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St. Anger is Metallica's eighth full-length studio album, and tenth overall cd release. The album was to be released on June 10, 2003. However, due to fears of extended music piracy over filesharing networks, St. Anger was released 5 days earlier on June 5, 2003.
Six years elapsed between the release of the band's last album, Reload, and their recording of the album, which began in 2002. Many factors contributed to this delay, the two most important being the departure of bassist Jason Newsted, and because of the amount of time spent by vocalist/guitarist James Hetfield in rehab.
Jason Newsted cited several reasons for his leaving the band, the most important being Hetfield questioning his loyalty to the band, due to his participation in other bands. Producer Bob Rock played bass for the recording of the album, and a permanent replacement has since been found—Rob Trujillo, formerly of Suicidal Tendencies and Ozzy Osbourne's band. Jason Newsted has now become Ozzy Osbourne's new bass player.
A limited edition of the album also contained a DVD of the band performing the album live.
"St. Anger" and "Frantic" have both been released as singles. In Australia, "The Unnamed Feeling" has been released as a third single featuring three tracks recorded at the Big Day Out concert in the Gold Coast in Queensland in January 2004.
Like every Metallica release since 1991, St. Anger was the source of much disagreement and controversy among Metallica fans. While some praised the album for the intensity and sheer "heaviness" of the music (it is arguably the most "heavy" Metallica record since 1988's ...And Justice For All), many criticized a number of aspects regarding the album; most distinctly, the production. Producer Bob Rock and Metallica deliberately "under-produced" the album, to make it significantly stand out from other albums by other artists being released. While, in the past, Rock had spent weeks perfecting the sound of the instruments, for the recording of St. Anger, there was little to no heed given. The idea was to capture the band at its rawest, befret of studio touch-ups and fine tunings. Similarly, James Hetfield record at most two takes for the vocal tracks, in an attempt to capture the most "on-the-spot" feel possible. While some fans embraced this approach, others lambasted it, claiming it diluted the quality of the songs on the album.
The quality of the songs themselves received much criticism, in particular, the fact that none of the songs had any guitar solos. Considering that Metallica have Kirk Hammett, regarded widely as one of the best guitarists in heavy metal, many felt that this was Metallica's attempt to turn nu-metal, by using downtuned guitars (the first Metallica album to feature this) and a lack of solos (a characteristic of nu-metal and the first Metallica album to be devoid ). In their defense, the members of Metallica claimed to have tried solos on their songs, but the guitar solos only detracted from the songs and were rendered unnecessary (and in the 2004 Some Kind of Monster documentary, Hammett spoke vehemently against the idea of not having solos, claiming Metallica never followed any trends, and solos were an integral part of Metallica songs).
However, a lot of fans felt that guitar solos were, in fact, necessary, considering the length of the songs - all the songs are over five minutes long, and detractors of the "no solo" idea claimed that the lack of solos failed to break the monotony of the song. That, and the songs used a minimal number of riffs ("St. Anger", the title track, consisiting mainly of two riffs spread out over 7 minutes and 21 seconds, is a prime example), and not to have any solos interspersed in the song made listening tedious.
Another gripe with the production came with the sound of the snare drum, upon which little to no production was done to it - as such, the snare has a very distinct "pinging" sound to it (as opposed to the flatter "snap" common to most snare drums). With the intense drumming of the album (bordering on blast-beats), the "pinging" sound is heard very many times over the course of the album. While some fans say this adds to the "raw" and "garage" feel of the album, others find it annoying and detracting from the actual music of the song.
In addition to production and songwriting errors, Metallica fans found fault with the lyric writing process of the album. Prior to [i]St. Anger[/i], James Hetfield had been the sole lyric-writer. Upon his return from rehab, Hetfield included Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammett into the lyric-writing process, as part of making the members of Metallica more open with each other. The results were, naturally for Metallica fans, criticized - many felt that the lyrical contributions of Hammett and Ulrich were dumbed down, and not on the same level as that of Hetfield's. Again, other fans did not have a problem and defended the lyrics.
All Music Guide St. Anger Album page http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=UIDMISS70311071654390588&sql=A8rapqj3wojta
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