The official St. Anger review and thoughts thread!!
 

Use this thread to discuss the actuall album and the individual songs and your favorite songs and even rank the songs.
Since some got theirs today, I thought I'd start it a few days early.

Das, you didn't jump to conclusions... until 48 hours ago, you were 100%correct. The date was June 10th.

Elektra announced the change just this past Monday

I know I'll be at Best Buy tomorrow morning at 10 AM to get it for $9.99.

can everyone please quit the "what thread does this thread belong in?" crap and just discuss st. anger , please?!!!

the point is moot because I AM LISTENING TO IT RIGHT NOW!!! i picked it up at best buy in NYC on 6th & 23rd at lunch today (Wednseday...June 4!!!). I found it in the "Metallica" section of the regular cd section, not on the special area for the pre-release.

it's really raw. long songs. cool packaging. great booklet (smaller in size than the normal cd booklet, but alot of pages & cool artwork). free dvd, special code to the web that allows you to go to hours of other footage.

the music. so far, not all that metal. kind of a raw danzig or something, the fast parts are just very repetitive, and not that interesting, no fast melodies like in master of puppets, etc.

i'll review more later, i'm only on "my world" track 6 of 12.

I must be the only one who liked the St. Anger song. Hopefully, amazon ships tomorrow.

Well it officially comes out today!

Prediction: There will be tons of these on eBay and Half.com in a week.

This album sucks. It's not even the songwriting that is bad, at least from what I can tell. Problem is, the sound is s***. I can't believe an album in 2003 can sound this horrible. It sound like someone recorded it in a basement onto a tape recorder. There MAY be some really good riffs on here, but the fast riff parts are so jumbled you can't even tell. There is no crispness to the guitar at all, just a monotonous mess. And that damn high-pitched snare drum. Please make it go away. If they were intentionally going for this type of sound, then it didn't pay off at all. So much for what was supposedly a classic sounding Metallica album.

I can't say how weak this release is.

I agree with the sound comments. There is some good riffage but the audio on this release is freakin' horrible. Probably one of the worst sounding releases I have ever heard. The high pitched snare drum is the hugest problem. Damn thing is in every song.

[walken]This album needs more cowbell, I mean high pitched snare drum[/walken]


The Robert Johnson blues recordings from the '30's sounds better than this recording.

I like it a lot. I guess I'm in the minority.

Well, the white stripes album that came out this year was recorded on old dated sound equipment.

But it didn't sound like s***!!!

Well, I guess I have to wait and here it for my self since your and my opinion of souding like $hit could be completly different.

Also, has anyone heard the dvd yet? How does that sound, i heard that they did live versions on the dvd?

True, but what I've read on this and other boards, if you didn't think it sounded like s***, you would be in a minority. But to each his own.

I don't think it sounds like ****... it is VERY RAW but I don't mind it. I think the album is very decent and hopefully with a few more listens it will only get better...

MATT

"raw" does not mean "make the drums sound Calipso and turn them up way louder than anything else". I prefer my music raw, this is just badly mixed.

The DVD has a slightly better mix.

I can kinda see how you might not like the sound quality, but the comments about the drums being louder than the guitar? I just don't get that. I think they're pretty even. There are parts where the drum is very pronounced, but I don't think its that bad at all.

I tend to agree about the snare, but it doesn't bother me.

Overall, out of 10 stars, I'd give it 6 1/2. For reference, I give Justice 10, black album 5 1/2, Masters 9, RTL 8. Load and Reload about a 3.

It seems like its that the drum is the middle track and the guitar, bass, and vocal are on the right and left. Maybe this is how the band wanted it to be mixed. Plus, they didn't use any studio effects so maybe thats the reason for the sound.

after ONE listen...

my top 5:
FRANTIC
ST. ANGER
SOME KIND OF MONSTER
SHOOT ME AGAIN
UNNAMED FEELING

as for my comments...well NO COMMENT [yet]

After one listen, there were a lot of unexpected changes I wasn't ready for.

After two listens, I'm more in tune with the whole thing and really like it. My World is probably my favorite right now.

I am eagerly awaiting MetallicaVault.com to open. There are three full concerts (all downloadable on mp3) from the 90s going up initially, and they want to put over 100 hours of music up there by the end. They've really outdone themselves with this package. A cool way to get people to buy music again.

I thought the title song was pretty much crap. When I first heard it on the radio I didn't like it much, but figured I'd give a couple more listens. The local station plays it quite a bit so I've heard it a few times. I think the sound quality is horrible. A lot of (unintentional?) distortion and the vocals always seemed unneccessarily loud. The lyrics were pitiful and the background shouting sounded awful. The song just sounded so generic and uninspired.

But, I figured I wouldn't judge the whole album on one song -- so I'll wait to hear the rest.

The albums kicks ass!!! I dont think this album is targeted towards old farts in mullets who still sport their Master of Puppets T-Shirts. With that in mind, it truly is a great album for the rest of us.

I like the mixing, its makes it seem more true and raw.

So far I've listened to the first 3 songs and they are excellent.

The vocals are good but the lyrics are bad. The mixing is good, the music is excellent.

I'll get more into it a little later.

I think my favorite currently is Dirty Window. Unnamed feeling is good too.

also, guys, don't forget to vote as well. I am really likeing this album and I for one think its up there with master and lightning. And if for what ever reason you get the edited version, the only songs that will get edited is st. anger and shoot me again (so far)

Ok after second listen... WOW this album is fkn REAL GOOD!

