jwalkernet

As promised...

Metallica, St. Anger: The Review

St. Anger is a fifty-megaton detonation right in your face. It's the sonic equivalent of being punched in the stomach repeatedly for an hour and fifteen minutes. (And I mean that in a good way.) The album is simultaneously a harkening back to the raw energy and fury of their early works and a bold step into the future. And it might just be the best thing they've ever done.

The rhythm and blues experiments on the Loads? Gone. The sleek, crystalline production of the black album and ...And Justice For All? Not here. Ballads? Yeah, right. St. Anger's eleven tracks hit with a unified, primal force the band has never reached before -- there aren't even any trademark Kirk Hammett guitar solos to break the tension (that's right, no solos at all, but you won't notice). Just seventy-five minutes of old-school, in-your-face fury.

The technically excellent, if slightly sterile, atmosphere of previous records is traded for a sound that suggests the band simply standing around a mircophone playing the songs. It's a revelation. There are a few tradeoffs to this -- the bass guitar (played by producer Bob Rock, current four-stringer Robert Trujillo not having joined the band until after recording completed) is often lost in the roar of the drums and guitars, and the drums (the snare especially) have an odd, metallic ring to them that can be distracting occasionally. But in exchange, the emotions and power of these songs are driven directly into the listener, undiluted by radio-friendly sweetening.

St. Anger is the most collaborative effort might by the band to date (Hetfield, Ulrich, Hammett and producer Rock share songwriting credit on all eleven songs), but it truly shines as a showcase for legendary frontman James Hetfield. His lyrics bite and snap with energy not seen in a long time, effectively chronicling his battle with alcoholism "My lifestyle determines my deathstyle," he growls on the opener, "Frantic." The titular deity of the album's title track is sought as a method of channeling his rage constructively; as a masterful counterpoint, Hetfield draws references to some of their more violent earlier tracks: "Fuck it all and fuckin' no regrets / I hit the lights on these dark sets." On "The Unnamed Feeling," easily the record's highlight and one of the best songs the band has ever recorded, he moans, "I just wanna get the fuck away from me...I wanna hate it all away."

Hetfield's voice is a far cry from the last few albums -- slick double-tracking and crooning harmonies are tossed aside in favor of just letting the man sing the songs. It's a techinque that reminds me quite a bit of Nirvana's In Utero, where Kurt Cobain just stepped up the mic and screamed. As on that album, Hetfield's voice is delightfully unpredictable, wailing from growl to howl to shriek and back again. Sometimes, he overshoots his boundries, and when he does, he voice shatters with piercing emotion. It might not be MTV-sweet, but it's powerful as hell, and damn near moving at times.

I would say the album is a step back on track, but I don't think they were ever off track to begin with. I'll say that St. Anger is a fully rewarding experience, in every way. Metallica's gone through a lot in the last three years, and this their response -- an extended middle finger and a fist in the face. It's absolutely beautiful.

Memo to Godsmack, Mudvayne, Slipknot, and all the other "nu-metal" bands out there: this is how it's done.

Rating: *****

It's out there right now. Go get it. It even comes with a free bonus DVD featuring video of the band in rehearsals, playing all the songs from the record. So go on. You'll thank me.