Figures. You're basically holding Metallica to alt rock standards, which doesn't make sense for early Metallica. You can get that stuff from plenty of other bands.
Sanitarium is one of my least favorite of their early tracks. So weak.
Soft sections in a song result in it being weak? Top ten Metallica songs:
1. One
2. Sanitarium
3. Orion
4. The Four Horseman
5. Battery
6. Fight Fire With Fire
7. Master of Puppets
8. Leper Messiah
9. Nothing Else Matters
10. Sad But True
Also, Metallica has nothing to do with alt-rock. The Black Album is on the borderline between thrash and regular heavy, Load is a solid heavy metal album with one or two thrash moments, ReLoad being the same case, though a more experimental take on that concept. St. Anger is some weird parallel universe return to form, and the subsequent two albums half-assed thrash metal that takes a decade to complete. No alternative, all metal, one way or another.
Anybody interested in seeing one for Darkness Descends? Thought about it after seeing a few people discussing the album in the last themed mixtape game