Metallica "St. Anger"

St. Anger is the eighth studio album by American heavy metal band Metallica, released on June 5, 2003, by Elektra Records. It was the band's last album released through Elektra, and the second-longest timespan between studio albums from Metallica, with nearly six years between the release of Reload and this album. It is also the final collaboration between Metallica and producer Bob Rock, whose relationship began with the band's fifth studio album, 1991's Metallica. St. Anger was originally intended for release on June 10, 2003, but was released five days earlier due to concerns over unlicensed distribution through peer-to-peer file sharing networks. The St. Anger sessions also mark the only time Rock played on any Metallica recordings, filling in for the departed bassist Jason Newsted.

Newsted left the band prior to the initial sessions for the album, and the band decided to wait until the album was recorded before finding a new permanent member. Recording of the album started initially on April 23, 2001, but was postponed indefinitely when rhythm guitarist and singer James Hetfield entered rehab for "alcoholism and other addictions". St. Anger is often recognized for being a radical musical departure from Metallica's earlier work; it features a modern heavy metal style, raw production, and no guitar solos. The artwork was created by Pushead, who had previously collaborated with the band.

Metallica spent the next couple of years touring to promote the album. Despite receiving generally mixed reviews, St. Anger debuted at the top of sales charts in 14 countries, including the US Billboard 200. In 2004, the album's lead single, "St. Anger", won a Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance. The album was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipping two million copies in the US. St. Anger has sold nearly six million copies worldwide.

Metallica rented an old United States Army barracks on the Presidio of San Francisco 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, the band postponed the recording because of the departure of bassist Jason Newsted. He 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 Bob Rock as bassist. The band stated they would find another bass player upon the album's completion.

In July 2001, recording came to a halt when James Hetfield entered rehab for alcoholism and other undisclosed addictions. Hetfield returned to the band in April of the next year, but was only allowed to work on the album from 12:00 to 4:00 PM. Due to his personal issues, as well as Metallica's internal struggles, the band hired a personal enhancement coach, Phil Towle, to help them. This, and the recording of the album, was documented by filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. The band's recording process was filmed over the course of three years. Subsequent to the album's release, Berlinger and Sinofsky released the edited material as the film Some Kind of Monster. From May 2002 until April 2003, the album was recorded at a new studio in San Rafael, California, known as "HQ".


Hetfield stated that the album was written with "a lot of passion". 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 so that Rock did not polish the sound while mixing. The band desired the raw sound 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 had 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 much 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 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 hired a new, permanent bassist. In February 2003, Robert Trujillo joined the band. He appears on the footage of studio rehearsals of St. Anger in its entirety, which was included on DVD in the album package.

Brian "Pushead" Schroeder designed the album cover and interior artwork for St. Anger. Pushead has designed a number of items for Metallica in the past, including liner artwork of ...And Justice for All, several single covers, and many T-shirts; however, the album marks his first studio album cover art for the band. Originally, according to Metallica's official website, four different limited color variations of the cover were planned, but the idea was eventually scrapped.

Music videos were shot for "St. Anger", "Frantic", "The Unnamed Feeling" and "Some Kind of Monster". Bass player Robert Trujillo is credited as band member, performs on the St. Anger Rehearsals DVD and features in every music video for the album, but he did not play any song in it. 

The album's creation process is chronicled in detail in the documentary "Some Kind of Monster". 

Metallica tried some different approaches to making music on this album, like collaborating on lyrics.

Recording information:

Conceived, recorded and mixed between May, 2002 and April, 2003 at HQ in San Rafael, California.

Mastered at Sony Studios in New York City, New York.