Fuck it all and no regrets

Continuing my trip back through the 2003 album charts.

15/06/03 : St. Anger - Metallica 

Our fifth visit with Metallica - I can't say I remember too many of them, but reading my comments they've not been as bad as I feared, so maybe there's hope for this. I'm not sure I'm going to need 75 minutes of it though.

Well - I definitely didn't need 75 minutes of it, but taken on a track by track basis it was all remarkably bearable if you can tolerate that sort of thing. It's all, to no-one's surprise, very drum and guitar heavy but there's a reasonable amount of variety in there and I might even go as far as saying I liked the first three tracks - "Frantic", "St. Anger" and "Some Kind Of Monster. I do think all songs could have done with some pruning - the shortest is 5:13 and there are six tracks over seven minutes long and three over eight minutes long on there. But we don't come to Metallica albums for understatement now, do we? It's also a pretty decent album cover.

We're at #4 in the charts this week on their second week of a longer-than-expected sixteen week run with it having peaked at #3 in its debut week. The rest of the top five were Radiohead (a new entry), Stereophonics, Annie Lennox (another new entry) and Evanescence and the next highest new entry was Steely Dan (#21 - their final album).

Wikipedia has a decent amount on the album (213 milliPeppers) and it tells me this is their eighth album (they're up to eleven now) and their only one as an official trio (niche Metallica fact alert!) because bassist Jason Newsted left the band just as they were about to enter the studio. Recording the album was also interrupted by James Hetfield going into rehab - and when he came back nine months later, he was only allowed to work from noon to 4pm. At which point the band hired a "personal enhancement coach" - all of which contributed greatly to the most entertaining documentary Some Kind Of Monster. 

Wikipedia describes the critical reviews as "polarized" and they're really not lying because they range from "there's no space wasted here...just a focused, relentless attack" to "all attempts fail miserably" (they do however all agreed on the one thing - how perfectly horrible the snare drum was). Commercially, no-one cared what the critics thought about anything because #3 is the lowest chart placing listed anywhere, with it hitting #1 in eighteen countries including the US - it was also #1 in Finland's year-end chart (what a happy country it must be!).

"Customers also listened to" Megadeth, System Of A Down, Pantera and Slayer - just don't ask me to choose my favourite out of that lot! And I'd hardly describe myself as a Metallica fan, but a lot of this was considerably more bearable (and even likeable) than I was expecting. A whole album of it was obviously far too much, but let's celebrate the small victories!

08/06/03 - Impressive, but...
22/06/23 - Enjoyable, but weirdly forgettable