St. Anger

St. Anger
Studio album by Metallica
Released June 5, 2003
Recorded May 2002 – April 2003
Genre Heavy metal[1][2][3][4]
Label Elektra, Vertigo
Producer Bob Rock, Metallica
Metallica chronology
ReLoad
(1997)
St. Anger
(2003)
Death Magnetic
(2008)
Singles from St. Anger
  1. "St. Anger"
    Released: May 27, 2003
  2. "Frantic"
    Released: September 15, 2003
  3. "The Unnamed Feeling"
    Released: January 12, 2004
  4. "Some Kind of Monster"
    Released: June 2004

St. Anger is the eighth studio album by the American heavy metal band Metallica. It was released on June 5, 2003 through Elektra Records. It was the band's last album released through Elektra. The album marked the end of the longest timespan between studio albums from Metallica, with nearly six years between the release of ReLoad and St. Anger. It is the first Metallica studio album to receive a Parental Advisory label. The album was originally intended for release on June 10, 2003, but was released five days earlier due to concerns over unlicensed distribution through filesharing networks. St. Anger marks the final collaboration between Metallica and producer Bob Rock, whose relationship began with the band's fifth studio album, 1991's Metallica.

St. Anger is the first Metallica album since their third studio album, Master of Puppets, that does not feature long-time bassist Jason Newsted. Newsted left the band prior to the initial sessions for the album. Recording of the album initially started on April 24, 2001, but was postponed indefinitely when rhythm guitarist and singer James Hetfield entered rehab for "alcoholism and other addictions."

St. Anger debuted at the top of sales charts in 30 countries, including the United States Billboard 200. Upon the release of the album, St. Anger met mixed critical reviews. In 2004, the lead single from the album, "St. Anger", won a Grammy Award for "Best Metal Performance". The album has also sold over 2 million copies in the US alone and was certified 2x Platinum by the RIAA.[5]

Contents

Background, writing and recording

Metallica rented an old army barracks in the Presidio of San Francisco, California and converted it into a makeshift studio in January 2001.[6] As plans were being made to enter the studio to write and record its first album in nearly five years, Metallica postponed the recording due to the departure of Jason Newsted. Newsted left Metallica on January 17, 2001, stating his departure was due to "private and personal reasons and the physical damage I have done to myself over the years while playing the music that I love".[7] Uncomfortable with immediately writing and recording with a new bassist, Metallica opted to include its long-time producer Bob Rock as bassist. Metallica stated they would find another bass player upon the album's completion.[6]

In July 2001, recording came to a halt when vocalist and rhythm guitarist James Hetfield entered rehab for alcoholism and other undisclosed addictions.[8] Hetfield returned to the band in December of that year,[9] but was only allowed to work on the album from 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM. Due to Hetfield's personal dilemmas, as well as Metallica's internal struggles, the band hired a personal enhancement coach, Phil Towle, to help them. This and the recording of the album was documented by filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. Throughout two years of filming, over 1,000 hours of video were recorded, documenting the band's recording process. Subsequent to the album's release, Berlinger and Sinofsky released the edited material as the film Some Kind of Monster.[10]

Hetfield stated that the album was written with "a lot of passion in this".[11] He said, "There's two years of condensed emotion in this. We've gone through a lot of personal changes, struggles, epiphanies, it's deep. It's so deep lyrically and musically.[11] [St. Anger] is just the best that it can be from us right now."[12] The band purposely wanted a raw sound on the album; therefore Rock did not polish the sound while mixing. The band desired the raw sound because of the depth of the emotion they felt and did not want to "mess with it".[12] Rock commented "I wanted to do something to shake up radio and the way everything else sounds. To me, this album sounds like four guys in a garage getting together and writing rock songs. There was really no time to get amazing performances out of James. We liked the raw performances. And we didn't do what everyone does and what I've been guilty of for a long time, which is tuning vocals. We just did it, boom, and that was it."[13]

Guitarist Kirk Hammett commented on the lack of guitar solos on St. Anger, a departure from what Metallica has done in the past: "We wanted to preserve the sound of all four of us in a room just jamming. We tried to put guitar solos on, but we kept on running into this problem. It really sounded like an afterthought." Hammett said that he was happy with the final product.[14] Rock stated "We made a promise to ourselves that we'd only keep stuff that had integrity. We didn't want to make a theatrical statement by adding overdubs."[13]

Robert Trujillo became Metallica's new bassist in February 2003 and toured with the band in support of St. Anger.

