Post Reply - The Great Collection Rediscovery

Album: St. Anger

Previous Last.fm Scrobbles: 12

Old Rating: 1.5/5

Verdict: Everyone's favourite album of all time...in some alternate universe anyway. Honestly I enjoyed listening to St. anger again. No, it's not a great album. The drum sound sucking in particular isn't something people exaggerate. But I do think there are far worse albums around. Far more boring ones too. And some so blandly inoffensive that they become offensive. Although it didn't work out as successful as they'd planned, you have to at least hand it to Metallica for having the guts to go into the studio and tell Kirk no soloing. Or maybe you don't. It kinda is a product of it's time with the popular metal being in the solo lite alt/nu metal vein so maybe Metallica were just trying their best to remain relevant in the early 2000s without realising what people really wanted from them was some good old fashioned thrash. At least they got the picture better with Death Magnetic. 

For me, St. Anger is a special album though, because it's the album that was my gateway to metal music. I'd never been exposed to metal before this. The heaviest my taste in music got was probably Nickelback, a group I later discovered is widely derided as a whole and not just for one release like St. Anger is for Metallica (I mean, not everyone loves Load and ReLoad, but I don't think they cop as much flak as St. Anger does). It's an odd album to claim as your gateway album, but for me that actually makes it that bit more special and think perhaps my metal journey is more unique than those who hear earlier Metallica or classic heavy metal like Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden or Judas Priest first. 

I really should scrap my old review of this one and see if I can write a Patrick-esque story review about it. 

New Rating: 3/5 - I did actually enjoy a fair bit of it.

Keeper? Yes.