Favorite Metallica Album?

[Elite]

Where is St. Anger?

In WildRanger's polls, you don't get to vote for an album he doesn't like.

Who in their right mind would vote for St. Anger? Do you know it's one of the most hated albums?

I did not! Can you show me a source for this?




And seriously though, whether or not people would vote for it is not up to you to decide. The fact that you don't even give the option shows you're biased in advance. Then again, based on the ridiculous elitist statements you've made elsewhere on these forums, I shouldn't be too surprised. But let's turn this around; say I were to make a poll asking people for their favourite food and the only options would be pizza, hamburgers, a steak and oven-baked salmon. See how ridiculous that is? This is the same thing, but in a smaller scale. The poll is void if you don't give all options. You ruling out stuff beforehand is bullshit and you've done it before and you'll probably keep on doing it no matter what, so this message likely has as little point as this entire thread.

[kirksnosehair]

I like the one with the wah-soaked pentatonic-based guitar solos 




I voted for "Hardwired...To Self-Destruct" because I like albums that make my ears bleed 

[twosuitsluke]

I have no doubt that somewhere out there, there are people who think St Anger is Metallica's greatest album. It'll likely be the people whose first introduction to the band was that album.

It's like Star Wars. Do I think Attack of the Clones is an abomination and just a terrible Star Wars film? Yes. Am I aware that there are a generation of kids who grew up on the prequel trilogy and LOVE it? Also yes. I find it baffling that people could prefer anything in the prequel trilogy over the OG trilogy, but I understand they do, because that may have been their gateway into the Star Wars universe.

It's all about your own experiences and point of view. We can never relate to others experiences and preferences as we didn't live them. That's the basis of it WildRanger. Some people love St Anger, that is fact, sorry.

I voted Ride, as my all time fave album, but currently my fave that I am most likely to spin is Justice.

[Dave_Manchester]

Who in their right mind would vote for St. Anger? Do you know it's one of the most hated albums?

If you go to one of the album's songs on Youtube and scroll down the comments you will find people saying that St Anger is their favourite Metallica album. Sometimes they'll say why, and their reasons can be interesting and even moving to read. Maybe they connect with its very raw, manic vibe, maybe it has some kind of meaningful personal history to them. There's a Pink Floyd poll on here in which 4 people have selected Ummagumma as one of their top 3 Floyd albums, even though it tends to finish dead last of most Floyd fans' ranking.  There are all kinds of reasons for why an album means something to someone, and sharing those reasons is what it's all about in my opinion. I like your threads WR but try to rein in how often you make assumptions about what people will or won't like. I for one would have been interested to see how many votes St Anger got (I have no doubt it would have received some over time).

[IDontNotDoThings]

Who in their right mind would vote for St. Anger? Do you know it's one of the most hated albums?

With comments like these, I'd do it out of spite

[Zantera]

I could see someone coming from maybe a nu metal background having St. Anger as their favorite, maybe someone who doesn't like the old classic stuff or whatever else. That's the thing with something like St. Anger, or Lulu for that matter, when something is so drastically different to what the band has done before or since, chances are there's someone out there who really likes that 1 album but doesn't care for the rest. I mean if Death Magnetic is an option why isn't St. Anger?

[Dave_Manchester]

Exactly, there are plenty of people who aren't Metallica or thrash metal fans but who connect with St Anger for whatever reason. I think the fallacy being made in this thread and others like it is that it's aimed at 'Metallica fans' rather than just anybody.

[wolfking]

I love St Anger.  Being serious, if I go for a Metallica album, it's this one.  I'm known for having odd favourites and this is up there.  Love the vibe, rawness, honesty and just downright confusing admission from a band in chaos.

[Dream Team]

RTL

[wolfking]

Where is St. Anger?

In WildRanger's polls, you don't get to vote for an album he doesn't like.

Who in their right mind would vote for St. Anger? Do you know it's one of the most hated albums?

That's a reason to not include it?  Madness.

Please don't do one of these polls for Priest or Maiden and leave off Jugulator and The X-factor as I won't be happy.

[KevShmev]

Who in their right mind would vote for St. Anger? Do you know it's one of the most hated albums?

I did not! Can you show me a source for this?

https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/metallica

That is one (it is their lowest ranked by a significant margin, when looking at that list and focusing on Metallica proper studio albums).  Of course he should have included in the poll here, but the OP likes to troll the forum a bit here, which is common knowledge, just like it is common knowledge that St. Anger is Metallica's most disliked album.  If you dig it, great, but you are in the massive minority. 

[emtee]

Hardwired.

