St Anger 20 years later - better than we gave it credit for?

[Towelie]

Given it a couple more listens lately, and it's a lot better than I remembered it being. Thoughts?

Shoot Me Again, Purify, Some Kind of Monster and the title track are all great songs. I even quite like Frantic as an opener. 

[Rovim]

the last time Metallica tried to move forward artistically partly by conforming to the trends of the time imo, which is ironic. I think the album suffers from severe editing issues, it's not that there aren't good songs on there, at least for me, but many times parts are repeated in songs without really adding anything and it just make it feel tedious sometimes.

Lars tried something with the drum sound which didn't work for me, Kirk was not allowed to play solos maybe cause they were thinking about still being relevant which I feel took away from what it could have been. It's Metallica. I always want solos, even if Kirk is not the best lead guitar player in the world, it's an important part of the sound the way he plays.

I also think they needed more time in the studio to work on what they had, it doesn't sound like it's complete to me, but it's not a shit album and after that everything they've released has been ok, but kinda Metallica trying to impersonate themselves, or look to the past to try and replicate a combination of what worked best which is a shame. I remember James saying in an interview something like he didn't know how do you make an album like Master Of Puppets after the release of St. Anger and you could tell they didn't know where to go next.

Death Magnetic is very retro Metallica imo, good songs, but one of the impressive things about them in the first place was how they pushed their formula forward with their first 4 albums or did something new like making it more mainstream and slowing down the pace of some tunes in their genre, coming up with heavy shit like Sad But True for example. 

I'll reserve judgement until I get the chance to listen to their latest album, but even just the new single lacks the fire St. Anger had imo. There are still always at least a few songs I like in their post St. Anger period, but they just lost a lot of inspiration. 

Lulu was terrible I thought, S&M2 was bullshit, at least with St. Anger they really gave it a shot and came up with  more than a few songs I like. It's not a great album, but it's not that bad. 

[Cosmo]

It's a very bad album with a two good songs, IMO (St.Anger and The Unnamed Feeling), two ok songs (Frantic, SKOM) and the rest is basically trash. Some of those songs are embarrassing. I would never, ever release some of these  even as B-Sides for my band. That drum sound almost ruins the whole album and the obligatory no-solo rule for all of the songs suck. It should have been an "it doesn't have to have a solo" rule. Plus, most of the lyrics are horrible. I'd give it a 3/10. It's better than Lulu, though. But that's more Lulu's embarrassing failure than any merit from St.Anger's side. Death Magnetic and Hardwired are way better albums. I don't care if Metallica went back to their comfort zone. It seems like they should have never have left it lol 

Edited February 8, 2023 by Cosmo

[Tomek1985]

Remember when my big-M-fan high school friend trashed it when it came out. Tickticktick tock. Damn, it was a name for it to the very end of our friendship. Good old times. 

I do not listen to that album at all and it's still solid 2,5/10 for me. All that "we Hook up w all that prisoners and they were blasted with our songs" babbling was much bigger on itself than the whole album.

Edited February 6, 2023 by Tomek1985

[ZoSoRose]

It’s still a really bad record imo 

[Stay.Of.Execution]

Disgraceful album.

[EvanG]

Great album.