Review Summary: Kill! Kill! Kill, kill, kill, kill!
Truth is, if not for Metallica's late ‘90s output, I have always imagined the American band going towards something like Coroner have done on Grin. Maybe Machine Head, maybe even Fear Factory. Groovier, industrial, similar to their more recent album Death Magnetic, even. OK, that is a more recent album, but that groove was around in the ‘90s. As every fan knows about Load and ReLoad, the less commercial iteration of Metallica of that era never was to be. Now, I see there are a lot of defenders for that part of the band's history. However there are not that many defenders for what has happened after.
Their 2003 album St. Anger presents itself as a long, wannabe-cathartic album with an obsessive drive for free-form violence. As an album, it feels unfocused. The violence itself feels unfocused. It was the time of nu-metal bands, it is correct, but Metallica used to know better than that.
There are some good moments, like “The Unnamed Feeling” and “All Within My Hands”, but the dark mood and the sense of experimentation that were still present on ReLoad kind of lack here.. “St. Anger” is about… the anger, “Purify” makes a strong statement for freedom through violence.
IT is not a hard listen, it is just somehow not very engaging for an album that emphasizes so much the hatred, the desire for wreckage. It doesn't make these things conscious, either, like a punk album, it kind of complicates the things that should have been more direct, more hard-hitting. The middle part of the album is forgettable, but the first couple of tracks feel heavy in the right way. “Frantic” and “Some Kind of Monster” try and deliver the much-needed (?) teenage angst, but altogether the desire (and the failure) to fulfill that same angst becomes the weak spot on the release. I am sure they could have done something bigger with this sound, instead of going towards that center, dull spot. It’s not in the snares, either, at least they did the fair share of experimentation. It is in the feeling of that anger, which is not yet fully conveyed here. Really, I’d prefer what they did later, on Death Magnetic. Violence used to have a meaning for Metallica, and this album is not progressive, although it did its best to capture the sound of the day, it is not profound, although it could have been. After all, they have made, during their career, their allusions to war, to the occult, to mental illness, to death. They could have done it way better, but the final result is kind of puerile, childish. Metallica became the cartoon of Metallica.
For something even more cathartic and angry, one has to look into their early, early releases, including Kill ‘Em All, and to which St. Anger bares no comparison.
