When it comes to Metallica there are a few things that are unequivocally true. The group’s first four albums are canon, with their importance in developing the sound of ’80s thrash-metal scene impossible to question. On the flip side, there’s no debate about how abysmal St. Anger is. There’s no bigger case against it than the fact that Lars Ulrich found a way to make his notoriously shitty drumming even worse, by opting not to engage the snares on his snare drum for the album’s recording session. The result was a hollow ring that persisted throughout St. Anger, making the record a difficult for reasons divorced from its borderline nu-metal songwriting.
A YouTube user recently decided to challenge all the known truths of the Metallica universe by taking something good (“Master Of Puppets”), injecting something bad (the St. Anger snare tone), and letting everyone suffer. It may not be as intolerable as fully listening to the eardrum puncturing sounds of St. Anger, but it does explain why Uhlrich would go on to call that drum sound an “abortion” just a year after the album’s release.
[via Metal Sucks]