10 Terrible Albums By Legendary Music Bands

The late '90s were not really the kindest to any metal band. The hair metal that had set the '80s on fire was pretty much dead once grunge hit, and while nu metal started off sounding like a breath of fresh air, the sounds of acts like Staind made the entire scene look like whiny white guys singing about their inner pain. So when Metallica announced they were working on an album, that should have been fantastic news...in theory.

Around the time of St. Anger's development, the band were going through therapy and it really shows, with James Hetfield really phoning it in with both his songwriting and vocal performances, as he tries to let go of a lot of the anger issues that he had built up over the years. Since this was the guy who wrote about heavy topics like war, hearing him talk about his inner existential feelings sounds like he's trying to tap into that nu metal energy and failing miserably.

That's before you even get to the production, with virtually no decent guitar tones to speak of in the mix and the now-memed sounds of Lars Ulrich's drums, which sound like an industrial sized garbage can being hit at the best of times. Somewhere in here is an idea for a good Metallica album, but this feels like one of the prolonged therapy sessions they were having that we were never really supposed to see.