St. Anger re-recorded

So two joes went and re-recorded St. Anger and even re-arranged some of the album. The production is great, a vast improvement over the original album's sound. Thoughts?

Kudos fro these guys to take the time and effort to do this. It's an improvement over the originals as far as I can tell. The snare drum doesn't hurt my ears.

That being said, it's like putting a silk hat and make-up on a pig. Dress it up all you want, it's still a pig.

It must be nice to have that kinda spare time, I guess.

Why? Seems like a waste of time.

St. Anger, while easily the band's worst album, really mainly suffers from being impossible to listen to. For me, anyway. Halfway through this version of "Frantic" that's pretty clear to me. No, not a great song, not even a good song, really, just kind of meh—but I don't have an overwhelming urge to push NEXT.

Anyway, I think this is kind of neat.

You can't polish a turd.

St Anger is still a great song, the rest is rubbish but that one song is golden.

Witchfinder wrote:

You can't polish a turd.

I've always disagreed with this. You can't totally polish a turd. Case in point above.

It sounds better, but the songs are shit. Which, for me anyway, was always the biggest problem with this album. This is when they went from circling the drain to disappearing into it. These guys must be uber fan boys.

DeathCult wrote:

It sounds better, but the songs are shit. Which, for me anyway, was always the biggest problem with this album. This is when they went from circling the drain to disappearing into it. These guys must be uber fan boys.

I've got a funny feeling that St Anger will become a 'cult' album in years to come with people claiming it was an unfairly judged flawed classic. It isn't, the songs are mostly shit, I could have lived with the sound if the songs were there but they weren't. Frantic is the biggest pile of old tosh I've ever heard, every time I hear that stupid deathstyle line I think of Lars and the face he pulled when james first read it out

why? If you could pick from any album Metallica has done why pick St. Anger?

Not exactly sure if their motives but if it was me this would have purely an experiment, sort of a what if. Sure I could do it with Justice but all the parts are already at least good enough save for the bass, and besides guys have been doing such on YouTube for years now. Here we have an album that is so so screwed up in every way. Here we can see if sound quality, or lack thereof, can actually make it break the actual written piece. For a lot if people here, it has little effect and the songs still suck. But for me, it has actually become listenable. St. Anger is one of those albums that I just cannot stomach. Except for here, which to me is remarkable.

Sorry about the typos above, I'm on mobile. f*cking Swype.

Boris2008 wrote:

St Anger is still a great song, the rest is rubbish but that one song is golden.

As much as I despise the album with a vengeance, I saw UFC live a few months ago, and one of the fighters entered the cage to "St. Anger". I was thinking, "Of all the Metallica songs he could have entered the stage to, why St. Anger?"

Someone at another board I post at made fun of him for it.

Witchfinder wrote:

You can't polish a turd.

You can..... But it's still a turd.

Invisible Kid is the only song I could get into on the album.

exact33 wrote:

why? If you could pick from any album Metallica has done why pick St. Anger?

Because even they didn't want to try and salvage Lulu...

Blabbermouth picked up on this story. The guys gave an explanation for the choice of album...

Quote :

According to The Pulse Of Radio, METALLICA's controversial "St. Anger" album has been re-recorded in its entirety by two fans who have called the project #STANGER2015.

The fans, Chris D. and Dave C., issued a statement saying, "Recorded during a turbulent time in the bands career, 'St. Anger' has always divided opinion. Some longtime fans were turned off by the drop tuned riffs and raw production, whilst some listeners embraced it, myself included. #STANGER2015 is for the listeners who weren't so fond on the record back when it was released in 2003."

The pair added, "Recorded from the ground up, the album has been shortened by 15 minutes, yet every riff and lyric is intact, resulting in a more concise and focused record. The production is also more conventional, and we hope that METALLICA fans appreciate this new version of an album that is always looked at as an anomaly in the incredible career of the world's biggest metal band, METALLICA."

The statement concluded, "Absolutely no money has been made from this project, and it has been created out of love for one of our favorite bands of all time. There will be no download links or alternative streaming options aside from this singular YouTube video."

So basically, they did it for the same reason a dog licks his balls. Because he can.

Wow. Haven't listened to anything off of st. Anger for a looong time. I actually really used to like that album. But the last time I tried listening to I was just getting a headache from it. This is cool, but not really inspiring me to sit down and jam the whole thing.

I've always like the song Frantic. This sounds even better than the original. Still think it's a bit too long and could be a kick ass song if shortened and some guitar solos were added. Made it through about half the video before I got bored with it and turned it off.

Someone said something about dressing up a pig. Good description.

Pass..... not a fan of this album at all....

What's next, a re-record of Lulu?

I consider St. Anger the absolute worst rock/metal album of all time, there's just no way to make it sound good. Even Metallica knew they made a mistake, which is why you never see them performing any of the songs off that album live anymore.

Gotta disagree with you on that point. At least St. Anger has personality, for all of its missteps st least it's not entirely bland, in my books that's worse.

Bored this evening so I watched the rest of the vid. Forgot how much I like invisible kid and sweet amber.

Boris2008 wrote:

DeathCult wrote:

It sounds better, but the songs are shit. Which, for me anyway, was always the biggest problem with this album. This is when they went from circling the drain to disappearing into it. These guys must be uber fan boys.

I've got a funny feeling that St Anger will become a 'cult' album in years to come with people claiming it was an unfairly judged flawed classic.

Along that line of thinking, I was recently thinking I should re-visit this record. Never listened to it in full before. But after recently coming to terms, after hating it for 20 years, with the fact that the Black Album is 10 songs of awesomeness and 2 crappy ballads, plus my fairly recent discovery that Death Magnetic rules hard...well, I was thinking maybe I'll find something in St. Anger now too.

Not saying I will, because I also tried to re-visit Load and that album still sucks.

I gave this re-recorded thingy a listen on YouTube last night while doin' other stuff on the computer and as background noise, it was OK. I still think the "songs" themselves are weak as hell but at least the sound quality of this version was listenable/not irritating. The most obvious (and welcome) change, of course, is the drums don't sound like someone firing a BB gun into a coffee can while blindfolded.

It's an interesting experiment by those 2 guys and goes to show what proper production can do for an album. Unfortunately, that's just ONE of many, many problems with St. Anger that noone can fix.