St. Anger is the eighth studio album by American heavy metal band Metallica. Released on June 5, 2003, this album marks the longest time span between studio albums from Metallica, with the nearly six years between the release of ReLoad and St. Anger and the first to receive a Parental Advisory label excluding Garage Inc. (a cover album) and S&M (a live album). The album was originally intended for release on June 10, 2003, but was instead released five days earlier due to fear of music piracy over filesharing networks.

St. Anger is the first Metallica album since ...And Justice For All to not feature long-time bassist Jason Newsted, due to his departure from the band prior to the recording of the album. Afraid to start recording too soon with a new bassist, producer Bob Rock performed the bass parts for St. Anger. After the recording of the album was over, Metallica hired Robert Trujillo as the band's new bassist. He went on a nearly two-year tour with Metallica in support of the album. Recording initially started 24th of April 2001, but was postponed indefinitely because singer and rhythm guitarist James Hetfield entered rehab for alcoholism and other undefined addictions. St. Anger also marks the last collaboration between Metallica and Bob Rock.

St. Anger debuted at the top of sales charts in 30 countries, including the United States Billboard 200. Upon the release of the album, St. Anger met mixed critical reviews. In 2004, the lead single from the album, "St. Anger", won a Grammy Award for "Best Metal Performance".

Background, writing and recording

Metallica rented an old army barracks in the Presidio of San Francisco, California and converted it into a makeshift studio in January 2001. As plans were being made to enter the studio to write and record its first album in nearly five years, Metallica postponed the recording due to the departure of Jason Newsted. Newsted left Metallica on January 17, 2001, stating his departure was due to "private and personal reasons and the physical damage I have done to myself over the years while playing the music that I love". Uncomfortable with immediately writing and recording with a new bassist, Metallica opted to include its long-time producer Bob Rock as bassist. Metallica stated they would find another bass player upon the album's completion.

In July 2001, recording came to a halt when vocalist and rhythm guitarist James Hetfield entered rehab for alcoholism and other undisclosed addictions. Hetfield returned to the band in December of that year, but was only allowed to work on the album from 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM. Due to Hetfield's personal dilemmas, as well as Metallica's internal struggles, the band hired a therapist to help them. This and the recording of the album was documented by filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. Throughout two years of filming, over 1,000 hours of video were recorded, documenting the band's recording process. After the release of the album, some of the material was released as a film, titled Some Kind of Monster.

Hetfield stated that the album was written with "lot of passion in this". He said, "There's two years of condensed emotion in this. We've gone through a lot of personal changes, struggles, epiphanies, it's deep. It's so deep lyrically and musically. [St. Anger] is just the best that it can be from us right now." The band purposely wanted a raw sound on the album; therefore Rock did not polish the sound while mixing, giving Metallica the raw sound they wanted. The band wanted the raw sound for St. Anger because of the depth of the emotion they felt and did not want to "mess with it". Rock commented "I wanted to do something to shake up radio and the way everything else sounds. To me, this album sounds like four guys in a garage getting together and writing rock songs. There was really no time to get amazing performances out of James. We liked the raw performances. And we didn't do what everyone does and what I've been guilty of for a long time, which is tuning vocals. We just did it, boom, and that was it."

Guitarist Kirk Hammett commented on the lack of guitar solos on St. Anger, a departure from what Metallica has done in the past, "We wanted to preserve the sound of all four of us in a room just jamming. We tried to put guitar solos on, but we kept on running into this problem. It really sounded like an afterthought." Hammett said that he was happy with the final product. Rock stated "We made a promise to ourselves that we'd only keep stuff that had integrity. We didn't want to make a theatrical statement by adding overdubs."

Drummer Lars Ulrich achieved a unique sound on St. Anger by turning off the snares on his snare drum resulting in a drum tone with far more "ring" than is usual in rock and metal. This sound received a lot of backlash from fans and critics alike. Ulrich said, "One day I forgot to turn the snare on because I wasn't thinking about this stuff. At the playbacks, I decided I was really liking what I was hearing — it had a different ambience. It sang back to me a in a beautiful way." Regarding the backlash about the sound, he stated "It's crazy, that kind of closed-mindedness." Rock said "I would say I've only [done something] this brutal [sounding] when I've done demos. It probably sounds heavier because it's Metallica, but really this was a 15-minutes-on-the-drum-sound type of thing."

When St. Anger was completed, Metallica kept true to its earlier statement, and hired a new permanent bassist. In February 2003, Robert Trujillo had joined Metallica. Trujillo appeared on the footage of studio rehearsals of St. Anger in its entirety, which would later be released on DVD. He was hired as a full-time member, therefore toured with Metallica in support of St. Anger.

Album artwork

Brian "Pushead" Schroeder designed the album cover and artwork for St. Anger. Pushead has designed numerous items for Metallica in the past, including artwork inside the sleeve of ...And Justice For All, several single covers, and many t-shirts. Originally, according to Metallica's official website, four different limited color variations of the cover were planned, but the plans were eventually canceled.

