Metallica - Ranked (Part 1)

10: St. Anger (2003)

The bottom place on this list will be the least contentious of all. St. Anger was panned, both by the fans and critically. It was recorded at a time of great strain between the band members, as documented by the accompanying tour DVD released a year later. James Hetfield was recovering from drug and alcohol addiction. Jason Newsted had left a couple of years previously; the black sheep of Metallica finally departing a band he was never a full member of, while old friendships between the others started to fray. This created a transitional vibe, as Metallica attempted to win back the credibility of their early years. As with the rest of their mid-career records, St. Anger is front-loaded. Frantic is the first and best song, offering a couple of decent grooves to ease the album in. The title track follows, a seven-minuter with a pleasing crescendo in the 2nd half to carry over a good amount of energetic enthusiasm. After that, St. Anger drops sharply, and begins to drift. As 30 minutes turns to 40, you realise nothing has happened for a long time. The only other song of note here is The Unnamed Feeling, and even mentioning that aside from the rest is a stretch.

To be fair to St. Anger, it was the victim of bad timing and circumstance. After the Load/Reload/Garage inc boredom triumvirate, the fanbase were ready for something to palate-cleanse the 90s, bring back the heavy style, and usher in a new era. What they got was low-tensioned snare drums, James Hetfield literally quoting lines from his anger management sessions, (“And I want my anger to be healthy/And I want my anger just for me”) and a no-solo policy which was the most astoundingly tone-deaf feature of all on this slow, drudgey project. The band relented on that final point, with Hammett writing some cursory twiddlings into the live set to add colour to the lengthy compositions, which says it all, really. But what if it had come 10 years earlier? Would St. Anger be so reviled if it was released with the goodwill of the first five records still in the tank? That will go unanswered, like so many requests to play Some Kind Of Monster at your local metal club night.

09/08: Load/Reload (1996/1997)

I’ve put these together because they’re the same project. They were intended for release as a double album, but the band felt that two separate releases would help fans to digest their new direction. Load/Reload is almost 3 hours of what’s best described as hard rock, as Metallica shook off their metal prejudices and softened their sound. This project spawned some well known favourites - Fuel, The Memory Remains and Until It Sleeps are all from this era. It’s mixed critical reception was a contrast to the white-hot praise heaped on Metallica’s previous releases, but didn’t harm the album’s popularity, which just about kept the band in the public consciousness through a tricky period of creative curve-balling.

The band reveled in the sheer length of Load, with stickers on the CD cases proclaiming “78.59” - As if that’s automatically a good thing? As with many long running albums, Load could have done with some songs hitting the cutting room floor. Reload has a similarly prohibitive run time, and between the discs you could easily lose an hour of music without missing much. Aside from the singles, it’s the genre-busting pieces that stand out. Low Man’s Lyric and Hero Of The Day are two beautiful slow-rock gems, while The Outlaw Torn peans with huge post-grunge riffs, a nod to the peaking careers of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, whose sounds painted the decade with a ubiquity Metallica never managed to emulate. While their “standard” numbers are hit and miss, tunes like The House Jack Built, Devil’s Dance and Ain’t My Bitch are melodically intricate, separate from the background hum.

These albums will never be lauded as classics, but it’s clear that this is something Metallica just had to do. Great bands rarely record the same form of music for decades on end without losing their edge, and this is why the Load/Reload project was so important for Metallica. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t even that enjoyable, but it needed to happen, and later on in this list there are better albums which only exist because of these mid-career dalliances. Testing out new styles sharpens the senses and is oxygen for different ways of thinking. It refreshes the old ways. After this decade-and-a-bit in the wilderness, Metallica would return, loud, bright and brash.

07: Hardwired… To Self-Destruct (2016)

Metallica’s latest release, already 3 years old but still being toured, (which shows how huge the band are after almost four decades together) is a return to their harder, riff-heavy straight-up metal style they explored on Metallica. As part of a welcome back-to-their-roots renaissance that was so desperately needed after St Anger, Hardwired... To Self Destruct is a pleasant mid-range record in ‘Tallica’s back catalogue. While it covers no new ground in terms of style, the album contains tracks which can easily sit with their songs from any other era on best-of mixes and setlists alike. Dream No More is my personal favourite from Hardwired. A thick, bold excursion, with guitarwork that harks back to Sad But True, it’s about the dawn of Cthulhu (obviously). Hetfield’s triumphant exuberance as he pushes the air through his lungs to shout “You turn to stone - Can’t look away/You turn to stone - Madness they say” proves his robust vocal prowess as he moves through middle age. It’s belting stuff, and other songs like Man UNkind, Atlas Rise and Halo On Fire evoke similar feelings. The band are still enjoying themselves.

There’s nothing really that bad about Hardwired, it’s just not exciting. For each big metal banger, there’s an average tune that leaves you thirsty for the next one halfway through. There are moments which are crying out for a dynamic shift, a quieter solo, a simpler riff which go unchecked. Songs which would have received the symphonic treatment in the 80’s falter and are forgettable. The project is midfield. But obviously, Metallica are returning to what they do best, and long may it continue. And I have to say, the first few listens of Hardwired got me excited in a way I’d not been about them in a while. But once the initial interest of a new album fades away, this is just an OK record, on the whole. And by Metallica’s lofty standards, you’d better believe that’s not enough.

06: Kill ‘Em All (1983)

There’s a sacred Big Five Albums in Metallica’s release history, which is unsurprisingly their first five releases. There will be purists who scoff at the idea of one of these hallowed discs being usurped by a more recent album, but rules are made to be broken, frankly. And here we are. Kill ‘Em All, the debut album from one of the biggest bands ever was an early 80’s release which proved revolutionary at the time. While time has told that Slayer are the true kings of thrash metal, back in the day Metallica were just as important in developing the punky, raw sound of what is a uniquely piquant style of music. This album was a landmark in thrash, introducing light-speed shredding solos and double-time snare drum work to the genre, two elements that can still be heard in more recent Metallica releases.

Kill ‘Em All is a delightful riff-fest, bursting with all the energy you’d expect from four guys from California, barely out of their teens and ready to take over the world. Seek And Destroy is the centrepiece, with it’s unmistakable opening guitar line and double time solo breakdown midway through. But there’s so much more on here that’s worth celebrating. Hit The Lights, actually a re-worked version of a song from Lars Ulrich’s former band opens Kill ‘Em All with a prophetic level of energy. The Four Horsemen follows this, and is a true early masterpiece, with complex melodies threaded throughout it’s 7.5 minutes of thrash indulgence. Whiplash is another highlight, the first single taken from this album, acknowledged by numerous journalists as the birth of thrash metal.

As we all know, Dave Mustaine was a member of Metallica in the early days, and his fingerprints can be found on Kill ‘Em All - Four songs give him a writing credit, and it’s widely known that Kirk Hammett borrowed a lot from his solos while playing on this album. Mustaine of course went on to form the equally brilliant Megadeth, also loved and heralded as thrash pioneers. Kirk Hammett is such an indelible part of Metallica now, but it’s fascinating to think how different things might have been if Mustaine had stayed on board with the ‘Tallica boys. As it stands, Kill ‘Em All is a great little record, and at the time it must have been exciting to witness. But it’s quite different from every subsequent Metallica release, and there are a couple of dud numbers that leave a lot to be desired. What came immediately after is far more representative of Metallica as a whole, and that’s why I felt the need to break the sacred pentagram.