Metallica's Reviews
St. Anger (Average Rating: 5.74 out of 10)
OK, I'm editing my review again... it was called "St. Awful" (Rated this album with 10 out of 10)
Reviewed by
A music fan
from USA
I'm adding 2 more stars to make it a full 5. One because the album really grows on you, and the other one because of so many people here giving it scores that are really too low.---------------------------- ... but now that I've listened to it some more I'm adding a star and acknowledging that I was a little quick to bash the album. Yes, the sound quality is still bad, but the songs are actually cooler than I had originally thought. It's a pretty complex album that rewards repeat listening. Much like the black album, it has more groove-oriented guitar / bass riffs that to me often sound better than the "chug-chug-chug-chug" sound of earlier albums. By the way, the DVD actually has better sound quality than the CD, and the snare drum I complained about below sounds better here. My original review is below. ------------------------------------ To be blunt, I'm not sure what Metallica and the producer were thinking when they decided this album was ready to be released. It's basically a big mess. I have always loved "the black album", but I never really got into most of Metallica's other stuff until recently, going back to listen closely to most of their albums. While I still like the black album the best, the rest are good and I can hear a progression (some call it "selling out"... that's a little too negative for me, although I agree that a few of the radio-friendly songs on Load and Reload are quite bad). Anyway, I've been reading reviews here, and I wondered why many of the fans were so displeased with St. Anger. Then I heard the album, and it all made sense. First, the sound quality. I realize that good sound quality does not make an album good, nor does bad sound quality make an album bad. But this is ridiculous, especially for a band with money, a known producer, and a history of mostly good sounding recordings. This must be intentional, and I don't know why. The best way to describe the sound is to imagine that all of the microphones to record this were placed OUTSIDE the closed walls of the studio, so you just hear the muffled sounds coming through the walls. As a drummer, I was especially annoyed by the sound of Lars' snare drum on this album. It sounds like it's missing its snare on the bottom head, so it comes across like a small tom drum. The songs themselves also sound like a mess, like they weren't really done writing them when they decided to record the album. Metallica has done plenty of long, multi-part songs before, but at least they used to sound logical. These songs are just long because they repeat parts, and in no logical progression. There are a few parts (emphasis on few) that could have been really cool if they had worked on them a lot more and scrapped the rest. The only reasons I even gave this a second star were because of those few parts that had potential (albeit unrealized), and because this album shows that the band wasn't worried about making an album that was radio-friendly.
Buy this album on Amazon at $14.99
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