CITIZINE REVIEWS

Metallica
St. Anger
(AOL / Time Warner, 2003)

By Mark Prindle
www.markprindle.com

"st*anger" it says on the spine. Could easily be misread as "stranger." As in "imposter." As in "NOT REALLY METALLICA AT ALL -- THEY'RE OFF SOMEWHERE RECORDING A GOOD ALBUM."

Let the child dream. Children must dream or their hearts fall out, a medical fact easily proven by removing a non-dreaming child's ribcage and dangling him/her upside down from the ceiling.

St. Anger: So much to say, but where to begin? Hmmm.... Oh wait, I know! It doesn't have any good songs on it! It sounds completely half-assed, the lyrics are embarrassing, the vocals are far too loud, the bass guitar is (a) not played by either the old bassist or the new bassist, and (b) not audible at all on the disc itself!

This record is seventy-five minutes long -- and Christ, does it draaaaaaaaaaaaag. But you're in luck if you like part of a song, because they will inevitably return to it seven or eight more times before the song ends! All of the songs are seven minutes long, and for the most part repeat two or three boring detuned chord sequences over and over and over and over and over! And these are all mindless riff-by-numbers running up and down the three or four lowest power chords on the guitar neck in surprisingly similar permutations! They don't even count as songs, do they? Fingers go UP the neck! Fingers go DOWN the neck. Fingers go UP the neck! Fingers go DOWN the neck. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The band didn't bother to arrange the songs either, leaving Lars to fake an arrangement by indiscriminately speeding up and slowing down the drums whenever he gets the hankering. None of the parts follow each other or have any flow at all and most of the songs eschew vocal melody for ass-dumb shouting or crapping rapping. And Lars has now apparently added a sewage pipe to his drum kit, creating an out-of-tune "CLANG!" noise that permeates the whole album.

The guitars sound completely guttural and are buried under the drums. Some of the songs do have neat crunchy noise parts, but they always return to the actual riffs, which sound like the worst Helmet outtakes ever. (By the way, if you like this shitty album, buy Helmet's Strap It On because it's the same minimal low-pitched songwriting schtick, but done creatively instead of just plopping three boring major chords together and assuming it will kick ass if Lars thrashes hard enough.)

To be honest, the guttural anarcho-crust guitar tones can sound good, especially in the sick, weird intro track "Frantic." Even that copper pipe that Lars keeps banging his wrench against has kind of a neat (though completely amateurish and moronic) tone to it.

The few parts where they actually branch out a bit, such as a quiet, intriguing part in "Shoot Me Again," and some interesting guitar note tones in "All Within My Hands," stand out as the only parts that sound like any BRAINPOWER was put into this record at all. The rest is boring, predictable blues-metal interspersed with fleeting moments of ham-fisted funk.

Unless you're not really familiar with the concept of songwriting, this album is the musical equivalent of the world's greatest female basketball player -- she just ain't no good!

Radiohead
Hail To The Thief
(EMI / Capitol, 2003)

So Radiohead are/is back and they've brought some melodies with them this time! Good melodies, sad melodies, interesting melodies! No more avant-gardism at the expense of a catchy piano line or guitar measure. This isn't to say that they're back doing simplistic forgettable SHIT like The Bends and OK Computer -- only that they've supplemented the cold electronics of Kid A and Amnesiac with guitar chords and notes, and the occasional piano tinkle (Thom has an incontinent bowel).

If you know Radiohead, you'll recognize this record as Radiohead. Depression abounds. The guitar lines are cold and slowly arpeggiated, as if they are trying to impress David Gilmour. The drumbeats are as often distorted electronic pulses as they are a real kit beating, and the vocals are really, really high and slightly quivery, as if a tear is rolling down the singer's cheek.

Every tune is awash with beautiful mesmerizing ambient electronics, making it impossible to tell half the time whether one is listening to a synth, or just an acoustic-style instrument run through some weirdo effects processor. It doesn't matter though because the songs on this record seem to reveal new layers of instrumentation with every listen, and make the sorrowful, longing melodies of Hail to the Thief endlessly listenable.

"2+2 = 5", "Scatterbrain" and "A Wolf At The Door" are guitar-driven like old-timey Radiatorhead; "Backdrifts" and "The Gloaming" are underwritten and synth-blip-based like Amnesiac; and "Where I End And You Begin" and "A Punchup At A Wedding" are almost dance-funk-bass-driven suicide sirens. The listener won't find anything overly frightening or surprising on this album, with the possible exception of the buzzy synth Kraftwerk/Trans Am-sounding new-wave "Myxomatosis," whose vocals don't even sound like Radiohead! Thom actually has a lower register? Indeed! Unless that's not Thom. Best not to question things that can be easily answered. Better to let them remain mysteries forever.

The biggest mystery, however, may be this: Why do so many bands get record contracts and label promotion when they will never, ever be able to write even one song as worthwhile to the world of music as 11 of these 14 (and the other three are no slouch in the back either!)?

It's not even that these songs are utter genius through and through. They're just almost-normal melodies that have been slightly skewed with unpredictable changes to make them less predictable than most of the music one is likely to hear on the radio. A couple of the songs could even be considered ROCK SONGS! Great goddamned rock songs at that.

And let me clarify what I mean by "great." To me, "great" is when somebody in 2003 manages to come up with a dozen or more melodies that I can honestly say I've never heard before. I'm utterly SICK TO DEATH with negative fools saying that "everything's been done before," because it hasn't. Copycats get the most radio play, but there are plenty of sound combinations that haven't been developed yet. Anybody who would claim that everything's been done has a disgustingly limited imagination.

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