St. Anger - Metallica > Reviews > Finally a modern definition of 'A mangled mess'

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Lacking inspiration
Lyrics	Mediocre
Quality and consistency of tracks	Consistently bad
How does it compare to the artist's other releases	Weak
Value for Money

Advantages:	A couple of good songs, some good headbanging guitar riffs and vocals .
Disadvantages:	80% of the album is boring and samey .  Terrible drumming and average vocals .

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

INTRO:

I’lld like to assume that everyone knows who Metallica are surely, but for those cave dwellers I will explain.

Metallica are a four piece heavy metal/hard rock band that were big in the 80's and 90's, and are most famous for hits such as 'ENTER SANDMAN' 'ONE' and 'NOTHING ELSE MATTERS'. Albums such as 'RIDE THE LIGHTNING' and 'MASTER OF PUPPETS' rank among some of the best rock albums ever, but they all have one thing in common, and that is that back then they were actually a very, very good band. However we're now in the 21st century and Metallica's latest effort 'ST ANGER’ fails to live up to any expectations.

They had around 6 years (I think) to create this album, yet it seems like its been done in less than one for the most part, but anyway lets listen to the cd shall we.

'FRANTIC' is the first song its also the second single, and in a sense its the right word for the song, it opens out with some crushing riffs and drum rolls that are soon overshadows by heavier more distorted guitars, which then lead to a riff and vocals that you would at first consider to be promising. It sounds decent... Until the chorus comes in that is, it sounds like something off a below par Korn album with James Hetfield yelling 'My lifestyle determines my death style'. Come on guys let’s put a bit more effort into the lyrics can’t we? It seems already that they’re being lazy with this, it COULD be a decent song by the opening riffs and some of the bridge but it’s let down by the vocals and lyrics and chorus, the later drumming isn’t particularly good either.

'ST ANGER' follows it up, and again follows the same form as 'frantic by having a promising into, some heavy riffs and chords that sound like they could lead somewhere, if it wasn’t for the drummer again who seems to be almost a 'chimpanzee' banging on random drums without any form.

Then we lead to a verse that again is poor by Metallicas standards, or even by a lot of decent bands out now. Although some of the chorus works well and is fairly hard hitting for a first single it could have been so much better.

As the song progresses you grow more and more disappointed, the song fails to lead anywhere, so besides the occasional repeat of the opening riff which was good there’s not a lot to be had here.

One thing I will credit them on is the track length, their a healthy 5 and 7 minutes song so far, good to see a band can still write a song over 5 minutes.

'SOME KIND OF MONSTER' follows up and it’s like one of those welcome breaks you come across on the motorway or freeway, because I found this a much better song. The guitars and drums are more adept, the intro is long and there’s some small guitar solos in there too. Whilst the vocals aren’t particularly good on this track, the sound of the music is an improvement. Some of it even sounds like its inspired by early Korn, surprising really for a band that was around 14 years before them, better song this time though even if the lyrics and vocals could do with a little work.

Proof that the singles don’t always make for the best songs on the album 'DIRTY WINDOW' is another better song then the first two, giving us a head banging intro followed by some good guitar riffs and an improvement in vocals. The bridge is strong too with James singing 'I'm Judge and I'm Jury and I'm Executioner too'. Better stuff from the heavy rockers now.

The next track 'INVISIBLE KID' continues the albums better half by starting off with a guitar piece, like something from older metallica, before transforming into their new style of guitar riffs, which by the way isn’t particularly bad, its just the way they couple it with the drums and vocals that doesn’t always work so well. Again the drums and vocals are the weakest part of this song but its quite catchy and metally.

It’s at this point you start to get a bit tired however. 'MY WORLD' starts off just the same it seems as almost every other song on the album, with the separated guitar riffs and thrashy but boring drum beats. The bulk of the song is decent although James isn’t being very modest in this song with lyrics like 'ITS MY WORLD NOW', it sounds like something out of the Matrix III, I suppose they have something in common in the fact neither are particularly good! 'IT’S MY TIME NOW' yells James; actually it was 'his time' 15 years ago!

Next up is 'SHOOT ME AGAIN' and I think that’s pretty much what you will be hoping for once you hear the opening to this track. Why are they repeating themselves so much? Almost Every song opening sounds the same, Thrashy guitars and drum beats that lead to a quiet verse, then a repeat of the chorus. After the intro the song improves and the riffs become more interesting, but it’s still pretty much a repeat of everything we've already heard, not to mention the fact the drumming has still not improved over the album, and I'm sure he could be doing a lot better then he is. The lyrics 'shoot me again I aint dead yet' fail to interest either. Again a fair bit of this song sounds Korn-esque at times, maybe that’s the reason Korn was inspired to cover 'ONE'

'SWEET AMBER' starts off with a lazy type western guitar piece, before breaking into a more classic metallica style guitar riff that works better with the band a lot of the time as opposed to all the jumpy separated riffs.

The vocals always work better with this type of song too and 'SWEET AMBER' may stand out a bit more. However there is the point to notice how the sound title sounds like 'ST ANGER' and the chorus sounds like that chorus, Coincidence? I think not!

The next track is 'UNNAMED FEELING' but I can tell you what the feeling is, more of the same. They really seem to be out of ideas in the intro department, or even in the whole department now, the guitars in this song are dull, generic and once again are separated and repetitive. This is one of my least favourite tracks on the album as it fails to lead anywhere, but for a repeating guitar riff and horrible vocals.

'PURIFY' really is the mangled mess of the album though. Once again we have the rubbish drums banging away coupled with some guitars that have basically been taken from about 8 other tracks on this album and reversed. Its probably the song that sums up every shortcoming on this album in fact, everything from the drums, guitars, vocals, and overall structure sound horrible; Its such a shame that a huge band like Metallica have been reduced to this.

'Please get better' I cry, but there’s only one more song to go. In some ways I'm glad because this is really getting bad now, but in other ways I really want more tracks for Metallica to show their real talent.
'ALL WITHIN MY HANDS' is the final track on the album, and it starts off in particuarly unconvincing form with some horrible drums and basically the same guitar riffs that were on the previous track, Oh dear! The song does improve later with some melodic guitar solos but the chorus is awful, absolutely awful attempt at thrashy metal. Its a long song clocking in at over 8 minutes, but most will be changing the track after the first 2 minutes I’m sure, such a shame that such a talented band has produced this. It does have a dramatic ending, but it does not save this song.

There is another track kind of it's a live version video rehearsal of 'ST ANGER' for your pc's, it's ok but if you didn’t like the studio version chances are you wont like this!

Metallica had six years to create this album, six years to create something I would have thought sloppy at one. There are a few good songs on this album, but nothing at all great, nothing really worth your hard earnt money.

If you're a fan of them, then you will hate it, if you haven’t heard them before chances are you'll have a very mixed response, some may think that this music has lots of energy and some may think it has 'heaviness'

But for me and I think the majority of people Ill leave you with this comparison.
Imagine an infinite amount of monkeys working in a recording studio with the various instruments, got it?

Now imagine a finite amount of monkeys, say 6. Now you've got some idea of how 'ST ANGER' feels for the most part.

Metallica showing us exactly how to grow old disgracefully!

45%-Rating-Poor

Here is my epinions review of this

http://www.epinions.com/content_138096447108