Yesterday I went to my local music store to buy the new Metallica album St. Anger. Unfortunately, there was not a single cd anywhere, so feeling very dejected I returned home. I have listened to a lot of the songs though and I have got to say I am a little disappointed. The new album is good but I don't believe that it is anywhere near what I expected from Metallica. Even more disappointing I think that they have bought into the status quo of many bands today. There was a time where Metallica said they really didn't give a f**k if they didn't get played on the radio or if everybody hated them, I fear this may not be the case anymore. There was a time when this band was the standard for heavy metal now they seem to want to sound like the flavour of the week which some might classify as nu-metal. Honestly, they seem to sound more like some of the bands they will be touring with like Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit. My biggest compliant against this new album is the lack of lyrical complexity that they are usually known for, in fact the lyrics are quite repetitive. There is a lack of melody, harmonics and guitar solos. Let me elaborate. Lars' snare drum is awful and the symbals are far far too loud. The nice guitar riffs fairly simple and sound the same from each song to song. James singing is definitely not what I would expect either. I am a fan of their work in the 80's and this release seems to be aimed at teens who gobble up acts like Limp Bizkit (I am a teen btw) which is sad. Don't get me wrong I don't hate it all, Dirty Window and Sweet Amber are two of my favourites. However, I really don't know what to attribute this poor performance to exactly. I can think of a couple of reasons firstly, the departure of Jason Newstead. I am sure that Jason did contribute a lot to the sound of Metallica but I think his contribution was in some ways limited. I have heard Lars say before that Jason wasn't ever really treated like he was really part of the band and it actually surprised him that he stuck around for so long. So I am inclined to believe this isn't the reason. The second reason I can think of is the production of Bob Rock. Bob Rock is a great producer I think, but I think he has encouraged them to re-invent their style much like he did with bands like Our Lady Peace. But with not such great results, see a band like Our Lady Peace needed to re-invented, I'm not sure Metallica does. I have also heard that they didn't write anything but they just put the cd together from various 'jams', I think this might be a mistake too. Anyhow, I will still buy the new album, I plan to return next week when I have time and buy it. I would like to hear the opinion of other fans though.

To me, the thing that really makes this album sound bad is the drums. They are the worst sounding drums I've heard on a Metallica outside bootlegs. They are mixed near mono and just sound weak most of the time. The album sounds more like a 4-track demo than a studio album. Production aside, I think it's an OK album. Nothing really interesting. But I really dig the fact they included a DVD, I hope that's the start of a new trend with album releases. To me the live DVD sounds better than the actual studio recordings.

Very much disapointed.

I lost all respect for Metallica when they attended "MTV Icon", a show that was dedicated to honoring the band Metallica. I have no problem with bands being honored for their influence on todays music. I have no problem with a band getting a surprise tribute show. But when a band is so full of themselves that they attend their own tribute on purpose with plenty of advanced notice (which coincidently came just before their new single was released) and promoted this tribute for weeks, the term sell-out really comes to mind. Not to mention that this supposed return to their roots was pretty much a lie. Sure they are "heavy" again, but St. Anger is not a heavy metal song, it is worse then even the crap off of ReLoad (I actually liked Load). The riffs and drums don't flow in the typical Metallica tightness, the singing is downright awful, and there is not one solo.

Seeing them attend their own tribute show made me think of that "king of pop" Michael Jackson tribute show a few months ago that had him and others honoring how great he is, when he isn't nearly what he used to be.

except for the piss-poor mastering, I like the album, myself. With a bit of Cool Edit Pro's clip restoration, I feel a little safer turning it up now. I was afraid for my tweeters before that.

I heard St Anger downloaded from Internet - this album sucked so much that most of ppl told: ITS FAKE! We were sure that it was fake - Metallica "can`t" make such bad album...

Anybody BOUGHT album in store and think it sucks? Metaliica is one of leaders or evil RIAA so they could relase FAKE album to Net...

i only like the slow songs of metallica like unforgiven, one, nothing else matters and songs that still have a melody like enter sandman. actually i don't like any of these louder-harder-louder-harder bands and in my opionion the new album is just like that

there's not too much metal music i like

i like oldschool metal like led zeppelin but stuff like rage against the machine and audioslave. good guitar riffs and at least a melody not just playing the guiter as fast as possible as well as the drums with tripple ultra bass shit.

listening to kula shaker - Last Farewell right now

I prefer Voivod With Metallica's ex-bassist

A group coming from where I live

Newsted's in Voivod now?