Drummer Lars Ulrich achieved a unique sound on St. Anger by turning off the snares on his snare drum resulting in a drum tone with far more "ring" than is usual in rock and metal. This sound received much backlash from fans and critics alike.[15] Ulrich said, "One day I forgot to turn the snare on because I wasn't thinking about this stuff. At the playbacks, I decided I was really liking what I was hearing — it had a different ambience. It sang back to me a in a beautiful way." Regarding the backlash about the sound, he stated "It's crazy, that kind of closed-mindedness."[15] Rock said "I would say I've only [done something] this brutal [sounding] when I've done demos. It probably sounds heavier because it's Metallica, but really this was a 15-minutes-on-the-drum-sound type of thing."[16]

When St. Anger was completed, Metallica kept true to its earlier statement and hired a new permanent bassist. In February 2003, Robert Trujillo joined Metallica. Trujillo appeared on the footage of studio rehearsals of St. Anger in its entirety, which was included on DVD in the album package.

Album artwork

Brian "Pushead" Schroeder designed the album cover and artwork for St. Anger. Pushead has designed numerous items for Metallica in the past, including liner artwork of ...And Justice For All, several single covers, and many t-shirts. Originally, according to Metallica's official website, four different limited color variations of the cover were planned, but were eventually scrapped.[17]

Release and promotion

St. Anger was released on June 5, 2003. It was originally scheduled for June 10, 2003, but due to Metallica's previous battle with Napster and fear that it would be illegally released onto filesharing networks, the band pushed the release date five days ahead.[18][19] A special edition of the album was released with a bonus DVD, featuring live, in-the-studio rehearsals of all of the St. Anger tracks. First week sales of the album were 417,000 copies,[20] and it debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200, as well as 30 other countries in the world.[21] In 2004, Metallica won the award for Best Metal Performance, for the song "St. Anger".[22]

Metallica playing live, in support of St. Anger.

After St. Anger's release, Metallica embarked on a tour that would last nearly two years. The first leg was the U.S. 2003 Summer Sanitarium tour with support from Limp Bizkit, Deftones, Linkin Park, and Mudvayne. After Summer Sanitarium, the band began the Madly in Anger with the World Tour with support from Godsmack (and Slipknot on certain European dates), which lasted until late 2004. The St. Anger songs "Frantic", "St. Anger," "Dirty Window," and "The Unnamed Feeling" were performed frequently during the tour. "Sweet Amber" and "Some Kind of Monster" were also played live, but not as often as other songs on St. Anger.[23] The album tracks were altered when played live; sometimes they were shortened, or in some cases a guitar solo was added.[24] Sometimes, only one song from the album was played live. By 2006, the songs from St. Anger, along with those from ReLoad and Load were almost completely absent from Metallica's set lists.[23] In October 2007, the song "All Within My Hands" was performed live for the first time, acoustically, at both nights of the Bridge School Benefit concerts.[25]

Metallica also released four singles from St. Anger. The order of the releases was "St. Anger", "Frantic", "The Unnamed Feeling", and "Some Kind of Monster". On the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart, these singles charted at #2, #21, #28, and #18, respectively.[26] Promotional music videos were also made of all four of the songs. These videos can be found on Metallica's DVD video collection, titled The Videos 1989-2004, and the video for "Some Kind of Monster" can also be found on the film Some Kind of Monster.

