‘St. Anger’: the album Lars Ulrich called the rebirth of Metallica
Ask anyone in the world who the biggest metal band of all time is and most would, rightly, say Metallica. In fact, they’re not just one of the biggest metal bands of all time, but one of the best-selling bands from any genre, full-stop.
Over the course of their career, the group has sold out shows at stadiums worldwide, dominated the heavy rock charts–incredibly, each of the six albums they released between 1991 and 2016 went to number one–and sold over 175million records worldwide.
Less well known to the casual fan, though, is that not only did one of those number one albums very nearly not get released at all, but the whole band came close to collapsing early on in the new millennium. The mighty Metallica might have seemed indestructible thanks to their total domination of the heavy rock scene of the 1990s, but when it came time for them to head back to the studio and record their eighth album, St. Anger, in 2003, they were headed for disaster.
Reactions to their last album Reload had been mixed and in the six years since, longtime bassist Jason Newsted had un-amicably walked out on the group whilst founding member and frontman James Hetfield found himself checked into rehab. Such was the seriousness of his situation that the rest of the band weren’t sure if he would ever write, sing or perform again.
Whilst leader Hetfield was laid low, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich and guitarist Kirk Hammett stepped up to the occasion and kept the band alive, bringing in bassist and producer Rob Rock to work on their next album. When Hetfield was eventually ready to get back into the fold, the new-look group were ready to hit the ground running and work on their new album, with an all-new sound.
“I hate clichés, I really do, but there’s no way around this,” Ulrich said about their new album St. Anger, “it really does feel like a new beginning for Metallica. The energy that Rob [Rock] brings to the party is incredible. With Jason [Newsted] around, the energy was so much more intense, but Rob is just so natural and unforced to be around. He has an almost Zen-like quality to him that Metallica really needs. And no disrespect to previous bass players but Rob’s work sits in a very different place, it feels more like a proper unit.”
Despite the suggestion that the new bassist was bringing a Zen-like quality to proceedings, there is nothing Zen-like about the album. St. Anger is a whirlwind of aggressive playing, the heaviest metal and chunky, choppy and churning guitars, drums, bass, shouted vocals and anger.
“I have to say that the more we feel as brothers again these days then, yeah, the more this angry stuff seeps out in the form of this Metallica vs the world thing”, Hetfield said in a conversation about the album. “I think anger has bad rap. It has these connotations that something bad is gonna happen or something is gonna break, but for me anger is a good way of getting your point across a lot of times – in a healthy way without degrading or injuring another person. It’s definitely an energy we all feed off.”
