10 Perfect Rock Songs On Terrible Albums
6. The Unnamed Feeling - Metallica
With years of hindsight, it feels like the snobby set of Metallica fans got their comeuppance with St. Anger. After years of claiming that one of the greatest metal bands had sold out, they came back to heaviness by delivering one of the most unlistenable albums in their entire catalog. Aside from the cymbal bashing though, there's still shades of the classic thrash band on the Unnamed Feeling.
Since most of the songs were written as a result of the band going through group therapy, a lot of the lyrics just sound like they shouldn't have been put on a mainstream record. When you get to this track though, this is the kind of emotional vulnerability that goes down a lot smoother, especially when Lars actually decides to reel things in a bit in the chorus.
Seeing how James Hetfield was also grappling with his addictions and anger issues around the same time, this is where his emotion actually feels real, as if the boy who grew up on the Unforgiven is now reaching his emotional breaking point. That way, when the heavy section actually comes back in, James' voice is meant to be off putting and Lars' drums actually work in creating a dense atmosphere. Although most of this record is just a culmination of really bad ideas, this is where they start hitting on something that's actually working.