St. Anger

St. Anger is a work on which METALLICA prioritized urgent riffs, rough sound and anger-filled singing over ordered constructive beauty. A song construction containing much repetition and a dry percussive feel create the sense of turning the band’s internal tension directly into sound. It is also a raw record built while the members faced their own relationships during the turmoil after Jason Newsted’s departure. On “Frantic,” “St. Anger” and “Some Kind of Monster,” by excluding guitar solos and using a distinctive snare sound and repeating riffs, a rough, aggressive sound image is made. Songs like “The Unnamed Feeling” and “All Within My Hands” carve an urgent emotion too. It departs greatly from the established style, so reactions are divided, but that very awkwardness is also the core of this record. Recording even the moment of near-collapse, it is a singular, special METALLICA work.