Just give me a second, I'm securing the last of the bolts on this door...there, I think that'll hold. Right, I'll just say this; I love St. Anger. Now if you'll just refrain from throwing your other shoe, at least until I'm done, and hear me out. St Anger was my entry point for Metallica in terms of the first album I bought with my own money after getting into them after Reload, and I'll be honest I had no idea what the 'perfect snare drum sound' was supposed to be, nor did I notice the absence of solos, or the fact that each song went on for six minutes too long. To me, it was just one glorious explosion of half-arsedly produced, foul-meaning metal, with a grunge/punk-like mentality that I think was far more in-keeping with the Metallica of old's sensibilities than the pompadoured hairstyles of the late 90's. They weren't out to please anybody with that album, they made it because they needed the purge. They needed to write dirty, badly-produced riffs with song-structures that went nowhere, because they just wanted to play their downtuned instruments as loudly as possible, and shout lyrics that came to mind the week before. I'll totally fight anyone (utilising a keyboard of course) that wants to say "My lifestyle determines my deathstyle" is a bad lyric, or "Was your back so you won't stab mine". They're just damn timeless, and given it was on a different album, snarled with the venom of old so potent you could bottle it, they would have been remembered far more fondly. All that being said, it did provide the turning point for the band, and since then they appear to be on the up and up, yet throughout Death Magnetic, save for My Apocalypse, there's nay a moment as purely primal, as the last 35 seconds of St. Anger's opening track Frantic. So what do you guys think? Fans and non-fans alike, I ask all of you to comment below and let us all know what you're looking forward to, and what you do and don't want from the new album.