Release and promotion

St. Anger was released on June 5, 2003. It was originally scheduled for June 10, 2003, but due to Metallica's previous battle with Napster (with Lars as the spearhead) and fear that it would be illegally released onto filesharing networks, the band pushed the release date five days ahead. A special edition of the album was released with a bonus DVD, featuring live, in-the-studio rehearsals of all of the St. Anger tracks. First week sales of the album were 417,000 copies, and it debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200, as well as 30 other countries in the world. In the U.S., St. Anger has a certification of 2× Platinum, for excess sales of 2 million copies sold. In 2004, Metallica won the award for Best Metal Performance, for the song "St. Anger".

After St. Anger's release, Metallica embarked on a tour that would last nearly two years. The first leg was the U.S. 2003 Summer Sanitarium tour with support from Limp Bizkit, Deftones, Linkin Park, and Mudvayne. After Summer Sanitarium, the band began the Madly in Anger with the World Tour with support from Godsmack (and Slipknot on certain European dates), which lasted until late 2004. The St. Anger songs "Frantic," "St. Anger," "Dirty Window," and "The Unnamed Feeling" were performed frequently during the tour. "Sweet Amber" and "Some Kind of Monster" were also played live, but not as often as other songs on St. Anger. The album tracks were altered when played live; sometimes they were shortened, or in some cases a guitar solo was added. Sometimes, only one song from the album was played live. By 2006, the songs from St. Anger, along with those from ReLoad and Load were almost completely absent from Metallica's set lists. In October 2007, the song "All Within My Hands" was performed live for the first time, acoustically, at both nights of the Bridge School Benefit concerts.

Metallica also released four singles from St. Anger. The order of the releases was "St. Anger", "Frantic", "The Unnamed Feeling", and "Some Kind of Monster". On the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart, these singles charted at #2, #21, #28, and #18, respectively. Promotional music videos were also made of all four of the songs. These videos can be found on Metallica's DVD video collection, titled The Videos 1989-2004, and the video for "Some Kind of Monster" can also be found on the film Some Kind of Monster.

Critical reception

St. Anger received a mixed response from critics; review-aggregating website Metacritic gave the album a score of 65 out of 100, based on 20 reviews. One reviewer, Adrien Begrand of PopMatters, took both sides to it, saying, "While it's an ungodly mess at times, what you hear on this album is a band playing with passion for the first time in years." Rock said that it was "a band jamming together in a garage for the first time, and the band just happened to be Metallica". Talking about the album, Greg Kont from Blender said, "It may be too late to rehabilitate Metallica’s image, but once again, their music is all about bringing the carnage." Reporting for NME, Ian Watson said "the songs are a stripped back, heroically brutal reflection of this fury. You get the sense that, as with their emotional selves, they've taken metal apart and started again from scratch. There's no space wasted here, no time for petty guitar solos or downtuned bass trickery, just a focussed, relentless attack." Johnny Loftus of Allmusic praised the album and described St. Anger as a "punishing, unflinching document of internal struggle — taking listeners inside the bruised yet vital body of Metallica, but ultimately revealing the alternately torturous and defiant demons that wrestle inside Hetfield's brain. St. Anger is an immediate record."

Although many reviews were positive toward St. Anger, some reviewers had a strong distaste for the album. Brian DiCrescenzo from Pitchfork Media strongly disliked the album and criticized Ulrich and Hammett, saying that Ulrich was "playing a drumset consisting of steel drums, aluminum toms, programmed double kicks, and a broken church bell. The kit's high-end clamor ignored the basic principles of drumming: timekeeping," he added, "Hetfield and Hammett's guitars underwent more processing than cat food. When they both speedstrummed through "St. Anger", and most other movements, [Hetfield and Hammett] seemed to overwhelm each other with different, terrible noise." PopMatters reporter Michael Christopher said "St. Anger dispenses with the recent spate of radio friendly pleasantries in favor of pedal to the floor thrash, staggered and extended song structures, quick changes and a muddled production that tries to harken back to the Kill 'Em All days.

Track listing

Personnel

CD

• James Hetfield: lead vocals, rhythm guitar
• Kirk Hammett: lead guitar, backing vocals
• Lars Ulrich: drums, percussion
• Bob Rock: bass guitar, producer, engineer, mixing
• Anton Corbijn: photography
• Scott Cunningham: production coordination
• Mike Gillies: digital engineer, assistant
• Pushead: artwork

DVD

• Robert Trujillo: bass, backing vocals
• Wayne Isham: director
• Dana Marshall: producer
• Vlado Meller: mastering
• Colin Mitchell: camera operator
• Paul Owen: monitors
• Jean Pellerin: editing, camera operator
• Ryan Smith: camera operator

Chart positions

Chart (2003)	Peak position
Australian Albums Chart	1
Austria Albums Chart	1
Canadian Albums Chart	1
Finnish Albums Chart	1
German Albums Chart	1
Japan Albums Chart	1
Netherlands Albums Chart	2
Norwegian Albums Chart	1
Swedish Albums Chart	1
Swiss Albums Chart	2
UK Albums Chart	3
France Albums Chart	6
US Billboard 200	1

References

1. [Click on specific years, then click on "tour", which will lead you to all the dates Metallica played that year. From there you can access a setlist from each concert that the band held.]