This album was touted as a return to the Metallica of old.
What we are in fact
presented with on St. Anger is a raw, stripped down amalgamation of
both the "old" and "new" Metallica; there is a naked honesty
about the recording that hearkens back to the early days, and savage riffs aplenty
("St. Anger" and "Frantic" especially), but there is also
a wicked, bluesy groove to songs like "Invisible Kid" that has obvious Load/Re-load influences.
However, although there are these high points, the band does tend to use all
their ideas up in the first 3 minutes of a song and then simply play them again
for no real reason. Which is annoying.
However, what saves the album from mediocrity and disappointment (by Metallica's
standards) is the track "Unnamed Feeling" - a dark, brooding snake
of a song that reverses the "loud chorus/quiet verse" formula to superb
effect. Overall, fair play to them for avoiding the over-compressed nu-metal
sound and recording themselves in such an honest way (how they pulled that off
with Bob Rock I'll never know). The album is a refreshing alternative to the
over-produced standards of today's metal, making a mockery of some supposedly "extreme" bands.
This album is raw, with all the good and bad things that entails.
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