Ah yes, Metallica. You remember them, don't you? The ultimate musical pissing match?
Being a fan of Metallica came very slowly for me. Musically, they remind me of yogurt. For years I had this problem with yogurt, and the very thought of it would make me want to gag. To eat it? Well, I would have rather been held down and beaten with a chunk of garden hose than get the stuff past my lips. Then something magical happened. I don't know if there was any divine intervention, or if the last pockets of yogurt resistance got cornered in a blind alley somewhere in the war-torn landscape of my brain and were picked off one by one by snipers as they screamed over and over for backup that never arrived, or if I was just suddenly in the middle of an amazingly beautiful run-on sentence and just plain forgot that I hated the stuff. But something happened, and I went from despising yogurt in all its many evil colors and rancid flavors, to being able to tolerate it in small doses, to becoming the yogurt craving titan of power you all cower before today. I'm a changed man, although I still have this unexplainable passion for run-on sentences.
It's much the same with Metallica. The diversity of my musical taste covers a fairly broad area, but Metallica seems to be the only band that could go from the dismal depths of my musical spectrum to somewhere near the summit where only a handful of artists have ever succeeded in climbing.
And then came ST. ANGER.
ST. ANGER (2003) seems like the natural progression of Metallica's music, and only because the band has reinvented itself so many times and in such unexpected directions that the mere fact that it is DIFFERENT (again) lands it squarely within the boundaries of the band's evolutional progress. The album is a 2 disk set, one disk being a whopping 75 minutes of music, and the other being a DVD of the entire album performed in the studio, cut from the band's rehearsals of the album. With the whole package served up at the price of a single CD, Metallica gives the listener quite a bit of damage for his dollar.
But is the damn thing any good? Let's break this sucker down…….
The most noticeable thing about the song style of this album is that Metallica is in many ways returning to their roots. The songs are delivered fast and furious, with many beats reminiscent of the thrash era that spawned Metallica in the first place. The title track alone features several sections which swing heavily back and forth between the slow melodies of the LOAD/RELOAD era and something blistering from the RIDE THE LIGHTNING album. In fact, the whole album in many ways reminds me of AND JUSTICE FOR ALL, with its long and carefully planned tracks featuring many separate sections of music.
Now, that covers the format of the album, but what about the overall sound quality and musical “production”?
It sucks.
It would seem that Metallica is trying to sound like a garage band again. While that may be all fine and dandy, and while there is certainly nothing wrong with that, it does go against the very grain of musical technology. I was enjoying the direction the tone of their music had taken, which technologically was pretty amazing. I for one don't feel that a polished sound makes music “sterile”, or that it takes away from the soul of the recording in any way. That's another pissing match, and one that I can't believe I even brought up in this review (I am REALLY opening up myself for an angry letter or two with this article. I'd be safer going back and talking about that Ford/Chevy thing again.).
In short, ST ANGER sounds like a demo tape.
In the foreground you have James Hetfield's vocals, which are some of the worst the man has ever set to recording media. While never being what I would call a powerful singer, he was once capable of pulling off some mean growls that, while not being musically brilliant, really set the mood for the Metallica sound. These days he sounds like he is straining to even be heard, which makes it even harder to handle since he is in fact, louder than anything else on the recording.
Except for maybe the drums.
The precision drumming of Lars Ulrich has always been a strong area of the band's music, with the drummer never being satisfied to be in the background pounding out the same repetitions over and over in his sleep. Metallica falls into the same category as bands like RUSH, where the drum tracks become an integral part of the melody, no less important than the vocals or the guitar riffs. The drums on this album take center stage, making many of the songs seem like duets between the drums and the vocals, with everything else shoved into the background. This would be fine if they didn't sound like someone beating on paint cans and cardboard boxes. The drums on this recording have an unusual quality to them that helps set the tone for the whole album, and while that tone is new and unique, it is harder to swallow than a John Holmes movie marathon.
Which brings us to the guitars and the bass.
The what?
The guitars and the……..
The what?
Guitarist Kirk Hammet crunches out riff after riff of some typical Metallica sound, but has clearly taken a backseat to the drumming of Ulrich. It's very much the rock music of some weird alternate universe, where the guitar sets the background beat and the “lead drums” play the melody of the song. It's different, and it's weird, and it works better in some places than others, unlike the bass, which doesn't work at all, because they seem to have made the bass player (new bassist Robert Trujillo) stand outside the recording studio, inside a concrete bunker, with his amp unplugged, and his fingers broken.
In a nutshell, this album has less bass presence than a Zamphir, Master of the Pan Flute, Greatest Hits album.
The songs themselves swing heavily from very good (Frantic. Dirty Window. My World.), to the just plain awful (Invisible Kid. Sweet Amber.). While tracks like ST. ANGER sound very unique in structure (play 4 different parts. Repeat them with no variation. Repeat them again with no variation. End song.), when the whole album is played from start to finish this underlying structure of the new Metallica sound, while still very similar in many ways to “classic” Metallica, gets old very quickly. Hey guys, I know that guitar solos aren't cool these days, but a couple of them might have broken things up a little bit.
Which brings us to the DVD…………..
The first thing I noticed was that while the DVD versions of the songs are referred to as the “dirty” versions (take that in an “unpolished” way, not in some kind of John Valby/Andrew Dice Clay sort of way), they sound 100% BETTER THAN THE FINISHED VERSIONS!!!! The mix is much better, and while it may have something to do with the sound limits of CD compared to DVD, I think much of it has to do with the fact that bassist Robert Trujillo has been let out of his concrete bunker and back into the studio. You can actually HEAR the bass!!!! Call me old fashioned, but when you can't hear the thundering bass of a recording, no matter how fast you play the music, it still sounds tinny and cheap. Make all the jokes you like about bass players, but you cannot have heavy music without them. They are the solid foundation of that musical building. Play all the fancy riffs you like, but without a bass presence you are just jerking off.
Metallica's ST. ANGER album is a bold attempt, I'll give them that. While the package is strong, and some of the songs are quite good, overall the album is a letdown in so many ways. Had more care gone into polishing the new sound, and a better balance of instruments gone into the final mix, this album could have been much better. I think Metallica, while trying to carve out a new sound for themselves, are trying to sound like so many of today's bands- repetitive, stiff, and uncreative. In their effort to stand apart, they have merely blended themselves into the crowd that much more. And while this album will certainly be enjoyed for its occasional bright shining moment, it won't even make it anywhere near my list of “perfect” albums, like Metallica's very best album of all time, RELOAD.
There. I've done it. I've entered the Metallica pissing match.
I suppose I'd better find a good hiding place.
Dr. Torgo