(Credits: Tim Saccenti)
Sat 29 November 2025 16:56, UK
Metallica has never been a band that half-assed anything that they did.
Every one of their albums was usually enough to elicit a strong reaction out of the audience, and even if they were making something that most people thought was a complete piece of garbage, you couldn’t say that an album like St Anger didn’t have a lot of passion behind it. But even for a band with a discography that’s so air-tight, there are bound to be a few songs in their discography that aren’t exactly favourites.
As much as the band themselves might be sick of playing tunes like ‘Enter Sandman’, that shouldn’t be a mark against the song. Anyone can get sick of hearing the same tune over and over again, but if those tracks take years before they start showing signs of age, that shouldn’t excuse the kind of songs that they thought were terrible from the minute they started working on them.
It’s no secret that James Hetfield wasn’t a fan of the song ‘Escape’ from Ride the Lightning, and while And Justice for All is a staple of their discography for being their most progressive album up until that point, Lars Ulrich was the first to say that he has trouble revisiting those songs because of having to relearn how the entire thing is constructed. Then again, that’s what Metallica’s always been about: taking chances.
The Black Album wasn’t the first thing that anyone expected out of them, but when working on the record, they could at least make something work as long as it felt right. Experimentation wasn’t a bad word to them, but if the Load era taught fans anything, it was that the band were willing to throw heavy metal out the window if it meant satisfying themselves with hard rock and alternative-leaning tunes.
While those albums are actually much better than most fans gave them credit for, it’s a wonder what St Anger could have sounded like if they had a better mindset. No one seemed to be having a good time there, but when listening to those drop-tuned guitars, they could have had a proper answer to the nu-metal crowd if they had the right idea. Unfortunately, that idea was not going to come from working with Ja Rule on the song ‘We Did it Again’.
Well, I use the term “working with” very loosely there. As Ulrich pointed out, the tracks that gave to Swizz Beatz for the record were never going to be considered proper Metallica songs, saying, “It really doesn’t have much to do with us, it’s not our record label, it’s not anything, we sort of just gave this guy [Swizz Beatz] a couple of riffs and told him to sort of run with it and then we have been sort of playing ball with him whenever he asks.”
If this were a mainline Metallica release, though, it would be one of the most unintentionally hilarious collaborations they ever did. There are many times where they have gone outside their comfort zone, but it sounds like Swizz Beatz created their track while drunk, to the point where every single section doesn’t connect to each other and Ja Rule seems to be delivering the hook in a completely different key than Hetfield’s riffs.
Cooler heads may have prevailed if the band were in a better emotional place at the time, but if St Anger was the terrible result of those years in therapy, this was the sound of them trying to stay current reaching its worst conclusion. Rap and rock can play nicely together, but even if you are the kind of person that likes rock and roll mixed with a little bit of hip-hop soul like the song implies, this is the closest Metallica has in their discography to a companion piece to The Room.
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