Johnny Loftus, All Music Guide

Metallica's first new material in over five years arrives after a flurry of non-musical activity that included a much-publicized spat over Internet file sharing, the departure of bassist Jason Newsted, and a lengthy stay in rehab for James Hetfield that suspended the recording of a new album indefinitely. Hetfield returned to the fold in late 2001. Still without a bass player, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and their newly sober frontman recruited longtime producer Bob Rock to man Newsted's spot, and creation of the album commenced in May 2002. St. Anger arrived a year later as a punishing, unflinching document of internal struggle — taking listeners inside the bruised yet vital body of Metallica, but ultimately revealing the alternately torturous and defiant demons that wrestle inside Hetfield's brain. St. Anger is an immediate record. Written largely in the first person, it never warns of impending doom, doesn't struggle with claustrophobia, and has care neither for religion's safety nor its hypocrisy. (The religious symbolism of its title and artwork seems only to function as a metaphorical device.) Lacking the heavy metal baggage of these past themes, Metallica is left to ponder only itself and its singer's psychosis, and delivers its diagnosis on slabs of speed metal informed with years of innovation and texture. The record exists as it ends. As the lockstep thrash of the eight-plus minute "All Within My Hands" tumbles toward its final gasp, Hetfield is explicit in his aims. "I will only let you breathe my air that you receive," he seethes. "Then we'll see if I let you love me." Ulrich's drums sputter in fits and starts, but the guitars are already dying, shutting down as Hetfield stabs at the microphone. "Kill Kill Kill Kill Kill," he screams, and you have to check the wall for a splatter radius. It's a brutal, ugly end to an album that switches on like a bare light bulb in an underground cave. It blasts each corner with harsh, unfiltered light for 75 minutes, until the bulb is shattered with a combat boot, leaving disquieting after-images exploding on the backs of your eyelids.
"Frantic" is driven forth by a snare drum that just may be made of iron, Hammett and Hetfield's guitars eschewing separate parts in favor of a roaring tag-team approach. A hint of the band's mid-'90s nod to alternative drifts in during a bridge, but it's quickly swallowed alive by the song's muscular groove, never to be heard from again. "St. Anger," the single, marks the first appearance of a vocal technique that lurks in the shadows throughout the album. As Hetfield groans, "I feel my world shake/It's hard to see clear," he seems manipulated by an unseen force, flickering like bad reception. It's unsettling, and startlingly effective. Hetfield's psyche is on trial throughout, and though he often expresses confusion and anger over his struggle ("Some Kind of Monster" and especially "Dirty Window," in which he becomes both judge and jury), the mechanistic rhythms of the band seem to give him strength. "Shoot Me Again" — another seven-minute epic — becomes Hetfield's sneering answer to himself. It lurches into gear, juxtaposing a deceptively soothing verse with a dirty guitar line that explodes in the song's titular money shot. The resonating cymbal cracks during its stops and starts are particularly satisfying, as you can imagine the members of Metallica facing each other in a circle, jamming the song's jagged melody down the throat of a solitary microphone. (The image comes to life in St. Anger's bonus DVD edition, which captures Hetfield, Hammett, Ulrich, and new bassist Robert Trujillo in their headquarters compound, shredding through each song on the album in its entirety.) St. Anger isn't a comeback, and it's not a throwback. The album is exactly what Metallica needed to make at this point in its career, after clawing its way to the top of the metal scrap heap, reeducating a generation of bands, and popularizing its genre beyond anyone's expectations. St. Anger looks inward with a hard eye, and while it finds some grinning demons in that pit, it also unearths some of the sickest grooves of Metallica's 20-plus year lifespan.

 Jaan Uhelszki, Amazon.com

Never underestimate the regenerative powers of Metallica. Following the stripped-down Load and Re-Load, they've returned to the raw, vitriolic savagery of their earlier canon, using 1984's Ride the Lightning as a template for St. Anger. The title track provides the psychic lynchpin of the album by combining the bombast and defiance of the band's earliest high-water marks with more deliberate lyrics and emotional nakedness. Equally cathartic is "Some Kind of Monster," a lumbering beast of a song that declares, "This is the voice of silence no more." Despite that claim, there's an economy to these lyrics; James Hetfield's raw-toothed growl only occasionally punctuates the menacing soundscapes. In fact, "Dirty Windows," the standout track here, is a shimmering five-minute instrumental that's free of the baroque trappings that sometimes clutter the Metallica landscape.

Album Description
Also included is a bonus DVD featuring a down n’ dirty live-in-the-studio performance of every track on the album. Never before has an artist designated a live DVD performance of a new album to simultaneously accompany its new studio release. CD produced by Bob Rock.
 

David Sprague, Barnes & Noble

It's been said that you can't go home again, that it's impossible to truly get back to your roots once you've evolved to another state -- but this two-decade-old thrash juggernaut does its best to prove that adage false on this purposefully abrasive, sometimes downright ugly collection. St. Anger isn't exactly a return to the sound of, say Ride the Lightning or Kill 'Em All, but it is a pretty close approximation of the emotional tone of Metallica's early albums. On St. Anger's title track -- which, like many of the cuts here, edges close to the eight-minute mark -- James Hetfield revels in apoplectic rage, while he and Kirk Hammett tussle with riffs that stop, start, and stutter rather than bulldoze straight ahead. The doomy "Dirty Window" lurches ahead in a similar manner, cleaving Sabbath-esque minor chords with some straight-outta-the-sepulchre vocals from Hetfield. The disc is swathed in something of an odd mix, with snare drum cutting to the bone of many songs and an unaccustomed layer of grit atop the guitars -- "Frantic" and the slide-laden "Sweet Amber" scrape with a gravelly tone that's seldom cropped up before in the notoriously clean confines of Metallica-land. There's a neo-industrial vibe to "Purify," which ratchets up the tension with a passel of false endings and an alternately funereal and thrashing machine-age rhythm bed. Some of the experimenting doesn't pan out -- notably "Some Kind of Monster," which creeps a little too far into Korn's field -- but overall, St. Anger packs a lot of meat, and plenty of motion, into its 70-odd minutes of primal screaming.

Amy McAuliffe, BBC

Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tock...
Summer 2002. The Metallica camp is in chaos. Bassist Jason Newstead has departed under a heavy cloud. Singer/guitarist James Hetfield is in rehab. The future of the band that blueprinted modern Metal as we know it is in doubt...

Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tock...
Summer 2003: Thanks to the gritted teeth of Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammett, and the vision of producer Bob Rock, Metalllica return with one of the most awesome rock records of the decade.