[ariich]

I've added St Anger to the poll. Also, if anyone wanted to vote for it but voted for something else as it wasn't an option, you are able to change your vote if you so wish.

[krands85]

I don’t like Metallica, so I voted Death Magnetic. 

Wait, is it St. Anger that everyone hates? I was thinking Death Magnetic was the one that was brick walled to death.

It is, but there are versions with better mastering. It also has some great songs IMO.

My ranking:

Master of Puppets
Ride the Lightning
And Justice For All

Death Magnetic
The Black Album

Hardwired... to Self-Destruct
Kill 'em All

Reload
Load





St. Anger

[Elite]

Who in their right mind would vote for St. Anger? Do you know it's one of the most hated albums?

I did not! Can you show me a source for this?

https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/metallica

That is one (it is their lowest ranked by a significant margin, when looking at that list and focusing on Metallica proper studio albums).  Of course he should have included in the poll here, but the OP likes to troll the forum a bit here, which is common knowledge, just like it is common knowledge that St. Anger is Metallica's most disliked album.  If you dig it, great, but you are in the massive minority. 

Well, of course I know that St. Anger is often considered Metallica's worst or weakest album, and I checked RateYourMusic myself this morning to see what the score there would be. Doesn't surprise me at all. What bothered me with that statement is again the inherent bias in the question he posed; "who in the right mind [...]?" (this is unnecessary). "Do you know" (what, you're here to tell me something I don't? Stop patronising, it's pointless) "it's one of the" (this implies that there's a list of some sort somewhere) "most hated albums" (uh, what? How do you even measure that?). I kind of wanted WildRanger to show me a source himself, because I've seen time and time again that he pulls all of his statistics and public opinions out of his ass. This is no different.

Furthermore, and this ties into the last point, I often think that the 'hate' or 'dislike' for St. Anger comes mostly from people who are biased beforehand that they should dislike the album, because it's the 'cool' or even 'correct' thing to do. This is EXACTLY the kind of rubbish bias WildRanger has in a lot of his threads. And not just with him, or with this album, but in general; is it sincere to dislike something because you're told you should dislike it? Have you even given something a chance if you're told from the get-go it's rubbish?

St. Anger has many flaws (and all Metallica albums have flaws, like seriously), but in some ways it's maybe the most creative or even the heaviest Metallica album. That last sentence will likely get ripped out of context, because it's the easiest thing to reply to out of this entire comment, but I'm kind of getting used to that.

Oh, and I voted for Ride the Lightning.

[Zantera]

I think when I saw Some Kind of Monster I gained some more respect for St. Anger. Now don't get me wrong, I still don't like it and it's the same album it was before I watched the documentary, but having seen the turmoil in the band, it's almost amazing they managed to make an album at all.

It's a fascinating album though. Metallica were coming out of the 90s experimenting with other genres on Load/Reload/Garage Inc and whether intentional or not on St. Anger, they weren't really competing with the same kind of bands that they were in the 90s. All of a sudden you had bands like Linkin Park, Korn, System of a Down, Deftones and St. Anger kinda feels like their attempt at targeting that sort of audience. So I can see someone being into that style of metal really digging St. Anger, but being 'meh' on the rest.

[twosuitsluke]

I think when I saw Some Kind of Monster I gained some more respect for St. Anger. Now don't get me wrong, I still don't like it and it's the same album it was before I watched the documentary, but having seen the turmoil in the band, it's almost amazing they managed to make an album at all.

It's a fascinating album though. Metallica were coming out of the 90s experimenting with other genres on Load/Reload/Garage Inc and whether intentional or not on St. Anger, they weren't really competing with the same kind of bands that they were in the 90s. All of a sudden you had bands like Linkin Park, Korn, System of a Down, Deftones and St. Anger kinda feels like their attempt at targeting that sort of audience. So I can see someone being into that style of metal really digging St. Anger, but being 'meh' on the rest.

I totally agree. It came out at a time when Metallica were no longer the cutting edge of metal. They'd had a difficult few years and they hadn't been able to follow up on the success of The Black Album. Nu Metal was the trend and all the bands you mentioned were huge in the mainstream. I think the other band worth mentioning is Slipknot. They are arguably the best band to come out of the Nu Metal era, and they were (at that time) raw, aggressive and dominating mainstream Metal. Metallica were pissed off and I feel this was their attempt to also try to stay relevant to what was going on in Metal at that time.

It may not have paid off in the way they had hoped but, as we all know, it was an important album that they needed to write, to continue functioning as a band. Is it my favourite? No. Do I appreciate it more than I did when it came out? Hell yes. Do I love it more than Hardwired? 100% yes.

