Album Review - St. Anger - Metallica **** I see all these kids at the moment, wandering around in their brand new, ironed Ride The Lightning t-shirts, and it makes me think.......I was there you little buggers, when you were a toddler, or even a gleam in your parents eye, I was drunk at Donnington, moshing at the NEC, and falling down the back of a chair in an embarrassing incident in Bradford. My Ride The Lightning tee has no sleeves (the mosher fashion at the time), it does though have tears, holes, paint splashes and various disturbing stains, it is indeed the very epitome of a metalheads garment. Metallica did some great work, RTL, Master Of Puppets, Justice For All and the awesome Black album, but then they went mad, did albums with full orchestras (hellooo, thrash metal), got in to a huge spat with Napster and released two albums of complete bollocks as Load/Reload. Well the good news is kiddies, Metalica the metal band are back. Big drums, crunchy guitars, twiddly bass bit, boom boom, opening track 'Frantic', great. Title track 'St. Anger' has taken a couple of weeks to grow on me but now I'm wandering happily around the kitchen grunting "Is it me ? Is it fear ? I feel my world shake" (much to the amusement/horror of the staff I must add). The band are now older, and on their third bassist, and the sound is not the same as it was. If you were hoping for the old cavalry charge guitars and barely controlled vocal style this isn't quite it, but it is damn close. Personally I would prefer it if James vocals were turned down just a little in the mix, and the guitars turned up, but you can't have everything. What you do have is a fine heavy metal album, 11 tracks, all pretty good, it should please old fans and kiddies alike. There is plenty of aggression and bile, fast songs again without the harmony vocals, drums pounding without having to wait for the string section to catch up, welcome back boys. Heh, old fans, I'm an old fan, I've bought the t-shirt, moshed in the pit and needed the neck brace after "Driving like a maniac...........WHIPLASH"