Metallica - St. Anger CD (album) cover




Prog Related

1.61 | 271 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Time Signature
3 stars Some kind of monster....

I know that a lot of people hate this album for its grittiness and ugliness. I'm not of of them. To me "St. Anger" marks Metallica's return from what I think was a creatively uninspired era to more interesting music. Sure, the songs on "St. Anger" are a bit longwinded, the lack of guitar solos equalled a lack of Metallica-soul, the snare drum sounds terrible, and the overall production is strange to put it mildly. But this album is characterized by something that's been missing from Metallica ever since the black album - namely, energy. What drew me to "St. Anger" was simply the raw unprocessed energy it seemed to contain which was sorely lacking from the boring "Load" and even more boring "Reload" albums (ironically, "St. Anger" turned out to have been Pro Tooled into being, which makes it all the more impressing that they managed to preserve the energy of the music). So, while others lament the ugliness and grittiness of this album, I've always celebrated it as a return to energetic music.

I think tracks like "St. Anger", "Frantic", "Purify", "Shoot me Again" and "All Within My Hands" are all, well, frantic and have a sense of desperation to them, which works quite weel and, if you latch on to those feelings, seem almost engaging and inspiring. And, here's where the strange snare drum sound fits in. It really enhances the franticness of the album. Also the groovy main riffs of "Invisible Kid" and "Some Kind of Monster", if you let them, seep straight into one's unconscious primate brain.

And what works really well on this album, I think, is the combination of groove and frantic frenzy. But the lack of guitar solos is unforgivable,

It's ugly, it's primitive, it's energetic, it's gritty, it's strange, it's unforgiven, it's some kind of monster.

Time Signature | 3/5 |




Share this METALLICA review


Review related links



Server processing time: 0.03 seconds