metallica is by far one of my favor bands but i agree with the people who say its sucks. it doesnt suck in the sense that it is complete garbage, i mean being used to the sounds they've produced before its just a bloody let down man.

not a fan of it
 

Yes.

James's signing sounds shoddy and half-assed.
The lyrics are.. well, not the best, but not the worst.
trash-can lid drums
no exciting solos; Hell, no solos at all (why waste Kirk's talents?)
The album as a whole does a great job of blending together into one, bland series of un-inspiring dirty guitar riffs on top of lame yell-talking.

Death Magnetic** at least feels like a more natural connection between Metallica now and Metallica as they were prior to its release, coming from Load/ReLoad.


** though this album is plagued by the guitar track(s) drowning out most everything else, especially the singing, making it a departure from the previous quality of their albums (for more, just look up how many people are downloading and ripping the music from Guitar Hero instead of the album)

The Direction taken in St. Anger is the logical continuation of what Metallica started with Garage Days Revisited. Basically stepping it up from covers and nostalgia from when Metallica wasnt a polished, experienced, multi-platinum band; to actually playing and producing like they were still in a garage, in their formative days. I'd have to agree that it probably was intended to be a little bad. Lars doesnt play drums like that. Hammet is better at guitar than that. Trujillo was new to the band, but wasnt new at all. And Hetfield can certainly sing better and write more imaginative lyrics now. Just listen to Death Magnetic, for proof.

With that said, I agree that it isnt a good album, by most standards. I cant stand to listen to most of the songs, and I only passably like Saint Anger, the title track. Its just not that good. Butyou can kind of see where they were going with it.

So as pretty much everyone has said, it doesn't suck, it's just not Master Of Puppets.

However, people have been bashing on every new album Metallica has put out since Load, so I'm not too surprised. What DOES surprise me is that Death Magnetic is getting great reviews all around, which leads me to believe that it could compete with albums like ...And Justice For All and Ride The Lightning.

(Have I named enough albums in this post? :D)

Actually, I'm not saying its even good. I'm just describing why they would even start to think it was good.

Raw sound and sparse lyrics doesnt begin to describe why its wrong. Old-school punk had raw sound and (usually) sparse lyrics, and St. Anger still doesnt begin to compare.
Basically, the best I could describe it is, its like Metallica wrote some lyrics on a napkin, and an hour later, each band member went to a separate studio and played their intruments alone, for an agreed upon length od song, then made a mix of it. Its as if they werent even trying to produce an album with coherence, they just played their instruments for the hell of playing them, and didnt try to make a uniform flow and sound together.