Metallica are an essential rock band, it was hard to avoid them in the 90’s and their fanbase are devoted as any. Yet this album gets a lot of hate, and the troubled recording was highlighted in the brilliant documentary Some Kind Of Monster. The documentary was full of unintentional humour – Metal God Lar’s dad asking him to burn the album, Kirk Hammett being told not to do solos, and the band hiring a counsellor who intrudes on the creative process. It’s one step away from Spinal Tap at times, but there was a heart and emotional resonance to the earnestness of their interactions.
01.Frantic
My lifestyle determines my deathstyle is a fun mantra. Metallica always had vaudeville elements to their dark lyrics and imagery but this album took that too far in some ways. I don’t think you’re supposed to laugh at the lyrics despite their extremes. Metallica previously used grandscale imagery to illuminate real world problems, Master of Puppets is that force of control, both outside and inside of ourselves. That being said, I can enjoy the goofyness of this title and song in general, though it’d be hard not to empathise with people who see it as a lighter incarnation of the band emotionally.
02. St. Anger
Now I hated this song when it came out and it was one of those videos they did not stop showing on MTV2 and Kerrang. Yet it’s one of those tracks where the things that I disliked – the overt serious tone mixed with the unnecessary and ridiculous growling harmonies ‘you flush it out!’ – are the very things I enjoy about the song as I come back to it. It’s not art I enjoy on an intellectual level like say Sanatorium or Master of Puppets, with lines like,
‘Fuck it all and no regrets!‘
But there are times you want something less intellectual. I don’t separate art into categories as much as I used to any more, like the idea somehow a ‘classic’ movie is better than a ‘mindless’ one. These are both experiences I can have, I don’t see one as weaker than the other. If the work makes me feel something, then it’s achieved something, the meaning of art to me is connection – either in ideas or emotions. When it becomes about an intelligentsia or a group telling me what I should and shouldn’t connect with or what are higher forms of connections, I switch off. I learnt a lot of this in University, it’s mostly a lot of people telling you what’s good to feel better about themselves, and they won’t even admitt that to themselves, so there’s delusion involved to. So if someone comes up to me and makes a point of telling me they’re into some dead poets I naturally question that, why did they choose that and then to communicate that side of themselves to someone else.
03 Some Kind of Monster
I’ve long been into documentaries and as I mentioned in the intro, this one showed me how being in a band at a certain point is hard, it’s like a marriage to more than one person. The ego involved is intense. If you hurt someone it’s not always just fun, like when you miss a shot in a football game. It can get to the core of their entire sense of self. I’ve played in bands so I know how it feels on a small level, to compromise, to feel unheard or be misunderstood and the weird communication problems. You’re afraid to hurt other people so you keep quiet but then it just builds and builds and needs an outlet but then it become too deep, too real for you to bring it up without it becoming a huge argument or breakdown. So this is just small time me, seeing all these things played out with one of the biggest metal bands of all time was fascinating to me. I gained more appreciation for the complexity of the band as human beings.
04. Dirty Window
Metallica usually have song titles with bigger ideas than this. For Whom The Bell Tolls, Enter Sandman. These epic ideas, but Dirty Window? It’s a weak title for them.
05. Invisible Kid
Relatable topic in the title here – I’m sure a lot of people, especially fans of metal, have felt like this sometime. It’s rare to hear James sing in a more conventional growl less voice.
I’m Ok, Just go away
The vocals on this part sound almost Cobain esque and the themes of being alienated fit the grunge template.
06. My World
There’s a fun singalong chorus on this one but it’s second tier stuff. The riff is generic and the track doesn’t have the character of the earlier tracks.
Not only do I not know the answer (I don’t know what the question even is!)
This is another track seemingly directed at highschool age problems.
07. Shoot Me Again
There are some much needed dynamics and humour here.
Shoot me again – I ain’t dead yet.
There’s some riffing on the idea of taking shots and it making no difference, the song could be interpreted to be about real shots or shot taking in life as in opportunities. There’s even a violin on this, a strange choice – for all its merits I don’t find the songs’ concept emotional or moving in any way. The violence is gonzo more than earnest. Some odd missed match feelings here.
08. Sweet Amber
Promising intro, but the guitar work is too similar in places to St. Anger
09. The Unnamed Feeling
This is the first track on the LP where I wouldn’t be certain this was Metallica if I didn’t know beforehand. The vocal tones and inflections used at first are different to the usual. But when the breakdown hits I can hear the familiar tones of a emotive Metallica song.
I can hear some real pain in the lyrics here too.
‘I wanna cry I wanna scream.’
They aren’t hiding behind larger concepts or receding back into conventional angst imagery, this seems to the bone of what James was going through at this time. We know from the documentary he was struggling with alcoholism and there are memorable scenes of him sat in the studio with a glass of wine and then running away from a while. He was lost and had nowhere to go. The unnamed feeling resonates with me as an idea. I don’t even know how I feel most of the time. I often drink to escape something but it’s not even sadness or anger anymore. I think as I get older I lose touch all things, it’s not even cynicism more numbness. If you start drinking numb and realise you feel nothing after 8-10 beers except the physical symptoms of mental foggyness and bloatedness, well you start questioning why you do that anymore, so you get sober and then you feel nothing at all, no kick, so you drink again. I don’t want to put too much of myself into this song but all I can say if I have the unnamed feeling a lot.
10. Purify
‘I’ve been dancing with your Skeletons‘
That’s a fun image. But watching that documentary made me wish that the band could have dealt with some of the issues they were going through more directly on this album. This album feels like them side stepping the turmoil at times whereas band albums about turmoil that paint that feeling for what it is are some of the greatest. Nirvana – In Utero being the pinnacle of that.
11.All Within My Hands
They slowed it down for the closer, the shimmering textural guitar work is beautiful and evocative here. And the assault of their usual riffs are toned down to something more haunting.
Love is all control. I’ll die if I let go. Let it go.
Those are some brutal words.
Choke within my hands
KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL
This album is unfairly hated. Sure it’s not as deep or interesting musically as other Metallica albums, and it feels like an unfocused regression in places, but there are some great tracks in there and variety too. There’s a sense of confusion throughout the album, a band at war with itself, an uncertainty in what they even want to make. It’s fun and funny in places as it is dark, ridiculous and serious in others. I’m not sure what overall effect they intended with this album, but the accidental elements of music are what keep me listening to new things. I don’t always want a band to play it safe or concoct a calculated album, sometimes I want to enjoy a band failing, see a band for the humans they are – trying, and if this album is anything, it’s that.
BOX MAN CHRONICLES 
I watched Some Kind of Monster as I do with many rockumentaries and thoroughly enjoyed it. I have to admit that I don’t follow the crowds response to music anymore because I like what I like and that’s all that really matters but I am curious. When you write that this album is “unfairly hated”, how do you feel the response to it compares to the Black album, Load or Re-Load? Is the public reaction any more or less venomous? Was the negative reactions more justified on the other albums?
I also want to add that trying to hold it all inside has been a mistake of mine multiple times in the past. The outcome is never good and in the end, you are often left wondering exactly what it was you were struggling to maintain.
I think Metallica fans all have different opinions on what album of their is the ‘worst.’ You’re right, there are even haters of ‘The Black Album’ for leaving their roots!
When I said it’s unfairly hated, what I meant more is that the album is a bit of a joke. Some of the anger is ridiculous and I’ve heard it mocked. I too agree that they lost their authenticity on this album compared to their best work, but there’s a sense of fun to that to be enjoyed as well.