Oh god......
Now I don't know if the song I just downloaded are form the real new record, but they really sound like St. anger (which video I saw enough times as to recognize the sound)... and jeez... They suck so much on so many levels it's even difficult to review it... Okay first thing, if I had to describe the album in one sentence it would be: St. Anger is the Same thing as Reload with a bit more speed, downtuned guitars and drums on steroids (which isn't always a good thing).
Now, on the production issue: Yes it is horrendous. Why? First, the drums volume is way to high... it buries the guitars and the bass; Same for the vocals, so pretty much you can hear Ulrich and Hetfield and the rest is just background noise... Second, WHO THE HELL chose to make the drums sound soooo shitty and on top of that add some echo to them.... Boy you can see Ulrich is the master of puppets in there (pun intended btw).
About the songs... IMO, they are too long for what they really are... It got to the point where i had to skip forward on almost every song because they all are too damn long and too damn repetitive, in their early days (MOP & AJFA) they always did long songs but they kept your attention by the means of epic guitar solos and cool rythmic mid-sections, both of whcih are non existent in this new opus.
As far as guitar plaYing goes, I must admit there are some cool riffs (And I just said "cool", not "amazing" or "incredible"), but most of them are crappy and uninteresting. The ultra low tuning actually makes them sound flat and lifless, and for my tastes the guitars are a bit too downtuned. Bass is nothing special as I can tell (or rather can't tell since the sound is buried under Ulrich's boring blast beats).
The drums.... Ah my favorite (sarcasm) part of th album. I think many people will think Metallica "is back" because monkey boy (aka) Lars U. plays prety fast, but speed means shit. Yes he plays fast and uses a lot of double pedals but heck, the core of his rythms are incredibly repetitive, thus incredibly boring. His fill-ins are boring as well and the over all sound of the drums fall flat once again bcause of the aforementioned shitty production.
And lastly: The vocals... Ok, I m sorry if anyone gets upset by reading this but Hetfield just can't sing anymore. In here he tries too much to sound good and end up sounding lacking. At times it seems he is trying to be a little too Justin Timberlake for his own good. Lyrics? --SNORT-- Booo-ring.
All in all, as some said: Is it better than Reload, sure it is, but is it better than anything else (load included) HELL NO!!!! And I m not bashing MEtallica because it's cool (although I admit it's a bit fun since it is so easy), cause I actually like LOAD a lot. I really like that album cause what they did, they did well, with ST. Anger, what they wanted to do, they didn't even come near, they failed miserably in my most honest opinion (unless they wanted to do some piece of lame ass musci of course in which case they succeeded).
Oh and Metallica never did innovate anything at all. When they slowed the pace with the black album and Load, Testament had already done that in Practice what you preach and Souls of Black, and with this album they are just following the old nu-metal style ( as in Korn's first two albums and Seplutura's Roots (minus they growling vocals)).
One word review: Disappointment (huge one!!!)
