Metallica - St. Anger

Good Evening! I am Hydro, your friendly neighborhood audiophile back to give you a little of that New Years advice.

The holidays are a special time for some and a god-damned nuisance for others. I am on the later end of that scale. From just before Piggy Piggy Fuck Piggy Day (AKA: Thanksgiving) to the commercialized hell that is the Winter Equinox (Pagan holiday of Yule…much better) it seems I’m yanked around and put into some strange form of mental terrorism by my family. So what do I do when things start calming...I delve into my box of mental razors. Yet again to cut my brain so that next week I may pour salt in the wound with another. Ok…I’m really sticking my dick in the meat grinder for this review. This is by no means the bottom of the barrel. But let’s be real here: This band they could do anything and it would go at least gold. Oh yes! I am going where I’d rather not…again. Metallica.

To some this band is the beginnings of their path of METAL and to other souls a very nasty taste in their own musical journey. Well to be fair this band had some good material. That material was not written in the 90’s. Their first four albums: Kill’em All, Ride the Lightening, Master of Puppets, …and Justice For All were all great albums in their genre. Then in the early 1990’s the band birthed that damned black album. You know you’ve heard every song off of that fucking thing more than any Beatles song. EVER. Do not think you are lucky and I’m reviewing the black album. That record was a work of monumental art compared to this work of audio fuckery. I could care less if that isn’t a word, because it fits this album well. I might make up some more engaging linguistic anomalies to help describe this album: Shitocracy, retardation of the artistic gene, Ass-oboe quartet, Protools Virus. I’m sure by now you have guessed that this beast is all about the abomination by Metallica called “St. Anger”. One of the first things that drove me over the edge with this astronomical (heavy on the ass) failure is that they weren’t even into the music. They were just trying to stay “relevant”. One thing that ALL good musicians know is that if the artists are true to their work, are into what they are doing then the piece will be relevant and come off sincere. With that being said this record tanks on more levels than I care to consider. Oh I will consider them, but I’d rather not. Now, before I get to the individual track bashing let me get the general complaints about this album out of the way. Firstly, when one thinks of metal, real metal, one does not think of bands such as Korn or Disturbed. If that offended you…fuck you. Real metal has competent playing and more then just a tribal drum beat (one beat per album at that). Metallica at one point was considered one of the big name thrash bands. I would never say they were the best. Overkill, Death Angel, and Exodus shredded them like a ninja on meth, but they WERE a good place to start. Well in the late 90’s and early 2000’s true metal was on the slide and Nu-Metal was all the rage. Metallica in a panic to stay relevant changed their sound to what was popular. I believe I’ve addressed this “staying relevant” issue. The whole record comes off very choppy and forced. The rest of my general complaints derive from this one thing. Trying to be something they are not. Metallica, a bastion of thrash and heavy metal, now trying to be Nu-Metal (a stupid name might I add). I will point out that I am not a Metallica fan. However, I do have some respect for their first 5 albums. Yes even that over played titan, the black album. St. Anger was a desperate grasp to stay relevant. What happened was that the record alienated many of their long time fans and really just threw the whole band into a slump. Jason Newsted left the group just after the recording of this sensory ass-raping was finished. He could see that the whole band was becoming just a business and not even about the music. Thankfully the devil…er…Rick Ruben came in and planted a boot firmly in Lars and James collective ass and Death Magnetic is a return to what one would expect a Metallica album to deliver.

In this large change we see all of Kirk Hammett’s solo’s pro-tooled out of the recordings. It would be one thing to not write songs with solos in them, but to cut them out intentionally. Someone needs to break the engineer’s hands with a hammer. Metallica has officially had their digital recording license revoked. Now once a person realizes that the engineer is a string puppet and the band have no bloody purpose with these recordings other than to make money then we can move on to how much of a douche bag Lars is. I said it…and Rick Ruben told him to shut up. I’d do the same thing if his midget ass was in front of me. Next, the mix of the album is so extremely amateur. This has been one of the largest complaints next to the sell-out style change. For one the drums are buried in the mix, the vocals are too loud, the bass is nearly non-existent, and the vocals are up high and sitting in your face. Each individual song has its own issues…let’s get to those now. By the time I get to the last song I’m sure my head in a wood chipper will seem a better idea.

