Bam's Music Reviews: St. Anger (Metallica, 2003)
I'm Bam. I like possums, I like music! Let's get into it~
St. Anger is an alternative metal album by the prolific Metallica, first released on June 5th of the year 2003 (Oh hey, that's my second birthday!) through Elektra Records, and happened to be their final record under that label before the band moved over to Warner Records. Released 5 days ahead of its original release date due to the band's ongoing crusade against peer-to-peer sharing networks like Napster, the album is often considered one of the worst albums put out by the band due to a very troubled production involving questionable snare drums, the lead singer's stint in rehab and a distinct attempt to sound more "raw". It's been nearly 20 years since the album came out, and one might wonder at this point: "Was it really as bad as it was on release?" Only one way to find out! Without further ado...
Before we get into the review in detail, I would just like to say that YES. It's still as bad over 19 years after its release, and it's arguably even worse than before! To think that his album isn't even the worst thing Metallica has put out over the years... I'm going to get some of the easy targets out of the way first, since if you're reading a review on St. Anger just a couple days before we hop over to 2023, chances are that you're waiting for my comments on the big elephant of the room:
The. Fucking. Snare.
According to an interview that drummer Lars Ulrich did with Blabbermouth a couple days after the album came out, while the band was working on the album he simply forgot to turn on the snares on his snare drum one time while recording and seemed to like the sound of it, resulting in the entire album being filled with the horrible, tinny sound of what many people have described as "someone banging on an oil drum". This is a sentiment that I wholly agree with, along with just about everyone who's listened to the album - the snare drum blows. Constantly hearing the gross sound of the snare overpowering a good part of the remaining drum kit turns potentially interesting melodies into practically unlistenable. Even on the more listenable songs on the album like the title track, "St. Anger", you can never escape the DONK DONK DONK of the snare, no matter how much you try to ignore it. There is no escape from the DONK.
And honestly, that would be fine! Not every part of the instrumentation has to sound incredible, and with proper mastering, it could even sound kind of nice! Such a shame then that the album is easily the worst mixing job Metallica has ever put out in their 40+ year career. Just about every song on the album ends up sounding like total dog water, with way too much emphasis on the already terrible-sounding drums, the lead guitar is sometimes practically impossible to hear through the cacophony of the way too loudly mixed rhythm guitar, and despite all of this, you can still never escape from the horror that is James Hetfield's singing on this album.
Let me make myself clear here: I don't hate James' singing. Most of the time, his vocals serve to elevate the band's work to a higher level, and the man can quickly go from aggressive thrash vocals to smooth and emotion-filled ballads with little problems. Unfortunately for me, James decided to go for neither direction on this album! Goodie! On just about every song on the album, James decided that the natural evolution of his singing abilities would be to go way past his vocal range and to really scream out like a cat being wrung out of its life as slowly and as painfully as possible. As someone who's been in rehab myself, I can see how it could affect Hetfield negatively, but man.
This review is already starting to rival some of my longer articles, and I haven't even talked about the actual songs so far in nearly the entire thing so far! Part of the problem with that is that, due to a combination of the new, "raw" direction the album took and the terrible mixing, the album ends up doing the cardinal sin you could do with an album like this - everything ends up sounding eerily samey and bland! If it weren't for the songs having dedicated endings, one could easily go through over 30 minutes of this 75-minute monster without realizing that they had gone through multiple songs. While this would be expected with projects where that's the entire point, it really hurts this particular album. And I haven't even talked about the lyrics!
I'm going to be blunt. St. Anger's lyrics are shit. I understand that Hetfield based most of them on his experiences dealing with drug problems and recovering from their effects, but that will not stop me from saying that the lyrics are messy and really weak, even for Metallica's standards. Whether it be the simultaneously metaphorical and painfully obvious symbolism of "Invisible Kid", or the ridiculous line of MY LIFESTYLE DETERMINES MY DEATH STYLE on "Frantic", the album is chock-full of really awkward and painful lyrics, all the while being sung by Hetfield trying his best to grind out his vocal cords so that he can retire from working in the music industry. Combining this with over half of the tracks on the album being 7-8-minute slogfests makes the listening experience of St. Anger headache-inducing.
Todd In The Shadows put it best when he made his review on St. Anger back in March of 2021; "For the vast majority of listeners, myself included, St. Anger forever put Metallica into the past tense." While the band has certainly made new and successful albums after it (notably Hardwired... to Self-Destruct back in 2016), the wide popularity of the band was killed almost overnight by this terribly produced, first-draft-sounding mess of an album. It's still not the worst of the worst the band has put out (Don't worry, Lulu. I'll get to you another time..), but it's easily the one that managed to kill the ongoing legacy of one of the biggest metal acts to arguably ever exist on this Earth of ours. I pray for the day when this album can finally be forgotten as the flow of time brings in new garbage to focus on, but until then, there's really only one thing I can say.