[darkshade]

Pretty tough decision.
It comes down to the first 4 albums.
Kill em All is great but they just topped that one multiple times.
I like Master of Puppets as much as the next person, but Leper Messiah was never a song I liked, and it always brought the album down for me.
Ride The Lightning was my favorite for a long time, but I don't need Escape in my life ever again.
Justice obviously has bass issues, but every song is just one all time slugger after another. It's their angriest album, (but not angst driven) heaviest, lyrically one of their best, and for the first time, Lars sounds like a competent drummer.

Justice for me, but only by a hair. RTL and MoP are more legendary, but each has one of those weak tracks that Justice doesn't have IMO.

Black Album is good, but half the album is radio hits that have been WAY overplayed in the last 30 years. The other stuff is solid, and once in a blue moon, I enjoy a sit through of this album, if only for the surprises of "oh I forgot about this part/riff" during the non-singles tunes.

Since then I like some stuff but I cherry pick at this point.

AJFA
RTL
MoP
KEA
s/t

HTSD
DM

L/R

any Metallica interview

St. Anger

[cfmoran13]

Who in their right mind would vote for St. Anger? Do you know it's one of the most hated albums?

It's sad to see such dismissive thinking.  Just because [insert name] doesn't like something doesn't mean someone else can't.  If there were only a certain amount of choices you were allowed to insert into the poll, I'd understand leaving that one out.  But, I don't know why it was so hard to include St. Anger.  And, I know it has since been added.

As for The Black Album, I remember grabbing it the week before heading off to my freshman year of college.  This was the first Metallica album I grabbed on release day.  Definitely a more streamlined Metallica with every song coming in under 7 minutes.  It had my least favorite Metallica song, "Don't Tread On Me", until Load and Reload were released.  This album also marked the first time I got to see them live, 3 times actually.  Not my favorite album.  But, all in all, a pretty solid release.  I can't wait for them to announce its 30th anniversary vinyl box set release.  I'm dying to see what they include.

[darkshade]

Who in their right mind would vote for St. Anger? Do you know it's one of the most hated albums?

It's sad to see such dismissive thinking.  Just because [insert name] doesn't like something doesn't mean someone else can't.  If there were only a certain amount of choices you were allowed to insert into the poll, I'd understand leaving that one out.  But, I don't know why it was so hard to include St. Anger.  And, I know it has since been added.

As for The Black Album, I remember grabbing it the week before heading off to my freshman year of college.  This was the first Metallica album I grabbed on release day.  Definitely a more streamlined Metallica with every song coming in under 7 minutes.  It had my least favorite Metallica song, "Don't Tread On Me", until Load and Reload were released.  This album also marked the first time I got to see them live, 3 times actually.  Not my favorite album.  But, all in all, a pretty solid release.  I can't wait for them to announce its 30th anniversary vinyl box set release.  I'm dying to see what they include.

I think it is fair to say that St. Anger is objectively bad, especially if you know how the album was conceived, which most of us do just based on the Some Kind of Monster documentary alone. You can't say that about most music even if you don't like the music or the style of music. I can say I get slight enjoyment out of the first 4 songs on the album on very rare occasions, but I'll never admit that it's a good album. It's OK to like bad music sometimes. I like bad music sort of like how I like bad movies. Bad music doesn't necessarily mean "not listenable". It's mostly humorous for me, I like satire, and St Anger is Metallica self-satire, with all the Hetfield o0o0o0o's and Oscar The Grouch on drums. But I won't ever criticize someone if they like it and think it's good, I just won't agree with them, but it shouldn't be taken as an attack on someone or their taste in music. Everyone has different tastes.

[dparrott]

Slight edge to Justice over DM for me.

[KevShmev]

Well, of course I know that St. Anger is often considered Metallica's worst or weakest album, and I checked RateYourMusic myself this morning to see what the score there would be. Doesn't surprise me at all. What bothered me with that statement is again the inherent bias in the question he posed; "who in the right mind [...]?" (this is unnecessary). "Do you know" (what, you're here to tell me something I don't? Stop patronising, it's pointless) "it's one of the" (this implies that there's a list of some sort somewhere) "most hated albums" (uh, what? How do you even measure that?). I kind of wanted WildRanger to show me a source himself, because I've seen time and time again that he pulls all of his statistics and public opinions out of his ass. This is no different.

Furthermore, and this ties into the last point, I often think that the 'hate' or 'dislike' for St. Anger comes mostly from people who are biased beforehand that they should dislike the album, because it's the 'cool' or even 'correct' thing to do. This is EXACTLY the kind of rubbish bias WildRanger has in a lot of his threads. And not just with him, or with this album, but in general; is it sincere to dislike something because you're told you should dislike it? Have you even given something a chance if you're told from the get-go it's rubbish?