From the punishing percussive assault of the title track to the all-out thrash of "My World" ('I don't even know what the question is...'), St. Anger demonstrates a return to form that could bring tears to the eyes of even the most hardened Metaller.

Bob Rock was clearly busy while Hetfield was 'recuperating'. Gone is the bombastic production that typified Metallica. In its place is an overall sound that's more akin to the raw and loose vibe prevalent on later Soundgarden and Alice In Chains cuts, with enough of a nod to johnnies-come-lately such as Amen to satisfy even the newest of Nu-Metal fans.

Some of the close vocal/guitar interplay might even have Steve Albini reaching for his copyright book such is the pared-down, right-up-in-your-FACE nature of the production on St. Anger.

Don't forget kids while Bros were storming the UK charts in 1985, the Lica were re-writing the Book of Modern Metal. Any nod on this record to any band that's come since is the aural equivalent of Metal Fencing Linkin Park might thrust, but Metallica parry and kill.

Don't waste their time. These are Veterans of the Rock Wars, and boy does it show. The animal rage Hetfield confronted during rehab is here for all to hear, backed up by the sonic storm of bandmates who, truth be told, actually wanted to kill him for flaking out on the best Metal band since Black Sabbath.

Metallica haven't sounded so good or mean since ...And Justice For All. St. Anger spanks the ass of Nu-Metal and sends it back to school. Metallica are the Daddies, and don't you ever doubt it baby.

Metallica: James Hetfield (vocals, guitar); Kirk Hammett (guitar); Rob Trujillo (bass); Lars Ulrich (drums). Additional personnel: Bob Rock (bass). Recorded at HQ, San Rafael, California between May 2002 and April 2003. "St. Anger" won the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance.

While LOAD and its sequel RELOAD, Metallica's final studio offerings of the '90s, found the band expanding their approach in what fans called "maturation" and detractors called "mellowing out," the band's first album of the 21st century is a powerful retrenchment and call-to-arms for the heavy metal faithful. Not since the bygone days of MASTER OF PUPPETS (and perhaps not even then) has Metallica sounded this furiously unrelenting. There's virtually no letup from the frenetic musical mayhem of the appropriately titled ST. ANGER, and nary a power ballad in sight, as the guitars blare and drums rage from one gut-assaulting tune into the next at a breakneck pace. One is reminded of the pure sonic fury of vintage Motorhead, the only band before Metallica to convincingly combine metal tonalities with punk energy. The brilliantly clear production is a blessing that maximizes every bone-crunching riff and jackhammer drum hit for an intensified sucker-punch that will leave even longtime fans reeling with the sheer heaviness of it all. ST. ANGER is surely one of the most effective metal albums of the early '00s, and a bracing lesson for all the nu-metal brats on how it's meant to be done.

Amy Sciarretto, CMJ New Music First

St. Anger isn’t Remastering Of Puppets. The propaganda surrounding St. Anger — and there was a fuck “load” of it — claimed Metallica was returning to its metal roots. While it doesn’t sound like the “Three” Horsemen channeled Cliff Burton’s soul via a Ouija board, St. Anger does combine elements of …And Justice For All, ’Tallica’s last metal album, and Load, its most commercial release. The album is centered upon Lars Ulrich’s hyper-blast snare drumming, which sounds like he’s pounding on trashcans. The tinny percussion is pitted against James Hetfield’s clean vocals, which — obviously a result of his newfound sobriety — feature less of the trademark whiskey-soaked snarl that fans have grown accustomed to. All this is juxtaposed against sludgy Homo erectus riffs of the Sabbath/Kyuss variety, most notably on “Monster” and “My World.” There are no guitar solos, yet there are plenty of “false endings;” on certain tracks, listeners will be led to believe that a song is ending as it fades out, then the band launches unexpectedly into another set of Barbarian (but not ultra fast) guitars. Ultimately, St. Anger is intentionally messy and raw; it sounds like a lot of money was spent making it sound like not a lot of money was spent making the album. The verdict: St. Anger is heavy ’n’ hard, just not in a 1985 kinda way.

Simon Ward, Dotmusic, June 11, 2003

It's hard to believe that Metallica almost went their separate ways following bassist Jason Newsted's departure. For years, this seemingly rock solid 'band of brothers' have constantly clocked up the sales and the miles without the bitter personnel disputes that marked their early days. But at a price it seems.

So 'St Anger' sees them once again fall back on the trusted multi-platinum hands of Bob Rock at the production desk (and filling in on bass duties following Newsted's exit). To those looking for clues as to the album's direction though, the choice of producer is a red herring - there ain't any stadium anthems to be found amongst these 75 minutes of music. Instead, this is the sound of Metallica drawing back into themselves and their history.

Opener 'Frantic' sets the agenda, with the kind of stop-start, grinding riffing and breakneck drumming that made the band's name. "My lifestyle determines my deathstyle" bellows James Hetfield and the tone is set. 'St Anger' itself has a frenetic chorus that sounds like it's come straight out of the Bay Area circa 1983.

What's immediately striking about Metallica's sound this time around is the lack of soloing. Instead of flexing his fingers, Kirk Hammett is now doubling up with Hetfield to provide riffs so heavy you could chew on them for a week. Melody is mainly eschewed in favour of brute force. 'Invisible Kid', a typical Metallica ode to alienation, is a good case in point albeit with some sixth-form poetry attached: "Invisible kid/Never see what he did/Got stuck where he hid/Fallen through the grid".

Yet amongst the hell-for-leather bombast there are some subtler moments. 'Some Kind of Monster' begins with a flowing drum groove, while 'St Anger' itself has a quiet, bass-led part before the thunder rolls in again. But these are exceptions to the black cloud that rules over these 11 tracks. Take the furious 'Purify', with Hetfield spitting out the words as the guitar and drum shrapnel flies around him. Fittingly, the album ends with Hetfield shouting "kill" repeatedly as the final aural blows are administered.

'St Anger' is Metallica at their most raw, 11 songs designed to flay bedrooms and moshpits the world over and sales figures be damned. It may not make them any new fans but it might persuade some old converts to return to the cause. And while the stop-start juggernauting becomes repetitive at times and the songs could benefit from some editing (self-censorship has never been Metallica's forte), it reaffirms that they can still make this kind of music 20 years on from their brutal debut album. Job done then.

