Your reaction when you first heard Metallica's "St. Anger"

I didnt really care for it man. I felt like they were trying really hard to run away from st anger by trying really hard to remake justice and it just sounded contrived to me and I wasnt feelin it. I listen to ska though so take it with a grain of salt ya know
I hear you it's still near the bottom of the Metallica list for me. But I like it.
 
I was in 7th grade when load came out and I rather enjoyed the album. It wasnt lightning but it was sold and unlike st anger it actually sounded good . I still to this day play the house that jack built at the bar pretty often as one of my concession songs to the metal heads I drink Giraffe beer with
Load is a really good album. But without a doubt way different from previous work. House that a Jack Built kicks ass.
 
My immediate reaction was to put on master of puppets and lose myself in sanitarium.

Then forget St. Anger ever happened.
 
I don't recall ever listening to St. Anger. Metallica had been dead and buried for years by that point.
 
I recall thinking the song St. Anger was "OK" and that Frantic was AMAZING.

The rest of the album?

Meh.
 
It was better than I expected. I mean, the trend clearly shows that he albums were getting worse and worse. Still, it's a horrific album.
 
I didnt really care for it man. I felt like they were trying really hard to run away from st anger by trying really hard to remake justice and it just sounded contrived to me and I wasnt feelin it. I listen to ska though so take it with a grain of salt ya know
You hit the nail on the head. It sounded so contrived it seemed as if they just outsourced their songwriting to a bunch of teenage Metallica fans and said write some shit that sounds like us.
 
Once you understand what the band was going through while recording St. Anger you will somewhat appreciate the album a little more. Just remember the band rented a former army barracks back in January of 2001 turning into a makeshift studio. The band ended up postponing the recording process after bassist Jason Newsted quit the band on January 17th. They decided to include producer Bob Rock as the bassist for the upcoming album and would look to hire a new one upon completion of the record. However in July of 2001 James Hetfield ended up going to rehab for alcohol and other undisclosed addictions. Didn't return to the band until April of the next year and could only work on the album a few hours each day while he did outpatient rehab. There was a time between July 2001 and late 2002 where the band as a whole were in jeopardy of breaking up due to James going to rehab, coming out and not being able to give 100% to the group. The majority of the problem stems from Lars Ulrich wondering if James truly cared about being in the band and going forward.

As per the album James said ""There's two years of condensed emotion in this. We've gone through a lot of personal changes, struggles, epiphanies, it's deep. It's so deep lyrically and musically. [St. Anger] is just the best that it can be from us right now.". For me the problems I have with the album are below

1)Almost every single drags on a bit too long. They should have cut down the length of each song since they tend to sound repetitive
2)Lars Ulrich thinking it was a great idea to turn off the snare thus giving us the crappy tin can snare sound
3)Kirk being overruled in regards to solos thus the album having none whatsoever
4)Kirk and Lars writing lyrics, while not necessarily a bad thing in theory it just the final songs lyrically aren't that strong and it shows how both Kirk and Lars aren't the best in the lyrical department. I personally would have liked if while they did have input in the lyric department they just let James do the final writing of the lyrics.
5)The overall production quality of the album suffers because Bob Rock thought it would be great to give the production a raw, natural feel like a band recording in a garage. I mean there are some great albums that have that raw and unpolished feel to them and sadly St. Anger isn't one of them.

I however must say some songs like Frantic, The Unnamed Feeling, Some Kind Of Monster, and All Within My Hands are damn fine songs that I thoroughly enjoy
 
I thought that guy that re-recorded it did a better job haha
 
CONFESSION TIME

It was the first Metallica album I had ever heard the first time I heard it.
 
CONFESSION TIME

It was the first Metallica album I had ever heard the first time I heard it.

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I know... I know. IN MY DEFENSE, I was only born in '88 so... yea.

Me too though bro! Haha I was familiar with Black Album, but I was plopped in front of MTV all the time. But I remember St. Anger being pretty big for a little bit.
 
All i heard was a snare drum...that's all they let me hear. That abrasive, tinny snare drum.
 
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I wasn't even born for the first few albums so I don't have that emotional involvement with their earliest stuff. I know a lot of old school fans got super pissed when Load came out (no pun intended).

Yeah, Was pretty young for the first couple, but really started getting into music about the time AJFA came out.. in fact, it was the first cassette I owned in 1987. I was sort of into the Black album when it came out, but even that was disappointing.
 
I liked it, because I was like, 12 at the time and I had no idea what good Metal sounded like hahaha.

But as time went on, I realized what a piece of shit it was.

1982-1991 is the only Metallica I ever came to truly love.
 
The first time I heard it I loved it because it was really heavy (and maybe because I was really baked ha ha), after a few more listens i realised how repetitive and shit the album was.
 
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