONK BONK... also James has his least inspired vocal performance ever. He's ... talking. Also, Are we the people... that part is completely worthless, and the main chorus sounds like Machine Head gone even more wrong. The song is just too overlong for its own good. "This is the club that drains these eyes." Oh yes, the lyrics don't make much sense either. Also, the riffs really are not all that catchy... they sound very generic and done without any flair and distinction - it's as if you wrote a simple computer program to listen to Slipknot and come up with something that kinda sounded similar, and do that for about 8 minutes. That's this "song".

Dirty Window - Hey, it's fast, but it's still mediocre and shitty, and they pause every once in a while (I slam my gavel down) and then there's the shitcore interval to make us all turn into sexual perverts, if we survive the experience in the first place. You know those experiments in the 1950s where they strapped a guy into a centrifuge to see how many G's he can take? This is like that... how much complete fucking torture can you take? Damn it, just cut off my balls, burn me at the stake, and get it over with. Klonk klonk.

Invisible Kid - so I'm not quite sure how to describe what sucks about the intro riff, other than the fact that the tone is weak and the drums are klonky and then the whole thing sounds mistimed and stop-go-ish ... I'm not sure. All I know is, it would be good if it didn't suck so much. Oh and then the vocals come in, and the song is generally pretty mediocre... ya know, it wouldn't be that bad of a song if they turned the guitars on, oh and they didn't throw in the whiney stupid middle part and they didn't play the song pretty much twice, and this is EIGHT AND A HALF MINUTES LONG??? Make it the fuck stop. Dude. Enough. I mean it's not horrible, but it is pretty mediocre, and you really fucking wear it out when you play it for so long. "What a good boy you are" and we're still only 5 minutes in... dear shitting lord puking all over a minefield, make it motherfucking stop.

My World... ya know I didn't notice that this song had started and the previous had ended, until that badly coreish chorus... "it's my world it's my world", but then... what's this? Yes, at around 0:59, the FIRST LAST AND ONLY REAL HEAVY FUCKING METAL RIFF ON THIS ENTIRE ALBUM. For one second, then a lot more groove shit. And the guitars still sound weak and squishy and the drums are klonk klonk and make that fuckfucker just goddamn stop. Eliminate the vermin. And the aggression-nonaggression combo is terrible. "Look out motherfuckers here I come!!" la la happy riff. Damn it, make up your mind. Are you gonna raging thrash, or are you gonna play happy Mary had a Little Lamb riffs? "Only do I not know the answer" "I don't even know what the question is". Look, even Slipknot knows the fucking the answer. "God it feels like it only rains..." damn it, it only gets worse.

Shoot Me Again... fucking mallcore. "I won't go away, right here I stay"... hello, Linkin Park, we are your tour mates and we ripped you off. Fucking weak-ass pussy riffs and stupid vocals and this is the worst song on here. Come again, stop you fucking cock. This is agony. I hereby declare this song to be the worst creation that mankind has ever come up with.

Sweet Amber... mama she has taught me well, or at least the intro... oh and then the same old chorus, and the same old stupid riffs, and even when they're not playing the exact same song parts again, I still feel like I've fucking heard it all before. And it's slow and boring and plodding and shitty and the guitar tone still sounds gheyer than a really ghey thing. It kinda picks up in the middle, and actually becomes catchy, and it's fast and the highlight of the album, but then it's so fucking repetitive. Use it when you want to get what you want. Shut... the fuck... UP!!!!

The Unnamed Feeling - how about you make like an unacknowledged feeling and keep this goddamn fecesshit bottled up inside until you expire from your worthless fucking worthlessness. I mean there's that shitty opening riff, and then the Tire Iron Buttfucker Death March comes in... "I've been here before, I've been here before" - and you thought Harvester of Sorrow was bad? Fuck, this bows cosmic genitalia like the worst of The Haunted, except slower and gheyer like Voivod and ... then it just gets worse, and that middle section - you call that metal? I can't even call it rock, it's that fucking bad. It's complete worthless noise, that's what that is. A prosthetic butt, placed in front of a whoopee cushion, will make better music than this.

Purify - hey, an actual riff to start things off. Then we get the klonk and you can totally hear the echo off that drum - snare drums are not supposed to have cymbal-like echoes. Who the fuck programmed these drums? A gerbil? The rest of the song is nothing we've never heard before... all the same, only the names have changed. At least it's kinda catchy, except that Hetfield's vocals completely ruin all the vocal parts, and the between-vocal parts are ruined by the incredibly shitty drumming under that one riff that they pretty much ride into oblivion. Guys, can we make a deal? Please don't play that riff for five minutes straight... around 4.00 it sounds like it's gonna get really good, and it builds up, but then goes into a shitty mallcore interval. Dear lord, I DECLARE THAT EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS ALBUM COMPLETELY SUCKS!! The agony!!!!!

All Within My Hands - it starts off with a mediocre fast riff that's not quite thrash, and they completely milk the living cocksuckfuck out of that one over a minute before we get into a squealy, whiny, stupid interval that ... wow, it's Voivod. Well, maybe not, but at this point I'm ready to sell my entire collection of speed metal vinyls for a chance to never have to listen to this again and just when you think it can't get any wronger, they throw in some weird techno interval! oooooohhhh.... That was the sound of my brain putting up the white flag and dribbling gelatinously out of my nostrils. Putting in that kinda uptempo riff every once in a while doesn't make this song not completely fucking suck.

I never have to listen to this again. I am physically ill. 75 minutes of unending agony. Merciless torment. The Spanish Inquisition wishes they had this one.