Talk about Anger management. After the reactionary Load and Reload found rock's grumpiest guys struggling to keep up with the alternative nation, they've come stomping back, ready to reclaim their position as masters of the genre. And they couldn't sound happier about it--or are they really pissed? While St. Anger doesn't go back to the speedy, epic-crafting days of yesteryear, it's all balls: bad-ass rock and blistering, visceral lyrics (a sample: "my lifestyle determines my deathstyle"). Fresh-outta-rehab frontman James Hetfield has plenty to rant about--the disc is 75 minutes long--and he chomps his way through his issues, chewing up lesser rock bands and spitting them out along the way. The lengthy disc will leave some with a headache. Rock fans, however, will find their prayers answered.

Mike Ross, JAM! Music / Edmonton Sun, June4, 2003

Metallica has obviously tried very, very, very hard to make an album that sounds wild and raw. What fans will get instead with St. Anger - in stores tomorrow - is a cluttered snapshot of heavy metal dinosaurs in turmoil and peril. The big money, the big egos, the lawsuits, the disgruntled former bass player, the lead singer in rehab - it all must've taken a terrible toll.

This is not to say that the resulting music is bad. It at least passes the minimum tensile strength test of heavy metal - it's fast and sounds better the louder it is. Is it heavy? Oh, yes, it is heavy. The songs are filled with thick, distorted guitar sludge and plenty of percussive bombs, thanks to Lars Ulrich's drums so high and proud in the mix. Ulrich is really the star, after all. This is actually heavier than a lot of what Metallica has done before - but at what cost? Memorable melodies are lacking, lyrics are confused and sometimes little more than a series of convenient rhymes and the songs generally plow on long after they've made their point. Overall, St. Anger comes off as an overworked and overwrought attempt to make the ultimate heavy metal "epic."

Of course, this is just my gut reaction, based on a quick once-through listen at the record company office yesterday. It could grow on me. However, I am not prepared to let it grow on me as long as Metallica took to get around to making it - six long years since the last studio release. Here's a more in-depth look at St. Anger:

FRANTIC: Machine-gun cadence opens a song that lives up to its name. Singer James Hetfield starts with a pertinent question, "If I could have my wasted days back, would I use them to get back on track?" Album generally goes downhill from here - but it's a long and bumpy hill.

ST. ANGER: Must be the patron saint of, well, anger. With at least four different rhythmic sections jarringly shifting into one another - including that old double-time, double-kick drum pounding - this song is a fine headbanger, but ends up the victim of its own excesses. Song is either about the joys of letting go or the sorrows of hanging onto one's anger. Perhaps it's vice versa.

SOME KIND OF MONSTER: Apparently about some kind of monster. After crashing through the walls and breaking all the good china, this shambling track quickly wears out its welcome.

DIRTY WINDOW: Amongst the fast metal riffs in another three-chord wonder, Hetfield is in a dark and confused place. From rattling off a list of pointless words - "projector, protector, rejector, infector, defector, injector" and so on - he ends up drinking "from the cup of denial," judging the world "from my throne." Don't have a clue.

INVISIBLE KID: Here's a cry for help from a passive-aggressive teen, set to the tune of a sinister, mid-tempo riff that should have heads a-bangin'. Like the simpler material on St. Anger, and there's isn't much, this song is one of the strongest.

MY WORLD: Another troubled youth empowerment anthem - "It's my world/you can't have it!" - framed in another jumble of rhythmic shifts.

SHOOT ME AGAIN: Think John Wayne's tough hombre from the movie The Cowboys. A man gets shot but won't fall down, taunting his shooter to "shoot me again!" The guy gets pretty angry about it, too. The Duke would've liked this one.

SWEET AMBER: A fast double-kick drum and giant guitar riffs set the stage for a tale of a woman who's not so sweet after all. Not exactly a song for the ladies.

THE UNNAMED FEELING: It's that dark place again - could be a sleepless night during a particularly difficult step on the 12-step program. Hard to say. This mid-tempo grinder with gothic overtones fails to answer the question, what is the unnamed feeling? Don't know. It's unnamed.

PURIFY: Some excellent anger here. Pare away the choppy noodling and there's a fine rocker lurking within. Hetfield howls the praises of "my sweet turpentine" before declaring, "I can find the dirt on anything." Perhaps it's Metallica's version of Lady Macbeth's plea, "Out, damn spot!"

ALL WITHIN MY HANDS: Nice and fast and yes, quite angry, though it gets tedious long before it lurches to a halt. "Love is control, I'll die if I don't let go," Hetfield spouts a confusing sentiment before describing various things one can do within one's hands: kill, crush, squeeze, choke, and so on. Share your feelings, people.

Ian Watson, New Musical Express

Metallica spent most of the nineties, they admit now, thinking that fast, aggressive metal was "old hat". 1996's 'Load' and its twin 'Reload' saw the band experimenting with blues and country; 1998's covers collection, 'Garage Inc', featured a slew of hardcore punk tunes and a Nick Cave song; 1999's 'S&M' was a collaboration with The San Francisco Symphonic Orchestra. They even cut their hair and started wearing make-up. Meanwhile, nu-metal conquered a world eager for a crossover hit to rival the mighty 'Enter Sandman'.

It's taken a nine week spell in rehab for singer James Hetfield, and the loss of bassist Jason Newstead, for The World's Greatest Heavy Metal Band to come to terms with what they truly are. They've been through countless traumas - the death of original bassist Cliff Burton in 1986, what appears to have been a midlife crisis for Hetfield, plus the pressures of being the planet's most innovative rock group - and each setback has resulted in Metallica stepping away from the truth, retreating to world where they can experiment and not feel any pain.

Now, though, the slate's been wiped clean. Newstead, a constant reminder of the loss of Burton and always punished for it, has gone. Hetfield's sorted through his insecurities, finding strength in the realisation that there's a difference between sadness and depression. And with a new bassist Robert Trujillo, formerly with Suicidal Tendencies and Ozzy Osbourne, injecting a fresh sense of purpose, Metallica can finally face up to what everyone else has known all along: that anger is their lifeblood, their motivation, their ultimate saviour.

Hence the title. Named after the St Christopher pendant that Hetfield was given in 1984, 'St Anger' is Metallica setting themselves up as the patron saints of rage. Anger isn't just used as an outlet and energy here, but romanticised as a full-bloodied emotion. The title track is a love song to anger itself, the pivotal line "I want my anger to be healthy" just on the right side of self help, while elsewhere there's the feeling in its many righteous hues: the slow burn of resentment through to the flashpoint of defiance.