Donk.
St. Anger is an alternative metal album by the prolific Metallica, first released on June 5th of the year 2003 (Oh hey, that's my second birthday!) through Elektra Records, and happened to be their final record under that label before the band moved over to Warner Records. Released 5 days ahead of its original release date due to the band's ongoing crusade against peer-to-peer sharing networks like Napster, the album is often considered one of the worst albums put out by the band due to a very troubled production involving questionable snare drums, the lead singer's stint in rehab and a distinct attempt to sound more "raw". It's been nearly 20 years since the album came out, and one might wonder at this point: "Was it really as bad as it was on release?" Only one way to find out! Without further ado...
Before we get into the review in detail, I would just like to say that YES. It's still as bad over 19 years after its release, and it's arguably even worse than before! To think that his album isn't even the worst thing Metallica has put out over the years... I'm going to get some of the easy targets out of the way first, since if you're reading a review on St. Anger just a couple days before we hop over to 2023, chances are that you're waiting for my comments on the big elephant of the room:
The. Fucking. Snare.
According to an interview that drummer Lars Ulrich did with Blabbermouth a couple days after the album came out, while the band was working on the album he simply forgot to turn on the snares on his snare drum one time while recording and seemed to like the sound of it, resulting in the entire album being filled with the horrible, tinny sound of what many people have described as "someone banging on an oil drum". This is a sentiment that I wholly agree with, along with just about everyone who's listened to the album - the snare drum blows. Constantly hearing the gross sound of the snare overpowering a good part of the remaining drum kit turns potentially interesting melodies into practically unlistenable. Even on the more listenable songs on the album like the title track, "St. Anger", you can never escape the DONK DONK DONK of the snare, no matter how much you try to ignore it. There is no escape from the DONK.
And honestly, that would be fine! Not every part of the instrumentation has to sound incredible, and with proper mastering, it could even sound kind of nice! Such a shame then that the album is easily the worst mixing job Metallica has ever put out in their 40+ year career. Just about every song on the album ends up sounding like total dog water, with way too much emphasis on the already terrible-sounding drums, the lead guitar is sometimes practically impossible to hear through the cacophony of the way too loudly mixed rhythm guitar, and despite all of this, you can still never escape from the horror that is James Hetfield's singing on this album.
Let me make myself clear here: I don't hate James' singing. Most of the time, his vocals serve to elevate the band's work to a higher level, and the man can quickly go from aggressive thrash vocals to smooth and emotion-filled ballads with little problems. Unfortunately for me, James decided to go for neither direction on this album! Goodie! On just about every song on the album, James decided that the natural evolution of his singing abilities would be to go way past his vocal range and to really scream out like a cat being wrung out of its life as slowly and as painfully as possible. As someone who's been in rehab myself, I can see how it could affect Hetfield negatively, but man.
This review is already starting to rival some of my longer articles, and I haven't even talked about the actual songs so far in nearly the entire thing so far! Part of the problem with that is that, due to a combination of the new, "raw" direction the album took and the terrible mixing, the album ends up doing the cardinal sin you could do with an album like this - everything ends up sounding eerily samey and bland! If it weren't for the songs having dedicated endings, one could easily go through over 30 minutes of this 75-minute monster without realizing that they had gone through multiple songs. While this would be expected with projects where that's the entire point, it really hurts this particular album. And I haven't even talked about the lyrics!
I'm going to be blunt. St. Anger's lyrics are shit. I understand that Hetfield based most of them on his experiences dealing with drug problems and recovering from their effects, but that will not stop me from saying that the lyrics are messy and really weak, even for Metallica's standards. Whether it be the simultaneously metaphorical and painfully obvious symbolism of "Invisible Kid", or the ridiculous line of MY LIFESTYLE DETERMINES MY DEATH STYLE on "Frantic", the album is chock-full of really awkward and painful lyrics, all the while being sung by Hetfield trying his best to grind out his vocal cords so that he can retire from working in the music industry. Combining this with over half of the tracks on the album being 7-8-minute slogfests makes the listening experience of St. Anger headache-inducing.
Todd In The Shadows put it best when he made his review on St. Anger back in March of 2021; "For the vast majority of listeners, myself included, St. Anger forever put Metallica into the past tense." While the band has certainly made new and successful albums after it (notably Hardwired... to Self-Destruct back in 2016), the wide popularity of the band was killed almost overnight by this terribly produced, first-draft-sounding mess of an album. It's still not the worst of the worst the band has put out (Don't worry, Lulu. I'll get to you another time..), but it's easily the one that managed to kill the ongoing legacy of one of the biggest metal acts to arguably ever exist on this Earth of ours. I pray for the day when this album can finally be forgotten as the flow of time brings in new garbage to focus on, but until then, there's really only one thing I can say.
Donk.
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