Metallica, one of the legends of world rock music, was included in the list of “50 terrible albums of brilliant performers”. The list was compiled by Rolling Stone. This is a kind of anti-rating, which has not bypassed the attention of many famous artists and musical groups.
Perhaps the most reputable music magazine has compiled a rating of “50 truly terrible albums of brilliant performers”, which unexpectedly included the American metal band Metallica. Such an “honor” was given to the album “St. Anger”, which was released back in 2003 and became the eighth collection in the band’s discography.
“St. Anger” topped the Billboard 200 and topped the charts in a dozen other countries. The collection was also awarded gold and platinum certification in the States, Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Japan and so on. Why, then, did Rolling Stone put it at number 43 on their terrible albums list?
The publication quite reasonably explained this decision. At that time, Metallica was going through hard times – the founder and vocalist of the band, James Hetfield, was then undergoing rehabilitation from alcohol addiction, and bassist Jason Newsted left the band, which is why the band was in danger of breaking up. Of course, this could not but affect the quality of the recording.
The very first thing that neither the fans nor the critics liked was the drumming throughout the entire album. Drummer Lars Ulrich was then accused of playing more like banging on a tin can. The audience did not like the lack of guitar solos, which Kirk Hammett was usually famous for.
However, this turned out to be not the main problem of the collection. If it was still possible to turn a blind eye to the sound of drums, then the lyrics of Rolling Stone’s songs were seriously criticized.
At the same time, the creators of the rating emphasized that the group members came into some kind of contradiction with themselves. Every time when it comes to criticism of “St. Anger”, Metallica defends the collection, but at the same time they almost never play tracks from this album at concerts.