Musically, the songs are a stripped back, heroically brutal reflection of this fury. You get the sense that, as with their emotional selves, they've taken metal apart and started again from scratch. There's no space wasted here, no time for petty guitar solos or downtuned bass trickery, just a focussed, relentless attack. 'Dirty Window' could almost be a demo, hewn straight from granite. 'Frantic' rages with the catharsis of walls being demolished. Lars' recent summation says it all: "No fucking shit this is heavy metal!" What makes Metallica the greatest metal band of all time, though, is the fact that, despite this focus, 'St Anger' is not a simple album. Each song mutates and heads off in a new direction at the exact point lesser mortals would finish up. It takes 73 minutes to play 11 tracks, stretching time and endurance, until you have an immense statement of superiority. Nu-metal minnows, you may return to your cubbyholes. The true masters have finally awakened from their slumber.

Ethan Brown, New York Magazine

A post-rehab record is sure to be unlikable, more off-putting than even a musician’s late-career discovery of Eastern spiritualism or electronic music. The rehab record always features pop’s least appealing values—introspection, maturity, coming to terms with demons. So it is somewhat of a shock that Metallica’s new album, St. Anger, much of which was recorded after lead singer James Hetfield’s long stint in a substance-abuse program, is so utterly raw and rocking. There are rehab references everywhere—“who’s in charge of my head today, dancin’ devils in angel’s way,” Hetfield sings on "My World”—but the sentiments are sparsely expressed and usually not too literal (typical of Metallica’s lyrics, they’re almost billboardlike in their economy). And Metallica’s music is unrelentingly furious, a near wall of sound of metal. Producer Bob Rock, who helped mainstream Metallica with albums like Load, allows rough edges. Lars Ulrich’s snare drum reverberates with a thwong, and the band’s stop-on-a-dime dynamics are traded for live-sounding musical rupture. It’s that messiness that makes St. Anger so great. For Metallica, noise is one of the twelve steps.

Brent DiCrescenzo, Pitchfork Media, June 16th, 2003

A twisted barbed wire sign spans the entrance to the Ben Elektra Kibbutz in Metulla, Israel. It reads: "And Justice for All." There, in the country's northernmost town, pinched by Lebanon, and set in a valley as arid and colorless as an Anton Corbijn photo, my brothers and I assembled compact discs for Elektra Records, far from the reach of cable modems and CDRWs.

After long days of picking rare bloodberries from barbed bushes for the screened St. Anger covers, which Lars assured us during his weekly motivational videos would only drive hard copy sales, I stripped my soiled black overalls, checked the bunks for banana spiders and sand ants, and settled in to read a tattered copy of Karl "Geezer" Marx and Frederick "Freddi" Engels' Metal Manifesto. Few historians care to document the period in the early 1850s when the pair, influenced by the heart-wrenching blue-collar poems of Bob Seger, abandoned the Bund der Gerechten, shaved their beards, applied eye-silver and rouge, and produced a series of simpler, populist manifestos.

Often, I found myself reading the first line by Zippolight, unable to proceed further, lulling myself to sleep with its mantra:

"A spectre is haunting Metal - the spectre of Metallica."

Decades removed from its writing I didn't find the assertion particularly leveling or insightful. Rather, I was amused by its irony. Originally, Marx and Engels had hoped to shock their staid, academic readers with imagery of the undead, as with the Pushead-inked "Red Monsta" devouring Europe on the cover to their earlier Communist Manifesto. Now the word "spectre" struck me only as a reminder that Metallica had long given up the ghost. The manifesto remained only a document of arrogance and comedy. Marx continued, "Metallica is already acknowledged by all Rock powers to be itself a power." And yet, when MTV recently bestowed Metallica with "Icon" status, they could only dredge up Kelly Osbourne, Ja Rule, Sum 41, Godsmack, Linkin Park, Avril Lavigne, Limp Bizkit, Lisa Marie Presley, and Snoop Dogg in tribute.

Time had only made the rest of the text increasingly contradictory and meaningless. Marx and Engels had seen Metal as the antisocial soundtrack that could topple pop for the hearts of the young. "Pop has converted the guitarist, the songwriter, the drummer, the man behind the boards, into its paid laborers," they vented. "The Major Labels cannot exist without continually revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relation between fans and artists."

I read that last line while seated in a mule cart heading toward the Cardboard Folding Hut. Behind me, shimmering cylinders of stacked St. Anger discs stood in tight rows, an electrical current coursing through them for defense. I snapped the book shut, sickened by the absurdity. If only Marx had lived to see the sides flip over a dwindling battle line. For the first time, a technological advance-- MP3s and digital downloading-- spelled victory for the proletariat. File-sharing had become as anti-establishment as Marx had envisioned metal sounding. And Metallica, Marx's metal champion, had dropped an iron firewall between their music and their fans, who, despite their revolutionary ripping, were, for the most part, bourgeoisie boys choosing bands based on how the logos looked protractor-scratched into study hall desks. We kibbutz workers, who lived here by choice, manufacturing Metallica CDs, faced time in the Lightless Cell if found touching or "experiencing" St. Anger before its shipping date. Yet James Hetfield seemed to always sing about being locked inside a Lightless Cell as a badge of honor. Irony upon irony upon irony. Then again, Marx and Engels did grow their beards back and move on to more ambitious projects.

A banana spider bit into Ktulu the Mule's heel. The animal reared. The cart spilled its contents, the CDs and myself, into the dust. A safety cut the electrical field protecting St. Anger. As the cart master attempted to rein the bucking animal, I slipped a disc into my overalls.

After lights out (or "enjoy the black" as it was called), my bunkmates and I listened to the disc for which we had so diligently worked. What an utter mess. I saved 300 boxtops of Of Wolf and Man Cereal and bought a ticket to Israel for this? Lars Ulrich had taken the return to "real Metal" quite literally, playing a drumset consisting of steel drums, aluminum toms, programmed double kicks, and a broken church bell. The kit's high-end clamor ignored the basic principles of drumming: timekeeping.

Fittingly, Ulrich's scrapyard racket rang senselessly like quickening, imploding industry under filtered, stream-of-cliché riffing. The gimmick overwhelmed entire songs, chiming hollowly over all else. Hetfield and Hammett's guitars underwent more processing than cat food. When they both speedstrummed through "St. Anger", and most other movements, H&H seemed to overwhelm each other with different, terrible noise. A bevy of pedals-- including the decidedly un-metal wah-wah-- jingled conspicuously like a massive charm bracelet... I mean, a string of skulls. A string of iron skulls.

