When you're able to brandish the kind of musical firepower that Metallica has unleashed for more than two decades - 10 uncompromising albums, marking an unprecedented reign as the Greatest hard rock band in history - you learn a thing or two about where to aim. But curiously enough, the making of their first studio album since 1997's Re-Load, the primal, raptorial, St. Anger, found Metallica not behind the turrets this time, but in the firing line itself.
The trials and tribulations leading up to St. Anger are well documented. The fissures in what the band members themselves describe as the well-oiled "Metallica machine" were beginning to show; Bassist Jason Newsted's nebulous exit from the group. James Hetfield's voluntary sojourn into rehab and much-longed-for sobriety. Public squabbles over the illegal downloading quagmire. All of these issues revealed the kind of seismic fault-lines that even the Metallica jauggernaut could not navigate - could not negotiate away.
At stake? Nothing less than the very existence of the band itself. Metallica's three principals, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, and Kirk Hammett, along with their frequent producer/collaborator Bob Rock, found themselves at the kind of crossroads worthy of the themes in many a Metallica song. The kind of foreboding scenario Ulrich and Hetfield could write in their sleep.
The irony was, if this was Metallica's oft-predicted meltdown, each member would have to face it in his own way. And from the inside out this time, without the Metallica
heat-shield to fend off all the bullshit that tends to calcify when you're a member of the most exclusive rock club in the world for twenty-odd years. With James on an indefinite hiatus, the group admitted to becoming 'professional speculators' themselves as to whether Metallica was headed for a rebirth, or withering away on life-support.
"It has been a very interesting three years," Lars Ulrich begins with atypical understatement. "A very different three years for us. Difficult. Awkward. It's been a ride that's taken us to places inside ourselves, inside the band, inside the potential of human beings and the music and everything else that we could not imagine existed. But if you asked me then, I would say for the first time in my life with Metallica, I was starting to prepare myself that maybe the ride was over."
The trials and tribulations leading up to St. Anger are well documented. The fissures in what the band members themselves describe as the well-oiled "Metallica machine" were beginning to show; Bassist Jason Newsted's nebulous exit from the group. James Hetfield's voluntary sojourn into rehab and much-longed-for sobriety. Public squabbles over the illegal downloading quagmire. All of these issues revealed the kind of seismic fault-lines that even the Metallica jauggernaut could not navigate - could not negotiate away.
At stake? Nothing less than the very existence of the band itself. Metallica's three principals, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, and Kirk Hammett, along with their frequent producer/collaborator Bob Rock, found themselves at the kind of crossroads worthy of the themes in many a Metallica song. The kind of foreboding scenario Ulrich and Hetfield could write in their sleep.
The irony was, if this was Metallica's oft-predicted meltdown, each member would have to face it in his own way. And from the inside out this time, without the Metallica
heat-shield to fend off all the bullshit that tends to calcify when you're a member of the most exclusive rock club in the world for twenty-odd years. With James on an indefinite hiatus, the group admitted to becoming 'professional speculators' themselves as to whether Metallica was headed for a rebirth, or withering away on life-support.
"It has been a very interesting three years," Lars Ulrich begins with atypical understatement. "A very different three years for us. Difficult. Awkward. It's been a ride that's taken us to places inside ourselves, inside the band, inside the potential of human beings and the music and everything else that we could not imagine existed. But if you asked me then, I would say for the first time in my life with Metallica, I was starting to prepare myself that maybe the ride was over."
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