Originally posted by: Blackened
EVERYONE READ
This taken from metallicasucks.com
First Look - St. Anger
Over the course of the three years metallicasucks.com has been operating, we've heard from lots of people, including editors of mainstream music magazines, and been interviewed for radio programs and many a news story. One of the other things that happened is that I had occasional e-mail exchanges with one of Metallica's managers. (Cordial, friendly, e-mails, it's not like they were trying to shut me down or anything).
I won't claim that he and I are friends, but I certainly never got the feeling he was anything but truthful with me. We had a couple frank and honest conversations about Metallica's direction, where I thought they "went south" musically, and what was the straw that broke the camel's back. He even had a couple ideas for trying to reconcile the "sucks" crowd with the fans, but the main one never panned out.
With Metallica's new St. Anger CD coming out June 10th, I decided to drop my contact a line, see what he could do for me in terms of maybe a review copy. I've always said I was openminded about tunes, simply that they'd lost my trust factor in terms of whether I would plunk down coin for the album before I'd heard it in its entirety.
I got an e-mail back which said, basically, that nobody was getting preview copies, not even me, but would I like to come down and have a listen in Q-Prime's private listening room?
I sensed a trap, an ambush, figuring that when I got there, he would surprise me somehow by saying "guess who happened to be around" and there would be Lars or James to try and plead their case for past sins or something. I must admit, though, that cool as it might have been to have an opportunity like that to do face-to-face critiquing of past albums, I'm glad it didn't happen.
I arrived at the Q-Prime offices (and don't let the movies fool you, these offices are nothing like what you might see in Jerry Maguire or anything like that) shortly before 11. My contact was on the phone, so I ended up spending time talking to the receptionist. It was interesting to at least realize I wasn't the only one who thought that maybe Load and ReLoad weren't the greatest pieces of work.
Finally I was ushered into the media room. After being asked if I had any tape recorders (no) and to put my laptop away (understandable, since it'd be about five minutes work for me to rip the album to MP3 and walk out with a semi-pristine copy), they popped in the new disc and left me alone for 75 minutes of listening. Security was tight on the disc, a CD-R that had come out of the Sony Recording Studios only two weeks prior, and sported a fictitious band name to throw people off the scent.
Let me say this now, up-front. Anyone who expects James to scream and wail like he did as some twenty year old on their early albums is nuts. That's just not going to happen. That's not where James' voice is at his age. If that's the standard someone is going to apply to whether or not they like the new disc, give up now, you won't like it, nor will you ever like anything ever again, even if they went back into the studio and re-recorded Kill 'Em All from scratch. Deal with it.
It wasn't the hair changes, or the sometimes weird Kirk piercings that drove many of the fans away, it was that the music was just plain bad. While they claimed they were "influenced" by other music, it was clear to a casual observer that what they had done was aim to be like that other music. They had taken "influence" to a whole new level.
This isn't the most radio-friendly disc, with the shortest track coming in at a little over five minutes, and an average track length of just under seven minutes, including several eight-minute-plus tunes.
That said, this CD is what the average metalli-basher has been asking for all these years. This is what you might have expected five or six years ago, as a follow-up to their self-titled "Black Album". It's clear from listening to it that there are certainly influences, but that the core ... the meat of the music ... is the Metallica many of us grew up on.
So what do the tracks look like?
Frantic 5:50
St. Anger 7:21
Some Kind Of Monster 8:26
Dirty Window 5:25
Invisible Kid 8:30
My World 5:45
Shoot Me Again 7:10
Sweet Amber 5:27
The Unnamed Feeling 7:08
Purify 5:14
All Within My Hands 8:48
My first throughts, after a single listen through with no real note-taking ability along the way (I'd intended to use my laptop for that)
Heaviest Track: Some Kind Of Monster
Weakest Track: Sweet Amber
Best Grade I Gave a Track in My Shorthand Notes: A+
Worst Grade I Gave a Track in My Shorthand Notes: B-
Overall grade for the album: A-
Would I, as someone who has been on the anti-metallica forefront for the last four years, plunk down hard-earned coin on this album? YES!
It will be interesting to see what happens here on the site over the intervening time. Certainly some of our populace will be appeased by the return of the heavier musical direction, but others will be unhappy. Still another group won't care what direction the music goes, because the band's actions and deeds will have already lost those fans forever.
Once upon a time, I considered myself to be a part of that last group. Today, after hearing it, I'm not so sure. I'm not yet certain I'd pay to see them in concert again - I still have this vicious memory of something that sounded like a steel guitar version of The Four Horsemen in my head from the last time I saw them in concert, the first time I ever walked out of a Metallica show before the house lights came up. They haven't completely won me back by a long shot, but I'm at least negotiable on the topic, which is a pretty big accomplishment.
Time will tell, though. It is undeniably an interesting first step.