A dry, crackling blooze melody squeezed out by Hammett on "Some Kind of Monster" brought to mind the time I used my practice amp as a stool in hanging a Ride the Lightning poster over my cot. The amp teetered and toppled, sending my foot right through the speaker cone. From then on I could only produce sounds exact to those on "Some Kind of Monster". I just never thought to release them during the kibbutz's mandatory "riffstorming" sessions monitored by Hetfield via satellite from his motorcycle factory. Bob Rock's bass neither bobbed nor rocked; it simply hid like an undulating grey amoeboid of sound, much like the web of hate pent inside the mind of the "Invisible Kid".

"Invisible Kid" towered as an example of Metallica's new alloy of ineptitude. In the video feeds streaming throughout the mess hall, Hetfield repeatedly reminded us of the cathartic, psychological process behind St. Anger. This implied a personal, emotional vent. However, Hetfield can only convey feeling through the persona of the implied "invisible kid" who cowers from parents and rejection in every song, mirrored in the bedrooms of their audience. Such juvenile confessionals as, "I hurt inside/ I hide inside/ But I'll show you," and, "Mama, why's it rainin' in my room," sound ridiculous coming from the mouth of a 40 year-old man. Is this how he talks to his shrink?

These muscle car confessionals and jerky, rough-edged transitions sounded not so much like metal, but Bruckheimer emo. Like Tim Kinsella, Hetfield found word pleasure in nursery puns such as "purify/pure if I" and "ominous/I'm in us." When "Frantic" cut from the grunting, "My lifestyle determines my deathstyle" refrain and shifted into the cooed "keep on searching" breakdown, it smelled strongly of sloppy pseudo-virtuoso bands like The Jazz June or Spitalfield. Emo bands found the simple process of merely moving from quiet to loud to be breathtaking. They wrote songs where beauty and melody was assumed on the count of clean guitar and picking chords, despite the fact that the two guitars had no knowledge of each other. In Metallica's case, the result was somehow worse for sounding so calculated and plotted in ProTools. ProTools had never been metal. ProTools never snorted ants up his FireWire from the side of the pool while urinating down a woman's dress. ProTools never inserted the sound of a chainsaw into the opening of "Black Metal" off the album Black Metal. ProTools never burned churches in Norway. And yet, ProTools had a major hand in assembling both "American Life" and "Frantic".

The disc ended as the sun was rising over Syria. Had it lasted that long? My comrades and I looked at each other, stupefied. Our only memory was of forced effects, laughable lyrics, and audio surgical scars. I sat up and began packing my duffel. I'd rather pick bananas. One comrade suggested smuggling the disc out of the kibbutz to leak to the Internet. If Metallica were such proud artists behind their music, unable to both allow downloading and refund money after purchase, then we should warn others. Metallica had become less a band leading a genre than a team soaking up payroll in a second-tier sport. This was NASCAR, WWE. Logos, sneers, mustaches, and beards. Hair grows back, but the Jheri Curl of insincerity, of contradiction, and of compromising a cause never straightens.

William Luff, PlayLouder, June 11, 2003

Jesus!! When did Metallica decide to go metal? Daft question, maybe, but we’ve got used to the men in black inhabiting the kind of stratosphere that the likes of U2 wander in – unit-shifting, radio-friendly, rock-juggernaut kinda thang. But, with the departure of Jason Newsted, and the well-documented alcohol and drugs breakdown that cuddly James Hetfield (the cowardly lion in Wizard of Oz, anyone?) suffered last year, it seems that Metallica have gone back to the drawing board and re-invented themselves once more as a true me-taaaal!!!! act. Out go the orchestras and, um, songs and in comes righteous fury, double-bass drum pummelling, thrash metal guitars and a fuck-you attitude that was once thought lost.

Yet as exciting as it may seem in places – the feral opener ‘Frantic’, the filthy Ministry-meets Monster Magnet riffage of ‘Dirty Window’ – there’s an overwhelming lack of coherence, as though the band have spliced an album together of disjointed bits and pieces and then called them songs. The title track itself is a case in point, featuring so many ideas in one track that you struggle to discern anything resembling songwriting. For their hardcore fanbase, this is manna from heaven; the long-awaited return to ‘Master Of Puppets’ style confrontation, dripping in punky, garage rawness rather than over-produced sheen. But while there’s no denying that Metallica have produced a huge – and welcome – blast from the past, it also represents a monolithic slab of noise that stretched over 11 songs and 75 minutes is just too dense and daunting to be truly enjoyable.

Adrian Begrand, Pop Matters, June 11, 2003

Metallica fans have had a rough go of it in recent years. In fact, in retrospect, the past twelve years have been pretty lousy. Their idols, easily one of the most influential bands in hard rock history based on their first four albums alone, didn't exactly put out a strong catalog of music in the 1990s: 1991's much-lauded Black Album is horribly overrated, with five classic songs masking the fact that the rest of their commercial breakthrough was nothing more than mediocre at best. The much-maligned Load/Reload albums have their share of moments, but are marred by too much filler, and some remarkably lazy playing by the band (what they laughably called "groove oriented"). Metallica's strongest releases from the Nineties are all either live releases, such as the stupendous Live Shit box set and the underrated symphonic experiment S & M, or cover songs, represented by the excellent Garage, Inc. compilation. As bad as that decade was, the real nadir for Metallica happened in the 21st century.

In a move that practically spat in the faces of every single fan who was introduced to Metallica in the mid-'80s via tape trading and word of mouth, the band sued Napster, instantly metamorphosing into grumpy old men, greedy celebrities, and a laughing stock all at the same time, with drummer Lars Ulrich becoming one of the most reviled people on the internet. Then, after 14 years of loyal service (in the face of some extreme abuse at the hands of his bandmates), bassist Jason Newsted, the one good guy in Metallica, abruptly left the band. And if that weren't enough, singer/guitarist James Hetfield entered rehab to deal with his alcohol problem. When Metallica headed back into the studio in 2002, it was no secret that their next full-length would be a crucial one. If it flopped, it would all but declare to the fans that their best days were behind them. If it succeeded, the band could begin to regain something they need much more than money: respect.

It's been nearly a six-year wait between albums, and like every single album Metallica has put out in their career, St. Anger instantly makes fans think to themselves, "What the hell?" This time around, though, after years and years of disappointment, that thought is a reaction to hearing a band that's been reborn. A ragged, cacophonous, raging beast of an album, it's not the most perfect album Metallica has ever produced, and it's a very bumpy ride for listeners, but the album's handful of high points are thrilling to hear. Simply put, they're playing with a fire under their butts for the first time in 15 long years.

