10 Albums That Were Supposed To Be Great (But Fell Apart)

6. St. Anger - Metallica

For a while, it seemed like we heard radio silence coming from Metallica at the turn of the century. While they had kept busy with their symphonic concerts and covers albums, there was no real new music coming down the pipeline outside of the leaked soundtrack song that started the Napster controversy. So, that means the band was planning something even bigger, right? Well...yes and no.

Looking to move away from the commercial direction of Load and Reload, producer Bob Rock had talked about Metallica's next record bringing them back to their garage rock roots. Since the Garage Inc. compilation had turned out pretty well, this was an encouraging sign, which was stomped into the ground once you popped in St. Anger. This record certainly does have the lack of polish coming from a garage rock record...with ear-bleeding guaranteed for all.

Recorded and written during a tumultuous period of the band's life, this feels less like a coherent musical piece and more like these guys coming to terms with their personal problems in the middle of the song. While there is a way for that to be done well, you need to make sure that you at least have the frame of mind to...I don't know...produce the record a bit and not have your snare drum sound like it's hitting you over the head on every other beat. This might have been a back to basics record for Metallica at the outset, but St. Anger showed why Metallica moved out of the garage scene after they hit it big.