Here it is: the album all mallcore bands look up to: St. Anger. For St. Anger, Metallica asked themselves: how can we make our reputation be even worse than it was when we a) Sold out in the 90s, b) cut our hair and wore eyeliner, or c) played with a full symphonic band. And the answer is St. Anger. It was 4:30 AM when I wrote this down on paper, and some of the scores may be affected by that. Read on:
I started at 4:30 trying to find my CD player, but i just finished the first track and opening statement of crapiness: "Frantic". Metallica pretends to be a tough-guy stale mallcore band, and I don't like it. I'll give it a 3.1. It's 4:35. Now I'm on my way to the second track, which is also a title track. I guess this is a long standing tradition in good Metallica albums, as showcased in progressive metal classics such as Master of Puppets and ...And Justice For All. Except that this isn't a good Metallica album, nonetheless is it a good song. Surprisingly, it had good potential: it has a pretty fair arrangement and a nice riff, but the underproduced sound never gives the resounding roar that "St. Anger" could have. Instead, it sounds like an overly long Nirvana outtake. I give it a 2.6. It's 4:42.
"Some Kind Of Monster." That is the name of St. Anger's third track. It is eight minutes of James Hetfield moaning "We the people/some kind of monster". It isn't good. I'm giving it a 0.0. But that's probably not going to be the only one. 4:50
Finally, a sign of life from an extremely stale album. "Dirty Window" is almost a serious thrash song, until the odd "eeyee" moans from Hetfield near the end of the song. Probably what Hetfield said when he heard the album. The score for the song is a 5.7. 4:56.
You know, if everyone thinks St. Anger sucks, is too long, isn't heavy enough, and can't sell, why does every rock fan (and most of all, hipster) have an opinion over it? What I mean, have all these haters bought the thing with their own money, or are they just bombarsting it with bad reviews beacuse it's the cool thing to do? This was my first Metallica album I ever owned. I graduated to own classics like Master Of Puppets, Load (well, scratch that as a classic), Ride The Lightning, ...And Justice For All, and Metallica. I actually bought this with my own money. Can't say the same for you though, punk.
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"Invisible kid/Never see what he did/got stuck where he did/fallen through the grid." Eight minutes. Of that. "Invisible Kid," the 5th song, gets goose eggs. 0.0. It's 5:04.
The lyrics for "My World are so laughably bad I think Metallica purposely made St. Anger suck. I mean, read these lyrics: "Mama, why's it raining in my room/cheer up boy clouds will move on soon; god it feels/like it only rains on me; It's my world/you can't have it/It's my world/sucker!" Yet the riffs and rhythm aren't too bad, and the song is respectable in length. A good (for this album) 5.1. It's 5:10.
"Shoot Me Again." Damn, it's getting late and tough to write this review: I got four (!) songs left. This is my favorite song on the whole album. Kirk Hammett has some room to experiment, while the rest of the album doesn't even have damn guitar solos. This is a really weird, arty (!!) song, and I'm sorta digging it. The lyrics are still absolutely unforgiveable, however. Ah, well, St. Anger won't give you anything good without a fight. A very good (!!!) 8.1. My clock says 5:17.
St. Anger is just taunting me now. I only have three songs left, yet it feels like I have a hundred. This is simply mindless torture. You can hear Metallica kind of trying new things, being their best art rock band they can be. But who am I kidding, there's nothing arty about Anger's eighth track, "Sweet Amber." It just plainly sucks. 3.1 for that track. It's 5:22. I'm hungry.
It's 5:30, and now I believe I can do this thing. Track nine is "The Unnamed Feeling," and the lyrics, production, bongo drums, screechy vocals, and simple bass all suck. I could go into detail on how these songs repeatedly reach such a high level of suckiness so easily, or i could quote some ***ty lyrics, but it's just too late. I'll give out my third goose egg out. Does Hetfield think by saying *** a couple times people will forget how bad his music is? Has he been talking to Trent Reznor again? 0.0. Easily.
"Purify," the second-to-last song (yay!) and tenth track of St. Anger, is a mind-boggler. It's delightfully raw, it hols nothing back, it has the same spirit of the 80's classics- but the lyrics suck, and the song is boring. Huh? I'm shaking because it's so late (5:36) and I'm exhausted. Barely can write. I'm listening to "All Within My Hands" right now. I'll give a 2.3 to "Purify" because its weirdness prevents it from getting a 0.0. Yeah, I'm tired. Does it matter?
God, I got up at seven in the morning. I'm a minute away from finishing the last song, "All Within My Hands" right now. It ends with Hetfield screaming "KILL, KILL, KILL" repeatedly. Ooooh, how scary. It's eight minutes long. It's craptacular. I'm giving it a 10.0 because it's the last song on St. Anger. I finished at 5:45. I'll calculate your final score in the morning. Good night.
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Okay, it's 11:00 in the morning, and it's time to give my final score for St. Anger. Only I'm going to do it a little different than usual. Since this album is in no way a cohesive unit (the songs aren't even cohesive units), it's okay for me to average out my scores I gave for each individual track. I am never doing this again. Now, after six hours of hard work, I give you, and St. Anger, the final score. And that score is...
3.6/10.0
There ya go, there's the final score for St. Anger. I actually LIKE Metallica too, but there's just no plausible ***ing reason an album can be this bad. Now that I think about it, "All Within My Hands should of gotten a 0.0. Whatever. Good night.