Critical reception

 Professional ratings
Review scores
Source Rating
Blender 4/5 stars [27]
NME 9/10 stars [2]
The A.V. Club (unfavorable) [28]
IGN 7/10 stars [29]
Allmusic 3/5 stars [1]
New York (favorable) [30]
Entertainment Weekly (B+) [4]
Rolling Stone 4/5 stars [3]
Pitchfork Media (0.8/10) [31]
Sputnikmusic 2/5 stars [32]

St. Anger received a mixed response from critics; review-aggregating website Metacritic gave the album a score of 65 out of 100, based on 20 reviews.[33] One reviewer, Adrien Begrand of PopMatters, took both sides to it, saying, "While it's an ungodly mess at times, what you hear on this album is a band playing with passion for the first time in years."[34] Rock said that it was "a band jamming together in a garage for the first time, and the band just happened to be Metallica".[6] Talking about the album, Greg Kont from Blender said, "It may be too late to rehabilitate Metallica’s image, but once again, their music is all about bringing the carnage."[35] Reporting for NME, Ian Watson said "the songs are a stripped back, heroically brutal reflection of this fury. You get the sense that, as with their emotional selves, they've taken metal apart and started again from scratch. There's no space wasted here, no time for petty guitar solos or downtuned bass trickery, just a focussed, relentless attack."[2] Johnny Loftus of Allmusic praised the album and described St. Anger as a "punishing, unflinching document of internal struggle — taking listeners inside the bruised yet vital body of Metallica, but ultimately revealing the alternately torturous and defiant demons that wrestle inside Hetfield's brain. St. Anger is an immediate record."[1]

Although many reviews were positive toward St. Anger, some reviewers had a strong distaste for the album. Brent DiCrescenzo from Pitchfork Media strongly disliked the album and criticized Ulrich and Hammett, saying that Ulrich was "playing a drumset consisting of steel drums, aluminum toms, programmed double kicks, and a broken church bell. The kit's high-end clamor ignored the basic principles of drumming: timekeeping," he added, "Hetfield and Hammett's guitars underwent more processing than cat food. When they both speedstrummed through "St. Anger", and most other movements, [Hetfield and Hammett] seemed to overwhelm each other with different, terrible noise."[36] PopMatters reporter Michael Christopher said "St. Anger dispenses with the recent spate of radio friendly pleasantries in favor of pedal to the floor thrash, staggered and extended song structures, quick changes and a muddled production that tries to harken back to the Kill 'Em All days.[37]

Track listing

All songs written and composed by James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Bob Rock. 

No. Title Length
1. "Frantic"   5:50
2. "St. Anger"   7:21
3. "Some Kind of Monster"   8:26
4. "Dirty Window"   5:25
5. "Invisible Kid"   8:30
6. "My World"   5:46
7. "Shoot Me Again"   7:10
8. "Sweet Amber"   5:27
9. "The Unnamed Feeling"   7:10
10. "Purify"   5:14
11. "All Within My Hands"   8:48
Total length:
75:01

Personnel

CD

DVD

Chart positions

Chart (2003) Peak
position
Australian Albums Chart 1[38]
Austria Albums Chart 1[39]
Canadian Albums Chart 1[40]
Finnish Albums Chart 1[41]
German Albums Chart 1[42]
Japan Albums Chart 1[43]
Netherlands Albums Chart 2[44]
Norwegian Albums Chart 1[45]
Poland Albums Chart 1[46]
Swedish Albums Chart 1[47]
Swiss Albums Chart 2[48]
UK Albums Chart 3[49]
France Albums Chart 6[43]
US Billboard 200 1[50]

Certifications

Country Certification
United States 2x Platinum
Canada 2x Platinum[51]
Germany 2x Platinum[52]
Preceded by
How the West Was Won by Led Zeppelin
Billboard 200 number-one album
June 15, 2003 - June 21, 2003
Succeeded by
Dance With My Father by Luther Vandross
Preceded by
Innocent Eyes by Delta Goodrem
Australian ARIA Albums Chart Number-one album
June 16, 2003 - June 29, 2003
Succeeded by
Vulture Street by Powderfinger

References

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