The first minute of "Frantic" drives that point home. Easily the most ferocious album opener since "Blackened", it begins with an extended intro of Ulrich's machine-gun drumming, and Hetfield's and Kirk Hammett's staccato guitar licks. Hetfield's vocals are surprisingly rough, harkening back to his tuneless growl from ...And Justice For All, as he snarls the album's central theme of the search for redemption while trying to deal with inner demons: "If I could have my wasted days back/Would I use them to get back on track?" Gone are melodies, sing-along choruses, and Hammett's guitar solos. Metallica have some pretty intense stuff to deal with here, and there's no time for messing around. The sheer focus of St. Anger is unsettling at times, but it expertly shows every single little nu-metal band out there how to get rage across on record.

The album's more memorable moments rank as some of the best songs the band has done since the early '90s. "Some Kind of Monster" is one of the heaviest songs Metallica has recorded since 1986's "The Thing That Should Not Be", a lurching, lumbering song that alternates from some ultra-low, churning riffs to double-speed beats provided by Ulrich. "Dirty Window" puts the foot on the gas, Ulrich drumming at a ferocious pace, while "My World" starts off as a metal-by-numbers tune, only to give you chills during a bridge that equals the work of Slipknot, with its blast of venomous intensity, as Hetfield whispers, "Not only do I not know the answer," and then hollers over a sudden blast of noise: "I don't even know what the question is!" "Sweet Amber" is especially strong, boasting a slinky blues-rock opening riff, and some of the deftest time signature changes on the album, evoking memories of their old prog-metal days.

But of course, Metallica never seem to know how much is too much. An album a direct and no-frills as this one is best suited to a running time of around 45 minutes, but the band carries on for a draining 75 minutes, and the sound gets so stale, that you're mentally exhausted by the time you get to the end. "St. Anger" is an interesting song (Hetfield quotes two older songs, "Hit the Lights" and "Damage, Inc.", in the lyrics), with a spectacular opening and conclusion, but that feeling is nearly extinguished by awful, maudlin verses that sound obviously tacked on by Pro Tools software. "Invisible Kid" is dullsville, and it's not helped by Hetfield's lyrics, easily the most ridiculous on the album ("Invisible kid/Never see what he did/Got stuck where he hid/Fallen through the grid"). "The Unnamed Feeling" is a boring exercise in recycled Slipknot riffs, and the goofy "Purify" sounds like a work-in-progress.

Of course, Metallica is Hetfield's and Ulrich's baby, and both members are especially strong on St. Anger. Ulrich's drumming is energized, his best since the Black Album, sounding like he's ready to make up for the incredibly lackadaisical drumming on the band's last two albums. Meanwhile, every song on the album has Hetfield dealing with his personal problems, not to mention some serious rage issues, and for the most part, he is able to avoid both the "poor, poor, me" whining, and the blind, antisocial sentiment of mediocre nu-metal, yet he doesn't get too syrupy, either. It all comes to a head on the stunning, harrowing "All Within My Hands", as Hetfield bares his soul, barking, "I'll die if I let go/Control is love, love is control," as the song concludes with his anguished screams of, "Kill! Kill! Kill!"

In an effort to prove that they're not really so mean, the band has given fans a real treat of a bonus feature along with the album, in the form of a special DVD that features the band performing every song in their rehearsal studio. It sounds as sloppy as the album sometimes, but there are times where the band, joined by new bassist Robert Trujillo (producer Bob Rock played all the bass on the album), completely blow away the album, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that they're still one of the best live bands on the planet.

It's probable that no band has worked harder, longer, to craft an album with the intention to make it sound as rough as possible. Bob Rock's production, aided by Pro Tools, has the guitars sounding considerably muddier than any other Metallica album, and Ulrich's hollow snare drum sounding like he's pounding relentlessly on a hubcap for an hour and a quarter. Audiophiles will definitely take issue with the album's sound, but it works very well with the songs' roughshod structures and blunt subject matter. However, although they're playing with the same intensity as Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets, there are absolutely none of the creative guitar and bass melodies underneath all the noise that defined those two masterpieces, and in the end, that's what longtime Metallica fans will miss the most.

St. Anger is flawed, but it's not anywhere near the disaster many people have been expecting. It's like Metallica is starting from scratch, trying to erase what has been a hellish three years, and what you hear on this album is the sound of a band playing with passion for the first time in ages. It's an ungodly mess at times, but that passion wins you over.

David Powell, Pop Matters, July 15, 2003

David Dinkins, then mayor of New York City, had a look of resigned disgust on his face, as though someone very nearby had cut the cheese. He was sitting in the audience at the 1989 Grammy Awards, where Metallica, nominated in the Grammys' new "Best Hard Rock Performance" category, were assailing the predominantly high-society crowd with what was, for many, their first taste of heavy metal. Though the award later went to has-beens Jethro Tull in one of the most infamous snubs in Grammy history, Metallica's appearance in such a rarefied forum marked a turning point in the history of the band and their genre.

Metallica has spent most of the last decade in a prolonged mellowing out process, to the detriment of both their sound and their image. They shed their long hair and traded their t-shirts and ripped jeans for slacks and leather vests, while frontman James Hetfield mostly abandoned his angry yell for a throaty, snarling baritone. Their themes remained dark and brooding, but the music lacked the ferocity that originally brought them to prominence.

St. Anger, released earlier this week, sounds like Metallica conceding that they have strayed too far from the headbangers' path. The album's 11 tracks feature more of the up-tempo riffs, time changes, and rambling arrangements (the shortest track is over five minutes long) that were hallmarks of their pre-commercial days. There is less singing, more "shouting in key" (as Hetfield once described his early vocals), and even some old lyrics that make awkwardly conspicuous cameos in the title track. Metallica really wants you to know that they remember how they used to play. Their performance here might be enough to make the listener believe them, but it fails to convincingly demonstrate that they can still do it.

The original releases of Metallica's first few records featured a tongue-in-cheek credit: "Not Very Produced By Flemming Rasmussen." Current very-much-a-producer Bob Rock, who had never worked with anyone harder-edged than Bon Jovi before he shepherded Metallica's self-titled 1991 effort, has clearly tried to strip out some ballast and help the band emerge from underneath the watery, languid sound that permeated Load in 1996 and its follow-up, Reload, a year later.

Had the band applied this approach consistently, they might have made a record that drew some disillusioned fans back into the fold. Instead, they go halfway, with too many of St. Anger's songs taking cues from newer groups like Linkin Park ("Shoot Me Again") and System of a Down ("My World") in a misguided attempt to fit into the current rock landscape. The result is a near-miss album that stops short whenever it seems on the verge of going somewhere worthwhile.