St. Anger has many flaws (and all Metallica albums have flaws, like seriously), but in some ways it's maybe the most creative or even the heaviest Metallica album. That last sentence will likely get ripped out of context, because it's the easiest thing to reply to out of this entire comment, but I'm kind of getting used to that.

Oh, and I voted for Ride the Lightning.

I don't think it is fair to assume that St. Anger critics are hating it for this reason.  St. Anger has earned its putrid reputation. 

[darkshade]

St Anger's release is the only time I witnessed someone throw out a new CD within hours of purchasing it.

[jammindude]

Personally, I’ve always really liked that album. It’s only the snare drum that prevents me from revisiting it more often. I’ve been meaning to try and get a rip of the audio from the live in studio DVD, which IIRC sounded far better than the CD itself.

I certainly think it’s a better album than either of the Loads.

Best album? I would have a very difficult time with anyone claiming it was their best album.

Even though I personally like it better than the Load albums, I can certainly understand that it was a far more abrasive and alienating album than the Load albums were. So I could still understand someone thinking Load was (by opinion) their best album... but no. Not St. Anger

[nobloodyname]

St Anger is exactly what it needed to be; abrasive, visceral, hateful. It's an essential part of Metallica's catalogue whether people like that or not, or enjoy it or not.

[WildRanger]

St Anger is exactly what it needed to be; abrasive, visceral, hateful. It's an essential part of Metallica's catalogue whether people like that or not, or enjoy it or not.

St Anger is a BAD album.

[twosuitsluke]

St Anger is a BADASS album.

FTFY 

[Elite]

St Anger is exactly what it needed to be; abrasive, visceral, hateful. It's an essential part of Metallica's catalogue whether people like that or not, or enjoy it or not.

St Anger is a BAD album.

[wolfking]

Personally, I’ve always really liked that album. It’s only the snare drum that prevents me from revisiting it more often. I’ve been meaning to try and get a rip of the audio from the live in studio DVD, which IIRC sounded far better than the CD itself.

I certainly think it’s a better album than either of the Loads.

Best album? I would have a very difficult time with anyone claiming it was their best album.

Even though I personally like it better than the Load albums, I can certainly understand that it was a far more abrasive and alienating album than the Load albums were. So I could still understand someone thinking Load was (by opinion) their best album... but no. Not St. Anger

Yes, great bonus DVD that one.  Sounds much better than the cd.

[wolfking]

St Anger is exactly what it needed to be; abrasive, visceral, hateful. It's an essential part of Metallica's catalogue whether people like that or not, or enjoy it or not.

St Anger is a BAD album.

I probably wouldn't call it my fav album.  I'm not sure what would be though, however, I voted for it just to piss you off.

[DTA]

Respect to people who like St. Anger. I love pretty much everything Metallica have done (haven't attempted Lulu and don't plan to) and since its release in 2003, I don't think I've managed to make it through the entire thing in full once. It's unlistenable in every possible way to me.

[MirrorMask]

Respect to people who like St. Anger. I love pretty much everything Metallica have done (haven't attempted Lulu and don't plan to) and since its release in 2003, I don't think I've managed to make it through the entire thing in full once. It's unlistenable in every possible way to me.

Indeed, it took WildRanger's attitude to create an outpouring of sympathy for St. Anger  , but gosh that album sucks bombs and balls and I've heard it literally twice before giving up and never ever wanting to hear it again. This of course doesn't invalid the opinion of the 9 people worldwide who enjoy the album and, as it's been said before, it's cool that music reasonates differently with everyone and it's cool that at least some people find some entertainment in such a musical atrocity.

And hearing St. Anger live was actually cool, that song is ok.

[WildRanger]

St. Anger got 3 votes and Reload zero? Death Magnetic only one? I'm really surprised.

[WildRanger]

Who in their right mind would vote for St. Anger? Do you know it's one of the most hated albums?

I did not! Can you show me a source for this?

https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/metallica

That is one (it is their lowest ranked by a significant margin, when looking at that list and focusing on Metallica proper studio albums).  Of course he should have included in the poll here, but the OP likes to troll the forum a bit here, which is common knowledge, just like it is common knowledge that St. Anger is Metallica's most disliked album.  If you dig it, great, but you are in the massive minority.

Even Limp Bizkit's "Significant Other" has a much higher average score than St. Anger (2.54). Just saying.

[ReaperKK]

Damn this is harder than I thought. I went with the Black album because it's the one I've listened to the most and the one that got me into Metallica.