Is ‘St Anger’ by Metallica an ironic classic?
Every band tends to have one or two projects in their back catalogue that fans don’t want to talk about. Whether it’s because of someone royally screwing up behind the scenes or the songs not being there, there’s normally something akin to The Clash’s Cut the Crap or David Bowie’s debut record that gets a nasty reputation among the fanbase. And while St Anger by Metallica is the equivalent of every bad idea coming together all at once, is there a way to still love it ironically today?
Because it’s not like the problems aren’t apparent from the first few sessions. The whole thing was going to be incredibly fractured since James Hetfield left for rehab midway through, and bassist Jason Newsted departed before it even got started, so what you’re hearing on the final product is the sound of a broken band desperately trying to put themselves back together again.
Countless great albums have been made under worse circumstances, but this isn’t like the perfect storm of problems leading to something great like Fleetwood Mac did on Rumours. No, this was just a shitshow from start to finish, down to the opening five seconds of the record on ‘Frantic’. From the relentless snare bashing from Lars Ulrich to Hetfield’s strange screaming delivery, it sounds like the group was at their wit’s end trying to find something to work with.
But so what? Having inadequate production isn’t necessarily something that Metallica hadn’t dealt with in the past, especially since And Justice For All sounds like a demo recording. There was still room to make something decent here, but when the best that you’ve got to work with is a song like ‘Purify’ with the most wretched vocals ever committed to tape, listeners would have at least thought that someone should have surely requested another take, right?
Well, no. This is Metallica, warts and all, and that means seeing them at their weakest point as songwriters and as people. But in a strange way, the fact that the album is on a different plane of batshit insanity actually works in its favour for some fans. Since the nu-metal crowd from around the same time were writing about how their lives weren’t the best, hearing Hetfield try out the same thing with even more vicious results at least fit into the zeitgeist at the time.
And even if the production is enough to make one’s ears bleed, isn’t that the point of metal music in the first place? It wasn’t meant to be soft and easy to digest, and since Slipknot had served up Iowa a few years before this hit store shelves, Metallica at least went out swinging on tunes that could hit with the same force.
Although the ending results still feel like getting hit in the back of the head with a baseball bat, there is a certain wonder in listening to the group at this stage in their career. The whole reason why the album exists is to expel all of their anger and see if they could still work as a unit, so hearing ‘The Unnamed Feeling’ is like listening to the bizarro world version of ‘The Unforgiven’, complete with Hetfield’s vocal strains soaking up every inch of the mix.
In some spots, the album doesn’t even feel like it should be listened to, but once Death Magnetic was released, returning to the record has shown that many people still have affection for it. It’s not like the group isn’t proud of it, either, standing as a monument to their survival and Hetfield even unearthing the tune ‘All Within My Hands’ for a handful of acoustic shows with the group.
So when people revisit St Anger these days, it might not be because they genuinely like every song or want to have their monthly flirtation with tinnitus. It’s almost as if it’s being studied like a piece of metal history, and even if it’s just to experience the drama behind everything, the record has at least earned a certain legendary status in the group’s repertoire by making every wrong step in the exact right way.