<edit> /me throws on some Nothingface

Yes, Newsted is in Voivod now

he's tired of metallica. I understand why.

It's only us$10 here in Australia with a DVD that contains a live show so I was going to buy it however with the comments I have heard here I'm rethinking it.

BTW does it contain copy protection?

no copy protection on the one in Canada

besides the much discussed mastering (which consisted solely of glueing the raw streams together in Nero wav editor or whatever), the lyrics and songwriting are very emberrassing.

Not even for 5$ and 3 Bonus DVDs, sorry guys

Wow, thats really very surprising, no copy protection you would think they would have it for sure.

The impression I got from it after listening once through was that it was extremly tedious and boring. The first couple of songs had some interesting riffs, but it was downhill from there.

As far as production goes, it was bad as far as mainstream albums go but I guess I've gotten used to worse than that. The snare is a bit ringy, granted. I stopped noticing it. The vocals were certainly annoying, but again, I've heard and gotten used to much worse.

So... I wouldn't say it's terrible, but it's unexceptional and -- I want to say "disappointing" but I didn't really have high hopes for it in the first place.


EDIT: Death to redundancy.

Amazon.com review:


I still haven´t listened to the full St. Anger , but from what I´ve heard until now , it´s completely different to RTL.Where´s Fade To Black´s template? Where´s Creeping Death´s style showing in St. Anger?.Where are RTL´s title track solos?
RTL is full of unbelievably good solos and melodies!!
I can´t believe the way the drums sound , never thought Metallica drums would sound that way , I just don´t like it.

When (if) I have a chance to listen to the full album several times I´ll give a fair opinion , ATM I don´t like the drums sound and the full-aggro-no-melodies style of this album.Any "yo nu-metal band" can do that.But then again , when I first listened to Kill´em All I thought it was lousy and now after a thousand and one listenings I think it´s a great album.
I just don´t have many hopes on this one.

That would have definately been the final nail on Metallica's coffin...

I

lol

This is when you KNOW things are going downhill...

http://pocket.ign.com/articles/422/422534p1.html

Honestly, I think it sucks really, really, bad. Was that actually Hetfield trying to rap on one of the songs? Good grief...

Time for those guys to take up golf. And no, it's not copy protected

Edit: even I noticed the snare drum had a really bad ring, and usually don't notice things like that

I haven't heard the full album yet, but the songs I've heard on the local hard rock radio station haven't really impressed me. I feel Metallica was at the top of their game with "...And Justice For All" and it's been a slow down-turn since then, so I'm not surprised that Saint Anger isn't that great. Just my two cents.

Lol, no wonder,



Yes, I certainly can't disagree. I sort of thought too Saint Anger wouldn't be very good but you can always hope.

well, I don't know about anyone else, but I can't count how many times some band has released a new album and the majority of people I know that like past work from that band instantly dislike the new material...and then a month down the road they can't stop listening to it. It's the "this isn't exactly the same as the previous stuff" syndrome. Seriously, if you like any given band, listen to their latest album five times before you decide it's the worst crap you've ever heard. More times than not, if you've already been enjoying any of their music, you'll end up enjoying some of their new stuff too. Hearing a chorus once on the radio isn't going to give you much of an idea about anything, ya gotta hear it a few times in your favourite listening environment.

As a general statement, I fully agree here. Many albums that are now classics and considered masterpieces got their share of bad reviews and negative comments when they were released. And the comment "oh, <insert title of any previous album> was sooo much better" is also used quite often.

For example, anybody who owns the Shine On box by Pink Floyd can check the reviews of Dark Side of the Moon in the book: a lot of those are like "Pink Floyds earlier work is great, but this is pretty weak", etc...

Now, about this new Metallica album.

I haven't listened to the full album yet, but based on the title song I think the music itself is not that bad. I'm certainly glad Metallica decided to play long, fast and agressive heavy metal songs again (I've missed that for a long time).

However, the terrible mastering is simply unforgiveable. What the hell were they thinking ? I also think And Justice for All is somewhat ruined by poor mastering, but it's nowhere near as bad as this.

I've also read many times that there are no guitar solos on the album. What's up with that ? I love good guitar solos, and it used to be one of Metallica's strengths. Part of the reason why One is such a great song is the awesome guitar solo at the end.

My feeling is: the potential was there, but ultimately it is ruined by these bad points I've mentioned.

Lastly I want to mention that overall the critics don't seem to agree with the immense bashing the album received in this thread so far. If you look at MetaCritic, 7 of the 11 reviews (at the time I'm writing this) give a rating of at least 80%.