"Frantic" opens the record with a rat-a-tat snare drum mimicked by a rhythm guitar that suggests the imminent onslaught of a speed metal anthem in the vein of "Battery", from 1986's Master of Puppets. It's just a tease. The song never quite reaches those heights and, before long, trips into an insipid, Load-esque chorus with a ballad-like tempo: "Keep searching / Keep on searching / This search goes on / This search goes on".

"St. Anger" comes as close as any track on the album to revisiting the sound that made Metallica's name. New bassist Rob Trujillo starts the song with a slightly dissonant, malignant-sounding hook that drummer Lars Ulrich bolsters with one of his furious double-bass drum rolls. Hetfield and Kirk Hammett jump in, guitars recklessly galloping after Trujillo, and we're off to the races. But less than a minute into the song, the song pulls the same bait and switch as "Frantic", slamming on the brakes for a laconic chorus that doesn't belong in this song. "I'm madly in anger with you", insists Hetfield.

The ship of rap/metal fusion set sail several years ago, but Metallica managed to get Hetfield airlifted aboard for a couple of St. Anger tracks. "This is the test of flesh and soul / This is the trap that smells so good / This is the flood that drains these eyes", raps Hetfield on "Some Kind of Monster", and it's tough not to imagine him waving his arms around, Eminem-style, as Ulrich lays down a phat beat. That incongruous image barely has time to take root, though, before the song suddenly downshifts into a 4/4 thrash bridge that leads to . . . another, slower bridge, and then the chorus. And so forth, for a full eight-and-a-half minutes.

The entire album largely confines itself within the two-octave range that characterizes the vast majority of current metal offerings. The cumulative effect becomes so monotonous by the end of the record that it's a bit jarring when an actual melody emerges from the fuzz during the finale, "All within My Hands". In keeping with the pattern, it doesn't last long, and the disc slams to a close with Hetfield barking the word "kill" over and over again as the rest of the band whirls its way through another two-note speed riff. Word repetition is a big deal on this record; "Frantic" features Hetfield singing "Frantic, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tock" so many times in a row that at one point, his voice seems to crack.

Redeeming qualities are few and far between, but they do exist. In places, the elements come together long enough to make an entire listenable song. "Dirty Window" starts off with a series of drum licks that sound like someone trying to start a homemade chainsaw. The guitars kick in and the song wriggles into a snazzy, hi-hat groove that evokes Metallica's 1987 cover of Diamond Head's "Helpless". There are also some nice freebies tossed into the sleeve. The CD has some interactive content, including a preview of the recently announced Metallica video game (apparently, nobody in the band remembers the lamentable Journey Escape) and a link to a web site where fans can download other new songs not available on the CD. An 80-minute DVD with rehearsal footage for every song is included on a separate disc.

The only change to the band's lineup since Reload is the addition of Trujillo. Trujillo effectively traded places with former bassist Jason Newsted, who, in March, filled Trujillo's spot in Ozzy Osbourne's band. Though pictured with the band in the liner notes, Trujillo didn't join Metallica until after St. Anger wrapped; producer Rock played bass on the record. Hetfield, who emerged from rehab last year, and Ulrich are the band's two senior members and handle the majority of the songwriting. Hammett, another mainstay, has played on all of the band's albums and was a lesser god in the pantheon of late '80s guitar heroes, but because there's so little work on St. Anger that qualifies as "lead guitar", his talents are mostly wasted here.

Metallica's influence on their genre is undeniable. They didn't invent heavy metal, but they carried it out of the commercial backwater, and virtually every metal act on the scene today has tried to take a page from their playbook. Like all bands of their stature, they're moving into a phase where they must either extend their window of relevance, crystallize into a live museum exhibit like the Rolling Stones, or call it a career. They are, to an extent, victims of their own success. To continue as a going concern within the genre they helped establish, they must continue to craft music that inspires others to copy them. St. Anger inexplicably does the reverse, and it's a recursive exercise that does nothing to deepen Metallica's legacy.

At least one distinctive element of Metallica's classic sound remains fully intact after all these years: Hetfield's penchant for Yoda-like lyrics. "Into distance let me fade", he growls on "Invisible Kid". He probably didn't mean it quite like this.

Michael Christopher, Pop Matters, July 15, 2003

St. Anger is Metallica's best record of original material in over a decade. Unfortunately –- that's not saying much. Recent efforts Load and Re-Load were an identity crisis of rock, alternative, blues, country and oh yeah -– some metal thrown in here and there. St. Anger dispenses with the recent spate of radio friendly pleasantries in favor pedal to the floor thrash, staggered and extended song structures, quick changes and a muddled production that tries to harken back to the Kill 'Em All days.

All attempts fail miserably.

"Frantic" starts off St. Anger well enough, with a signature thrash guitar riff playing in tandem with a strangely hollow and tinny drum, as if Lars Ulrich traded in his Tama kit for a Toys R Us model. Sounding somewhat unique at first, before it becomes clear; this isn't some neat studio trick for the beginning of the song -– the production is really that horrendous. James Hetfield starts to drop clichés such as "My lifestyle / Determines my deathstyle," but it's not until about 2:09 into the song when he squawks the doozy "Frantic tick tick tick tick tick tick tock" that "Frantic" loses every ounce of credibility. The singer, who used to describe time along the lines of "Millions of our years / In minutes disappears" ("Blackened" from 1988's . . . And Justice For All) has sadly been reduced to simpleton nursery rhyme ramblings like "Tick tick tick tock?"

When not trying to be Mother Goose, Hetfield's new found sobriety dominates the lyrical subject matter, but did the rest of the band have to give up something too? Kirk gives up solos completely, Lars gives up keeping time and tune, and former bassist Jason Newsted just plain gave up.

The title track, with portions bearing a striking resemblance to Megadeth's "Hangar 18", again delivers another great metal riff, speeding it up as the double bass pounds away before a break where Hetfield starts trying to sing in key, recalling everything that sucked about the Load records. Multiple riffs fall all over each other, creating a mish-mash that sounds like a jam session gone wrong.

The theme doesn't waver much, save for a bright spot here and there, like the layered "Some Kind of Monster", which buries an evil and almost bluesy guitar churner just below the surface of a classic speed metal attack and trademark Hetfield growl. Yet, just when it seems like they're getting it right, a cog in the machine breaks and screws it all up. This time around, it's Hetfield screaming "We the people" annoyingly off key. Who made the rule that the first, or for that matter worst vocal take had to be used –- or was it another part of the "plan" to keep it real and raw?