I put my vote down, ***** a classic

AGREE!
yeah stop this S _ T... It's not the 80''s no more, it will never be like that, if it was then they would have not lasted this long and not be this good... It's still METALLICA!!! and it FKN ROCKS!

Its got a modern sound to it with an 80's speed metal type guitar.

rotfl

its funny, because its so true! :lol:

That would be great if I could hear the guitar. One thing great about Metallica was that no matter how fast, the guitar was always crisp and you could distinguish every note. The guitar on this album is just a muddy mess. I wish I could hear it.

Maybe your speakers were messed up or something else since I could understand each guitar note (with even cheap maxwell headphones.)

Well, considering I listened to it on the same stereo that I listened to all other Metallica albums on (and they sounded very clear), I doubt that's it. Numerous others have remarked about shabby sound quality as well, so I don't think it's me.

If the rest sounds like St. Anger, then I probably am an old far. I knew it would happen eventually. :)

3 people Recommend Britanny Spears over the new album at Amazon. :)

I still have to hear it, but Amazon doesn't have samples yet.

I've never seen a record with so much hatred on one side and so much love on the other side in this forum. Sucks being at work because Im dying to hear what all this fuss is over!

I like it better after watching the dvd. Can't beat the price 9.99 for a cd and a dvd of every song.

Some of the riffs remind me of Fight

Review form Rolling Stone:

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/...sp?aid=2046700

4 stars


Metallica released the best-selling album of their career, 1991's Black Album, in the middle of an identity crisis. That same year Nirvana released Nevermind, a disc that immediately made the previous decade's worth of metal seem kitschy and outdated. Even while outselling the albums on which Metallica built their fan base in the Eighties, the Bay Area quartet spent much of the last decade trying to rediscover how to rock -- fighting Napster, losing bassist Jason Newsted, watching singer James Hetfield go into rehab and alienating plenty of loyal fans along the way.
No wonder there's an authenticity to St. Anger's fury that none of the band's rap-metal followers can touch. Across seventy-five-plus minutes of savage but intricate structures that recall those pre-Black glory days, Metallica go back to their brutal essence. There's no radio-size, four-minute rock here, no pop-friendly choruses, no ballads, no solos, no wayward experimentation. Recorded with longtime producer Bob Rock on bass, this is loud, expansive, unrepentant Metallica.

Although it was written and recorded in the studio, St. Anger barely resembles a studio album. The raw sounds on the throttling opening cut, "Frantic," are essentially the same raw sounds that are heard throughout the next ten tracks, as if the band members focused solely on playing off one another, not the mixing board, and were too busy to notice that the snare drum annoyingly goes ping instead of snap. Rock's bass is mixed way down in a blare of guitar-and-drums midrange that recalls 1988's . . . And Justice for All -- over him, the band hammers out its signature staccato stops-and-starts and multiple tempo and key changes like three angry fingers on the same fist. It's a rush to be pummeled by this group again.

Despite the songwriting help from drummer Lars Ulrich and guitarist Kirk Hammett, St. Anger chronicles Hetfield coping with recovery's ugly truths. He's still ornery, still defensive and still sometimes overselling his rage. On the final track, "All Within My Hands," he sings, "Love is control/I'll die if I let go," and the album ends with him screaming, "Kill! Kill! Kill!" seemingly unable to forgive himself or others as sobriety demands, stuck in the same dark childhood place he's always struggled to escape. It's a closing that puts an uneasy spin on the album's return-to-basics approach and makes it seem more of a masterful retreat than a fully victorious breakthrough into new territory.

Now that ex-Suicidal Tendencies bassist Rob Trujillo has completed the lineup for the band's upcoming tour, St. Anger already feels like a piece of Metallica's history, something they had to do in order to hold themselves together, bring back the old fans and prove their mettle to the kids. There's a happiness to its wrath, along with the fluency that comes with reclaiming old ground. If that's ****ed up and facile, then so be it.

ok, now that I've heard the WHOLE album from front to back, I can make a better opinion of it.

It's not that bad! Besides the annoying drums (which you either get used to or it goes away as the album goes on), the only thing that really bugs me about it is the CD slips into a paper slot in the cover. I've taken my disk out twice and it's ALREADY SCRATCHED UP! Thankfully I can make a backup of it later tonight (I hope).

The songs are good and I think this album is to Metallica is what "God Hates Us All" was to Slayer. You can tell this is Metallica and they do seem to be "going back to their roots" but at the same time are doing something different. Of course it doesn't even compare to "Ride The Lightning" or any of their first 4 albums, I'm happy with the purchase. Best thing they've done (with original songs) since "Justice".

Just got the CD, so my comments are based on a my very first impressions:

- Audio Quality of the CD is bad, criminally bad. It sounds like a copy of a copy.
- The muisc is good. I really like some of the driving drum beats and guitar riffs. This is both a step forward and a look back for Metallica as they revisit some of their classical harder stuff with a very new take
- Lyrically it's just awful. There are so many bad lyrics and many of the songs just don't flow well lyrically.

I just popped in both the CD and the DVD and the sound quality is much better on the DVD. Much criper and less muddy.

The CD sound is so bad I did think about returning it, and if it weren't for the DVD I probably would.