The bad ring I've been noticing in alot of 2002 and newer releases, it sounds to me like a crappy 128kbps mp3.

Yes.

Of course, now they are going to blame poor sales on piracy and P2P and not bad word of mouth.

Poor sales? Umm.

Billboard Album Charts

German LP charts

No comment...

They had a debut at #1, but they could easily fall down the Billboard rankings. Some albums that open at #1 stay on the Top 10 for several months, others fall off the Top 50 within weeks. I don't think "opening weekend sales" are as big a deal with music as with movies, but maybe that's because I pay absolutely no attention to music news. Let's see what happens to sales in a month, after all the die-hard Metallica fans have bought their copies...

it's not only metallica, which i'm sure will eventually bitch about how file-sharing is affecting the sales of their new album, but the entire recording industry

another small label in england closed down this month. it's called neo records (those of you who are into trance probably heard of it). anyway, here's what the owner had to say about the music business today

http://www.neorecords.com/epitaph.html

All this talk about bad mastering...

Makes you wonder if Bob trusted them to let them do it themselves =D

the liner notes mention Vlado Meller as who mastered it. Also says it was recorded and mixed by Bob Rock, assisted by Mike Gillies & Eric Helmkamp. Mike Gillies also gets digital engineering credit. <edit> What's weird is the mastering on the included rehearsals DVD is great, lots of dynamic range compared to the CD. Actually looks like music when you load it up in Sound Forge, heh.

Guess what... he's also responsible for the Red Hot Chili Peppers albums (at least "Californication" and "By The Way", both of which are ridiculously loud). Good thing this isn't my style of music...

the whole loudness issue is not always the fault of mastering engineers. in many cases today mastering facilities receive a project which is already too loud, and they're asked to make it even louder. they have to do it if they want to make money. if they won't do as the client asks, the client will just go to another mastering facility

outscape, yeah, we've been over that. It makes perfect sense that the engineer likely doesn't actually want to do that to the music, and that it's from a higher-up that the order comes in.

I've heard a little of St. Anger, and the snare drum does sound awful. But the mastering job on ...And Justice for All was also terrible. No bass whatsoever. It really had the worst kick drum sound I've ever heard on an album. The incessant click click click click of those terrible kick drums was almost enough to ruin the album for me.

Lack of bass is not the fault of mastering.

It's the fault of mixing, that's the process responsible for the actual EQing of the song (at least it should be). Mastering should just be the final touch that takes different mixed pieces, eliminates minor glitches, makes them sound as part of one album, etc.

I would find it hard to believe someone would actually alter EQ as part of mastering (e.g. adding more or less bass) as that would go counter to the vision the mixing engineer had for the overall sound (not that overcompressing it doesn't ruin that vision anyway).

But then that's the way I do it...maybe in the real world for commercial albums the mastering process is just a free-for-all where the mastering engineer can mess with the source input as much as he wants, regardless how the artist wanted it to sound.

AJFA sounds better than St. Anger all the way.The clicking bass drums are nothing compared to the awful sound of the snare drum on St. Anger.Plus the album is too loud.
Not to mention the music and lyrics....AJFA is much , much better.Great lyrics , great music.

Pretty sad...

My Tama's sound better than a touring professional musician.

Yeah. I've got a set of Yamaha Stage Customs and, since I live in a small town that's at least an hour away from the nearest drum store, I've had the same heads on for about four months. My snare head is so beaten, it doesn't even reverberate anymore. But it still sounds better than Lars's snare on St. Anger.

Hi. I am trying to rip this album so my son can put it on his player.

It rips well up until track 8 where I have timing and click problems similar to the other CDS discs I have purchased.

I will try and rip it on a lite-on drive and see if this works.

edit spelling

I wonder how many people are closing their eyes to what Metallica serves them...
I have this album for more than 1 year and I can tell you that besides the really bad production it's a piece of crap!
No memorable riffs, cool melodies, creative song structures, incredible musicmanship, ... It lacks every attribute that a good record holds!
Just comes into my ear and goes out, nothing honorable remains...
I gave that album more than 10 attempts but although I tried very hard (because I simply can't believe that their "back to the roots" trip is so pathetic) I must clearly say that this is the worst album Metallica ever created and I can't imagine it can be even worse...
Just my 2 cents...

Edit: Here in Czech Republic there's no copy protection on St. Anger! Very strange indeed...

There is a defect in the disk.Like a bubble in the plastic or something.

Why don't you return it?

Done