METALLICA — St. Anger (review)

Album · 2003 · Alternative Metal

2.5/5 · 2010-04-30
Pekka

The most slaughtered metal album of all time? Very possibly. Anyone who's seen the Some Kind of Monster documentary knows that Metallica were going through a world of difficulties in the early 2000s starting with the Napster backlash, the departure of Jason Newsted, rehab stint of James Hetfield and a general bad air between Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. Out of these feelings is born St. Anger. Depending on the viewpoint the band is either completely lost at sea or proudly aiming for new ventures once again.

The first thing you can't avoid noticing when listening to this album is the sound. Unpolished, uncompromising, unproduced if you will. After the lushly produced Bob Rock era albums this comes as quite a shock as the producer hasn't changed. The bass is yet again barely audible, guitars are raw and the snare... A lot had been said about the snare drum and I am one of the rare people who actually really like the sharp, piercing, ringing sound of it. All in all the sound is very much in accord with the music which, to quote James Hetfield, is like a movie entirely made up of violence scenes.

70 minutes of violence can get pretty boring, and that's the biggest problem of the album. For the first time ever Metallica left a bunch of songs unreleased, but in my opinion they weren't strict enough. For this kind of full on attack music 40 or 50 minutes is a recommended maximum, after that it might well get tiring. But what holds this album better together is the placement of the tracks, with three of my favourites being the last three songs. After a solid start with the pummeling singles Frantic and St. Anger, despite the goofy bass drum hit overdubs of the latter, the quality of the tracks takes a slight downhill with Some Kind of Monster, Dirty Window and all the way to My World and Shoot Me Again, which are the tracks I would like to cut from the album. After that things turn brighter again. Sweet Amber is somewhat resembling of the earlier thrash Metallica and after that we get what is the only calmer track of the bunch, The Unnamed Feeling. Slightly aliceinchainsish vocal harmonies spice this chrushingly slow piece of metal, one of the post-80s Metallica highlights, as are the following tracks Purify and All Within My Hands. Both feature rather unusual traits for the band, the former in its rhythm approach and the latter in its clean picked guitars in midst of aggression.

Another thing that usually gets a lot of flak apart from the drum sounds is the fact that the album contains no solos. I'm very ok with that, having the obligatory solo in every single song after the second chorus is just as boring as having no solos at all, and as Kirk Hammett isn't necessarily at the top of my favourite guitarists list, it's no big loss.

Lots of good riffing and genuine drive and aggression. Pity that it doesn't always translate into enjoyable music. Nevertheless a good underrated album with its highs and lows.