Let us proceed and dispense with the delay of this inevitable…

1. Frantic – Within seconds my ears notice the lack of quality production. The drums sound very tin-ish and the guitars are so far in the face that I think they are trying to build a bridge to the nostrils. The song is pretty heavy, but it just is missing something. The riffs seem to have a lack of raw inspiration. Not the greatest song, but I would go as far as to say it is semi solid. Ok…I’m just attempting to be nice this is shit…pure and unadulterated.
2. St. Anger – Ah!!! The namesake of this wretched album. If I were to say I was impressed it would not be in context to this shit of a song. Probably the only thing that worked my mind was thought of Lars playing the fast double kick portion. Munchkins on meth… Also, the semi rap portion that James puts into the lyrics is so not fitting for this band. This song brings shame to metal. I wonder if Lars knows any drum beats that do more then gallop. I will not go into the facts on how bad of a drummer he can be.
3. Some Kind of Monster – We are moments from the epic ear bleeding. Three tracks in and the songs are beginning to mesh together. This song has the award for least impressive guitar tone. Whoever had the idea to experiment with fuzz tones needs to go take some fucking lessons from Fu Manchu. It sounds like the speaker is broken or the engineer threw to much gain on the channel and it is peaking left and right. The lyrics are…well…a bit weak coming from the guy who wrote “Creeping Death”.
4. Dirty Window – The bass tone on this song makes me want to eat dead babies. It sounds like the high and low ends were hacked off leaving mid tones with no punch. I’m starting to think that this album is far too politically charged for its own good. This song is REJECTED!
5. Invisible Kid – Being invisible does not help with hearing things. Maybe if it were called Deaf Kid then I could get with it. Yet again we find more uninspired riffs that seem to have no direction. Oh wait…I found the low end bass from the last song. They dumped it all into this track. Let me ask my lovely readers something. Can anyone tell me where the engineer for this album lives, because I’m going to break his fingers so he may never do this to the world again.
6. My World – This song reminds me of something off the Gorgeous Frankenstein album. I say this in regards to My World sounding like a throw away song that eventually got revamped into something off of Ride the Lightning. With that I feel I give this song to much credit. The drums are tin-ish still and buried.
7. Shoot Me Again – Either the band is psychic or the album is channeling my feelings about listening to this spinning audio atrocity. We have a little ditty trying to be melodic. This had merit until the “chorus” kicked in. I think Metallica was attempting to invoke Disturbed here. That was not a wise idea. Greed leads to shitty art. Plain and simple.
8. Sweet Amber – Yet again the album is invoking my feelings. If I listen to much more of this it will lead me to drinking. Hell a nice buzz would probably make this shit sound better or at the least make me laugh more. This track has the distinct feeling of a drum beat and a guitar line that don’t work together well. I am not feeling this “no solo” business. It does not mesh well with Metallica.
9. Purify – Album are you even trying? Does it feel good to anal rape your fan base? We find no purifying here. However, we do find a break down toward 3 minute mark that is actually good. The song actually picks up quite a bit here. To bad the beginning blows rotting goat cock. This is a valiant effort and probably one of the better songs on the album.
10. All Within My Hands – Any song that starts out with that much of Lars is most likely going to suck. The drums are pushed forward in the mix here, but they sound extremely thin and flappy. The vocals are promptly jammed up the ass with a very choppy guitar riff that has no head bobbing capability. Really…Metallica…Pantera was a better band even when they wore pink spandex and sounded like Poison. Even when they went all south Texas Redneck metal they held onto their integrity.
11. The Unnamed Feeling – I know the feeling they are talking about it and it has a name. It is called herpes! The same feeling this whole record has given me. A burning and itching feeling that will NEVER GO AWAY!!! This is the last track and it just sounds like an extension of the first song. Yet again I sound like a broken record by saying we have more uninspired riffs and bad lyrics. I dye a little more every second I listen to this audio terrorism.

This album is like a dirty bomb gone off in my head phones. My over all rating for this is negative infinity. Granted I would much rather listen to this slop then say an NSync album, but you get my point. I began to wonder if Metallica even tried to created descent music on this finely aged shit stain. I’d rather listen to polar bears fuck. I’d rather listen to Wookies on acid play a mean game of Monopoly. Now that this analysis of wasted Compact Disc time is over I’m going to burn this fucking album.

Happy New Year from Hydro!