Initially, it seemed like a shame that new bassist Robert Trujillo didn't come on board until after recording had been wrapped up, as Bob Rock was apparently too busy handling bass duties to worry about producing the record. One week after it's release though, Rock told MTV that St. Anger was meant to "sound like four guys in a garage getting together and writing rock songs". That's a unique concept –- except Metallica has already done it. The Garage Days Re-Revisited EP in 1987. That album was "Not very produced by Metallica" according to the inlay, but sounds like a Phil Spector produced record compared to St. Anger. If Rock is telling the truth about designing the album to sound like five-year-olds just learning to play on coffee cans and Fisher-Price musical equipment, that may be worse than admitting to doing a shitty job on production. The old school Metallica fan that is apparently the demographic for this release wants to hear their favorite band get back to their roots -– but not at the sake of becoming poseurs, which is what contrived rawness is equal to.

Critics comparing St. Anger to . . . And Justice For All had better pull the 1988 masterpiece out again for another listen. There is nothing on this CD that touches what remains the most focused, angry and pure Metallica record to date. St. Anger's final moment of failure comes at the end of the last track, "All Within My Hands", where Hetfield screams "Kill / Kill / Kill / Kill / Kill" over and over -– off-key yet again, he sounds about as angry, threatening and authentic as Justin Timberlake, much like the disc as a whole. If Metallica wanted to sound desperate to regain their former fans, they couldn't have picked a better method of going about it.

Barry Walters, Rolling Stone, Issue 925, June 26, 2003

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 fucked up and facile, then so be it.

Kevin Forest Moreau, Shaking Through. net, June 23, 2003

Rattle and Ho-Hum

Metallica has had a proud and distinguished career. When Kill 'Em All was released twenty years ago, none but the most starry-eyed headbanger would have dared to dream that one day the brash upstarts behind "Seek and Destroy" would one day be considered the elder statesmen of metal. Hell, who would have believed that heavy metal would ever be taken seriously enough to merit elder statesmen? Metallica wasn't the first band to find the music of the spheres in the relentless stampede of jackhammer guitars, nor the heaviest by far. But it was one of the few bands to bring metal into the mainstream. Critical acclaim (of the kind that counts, not the Circus/Hit Parader variety), Grammys, MTV airplay -- Metallica was the first long-haired hard rock outfit to barrel its way onto pop culture's main stage without apology or compromise (at least, for a while) and make the world come to it on its terms. You can't turn around in a record store or pause for too long on a commercial radio station today without confronting the band's undeniable legacy. Its achievements have been nothing short of remarkable. And thus there's no shame in accepting the inevitable: Metallica should call it a day.

Or at least consider a name change. Because there's nothing metallic about St. Anger, a lumbering behemoth of an album that doesn't so much trample everything in its path as it thrashes clumsily about, like a woolly mammoth with a flank full of arrows, crashing awkwardly through the brush on its way to the cold finality of eternal slumber. Oh, sure, there are some identifiable hard rock touchstones at hand: granola-crunchy guitars, throat-constricting drums and (most of all) pure primal-scream fury. But these elements bear as much of a resemblance to the Metallica of old as the creepy space alien occupying Neverland Ranch bears to the Michael Jackson of Off the Wall. The guitars stumble in a monotone of mid-level, processed rattle; the drums don't propel as much as struggle to disguise an all-too-turgid pace; and the rage is both unfocused and leavened with too much narcissistic navel-gazing.

How does St. Anger stumble? Let us count the ways. First, it discards what's always been the band's secret strength: the inescapable melodicism of its saw-toothed rhythmic assault. There's not so much as a single memorable melody to be found on St. Anger, save for those that embed themselves into the listener's consciousness by dint of their sheer atrociousness, as on the mewling, metal-scraping title track and the decidedly non-monstrous "Some Kind of Monster." Second, it further turns its back on the intricate, cerebral shifts and time signatures that elevated ...And Justice for All and the superlative high-water mark Master of Puppets into something approaching art. This has been a grating flaw in the band's output for the last dozen years, but in the absence of the more conventional song structures that took their place on Metallica, Load and Reload, it's all the more pronounced. There's not even so much as a single, solitary guitar solo; Kirk Hammett, the band's mercurial axe murderer, is given little to do but chop-strum in unison with vocalist James Hetfield. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is just not what Kirk Hammett was put on this earth to do.

Worst of all, perhaps, St. Anger doesn't even try to live up to its title. Instead of exalting absolute, primordial rage as a thing of divinity, embracing it as a necessary part of man's duality, Hetfield drowns in the miasmic, inchoate anger of the womb. Anger is no longer a natural emotion whose energy leads to a cathartic, howling release; it's a security blanket for a middle-aged soul discovering self-examination for the first time. Hetfield's well-documented rehab stint has neutralized his mojo, robbed him of his Samsonesque vitality. "Invisible Kid," "My World," "Frantic" and the imploding title track document a man-child grappling with his anger management issues, trading in the white-hot bash-and-pop assault of Janovian bellowing for the self-absorbed wail of Fred Durst.

And with that primacy has gone any shred of Hetfield's serrated lyricism: "My lifestyle determines my death style," he snarls in "Frantic," while on the closing "All Within My Hands," he all but screeches "Love is control/I'll die if I let go" before doing just that in the only way he knows how, chanting "Kill! Kill! Kill!" like the mantra of absolution it was two decades ago. "Dirty Window," in particular, is a maelstrom of journal-entry clichés: "Am I who I think I am?;" "I'm judge and I'm jury and I'm executioner too;" "I see my reflection in the window; this window clean inside, dirty on the out."

Metallica has endured its share of tests recently, from Hetfield's struggle with sobriety to the emotional departure of longtime bassist Jason Newsted, and especially drummer Lars Ulrich's outspoken opposition to the file-sharing site Napster, which led to the unprecedented PR disaster of a band of multimillionaires filing suit against its fans. Trying times indeed, and surely in all of that turmoil there's fodder for a wondrous explosion of creative and artistic catharsis. St. Anger, with arena-rock producer Bob Rock stepping in on bass as well as orchestrating the album's muddy sonic whirlpool, ain't that document. And judging from the album's alarmingly murky sprawl, it's hard to imagine such a document is forthcoming. Rarely has an album gnashed its canines so ferociously and yet proven so toothless.

© Frank Steven Groen