This CD collects a 7" and a four song EP of the same name from Pailhead. These guys got together after Al Jourgensen of Ministry met Ian MacKaye in London shortly before MacKaye formed Fugazi.
The music here is in the same vein that Ministry's Land Of Rape And Honey album was headed in, which is to say industrial-tinged metal with some punkish guitar lines. If you're a fan of either Ministry or Mackaye, definitely consider picking this up if you run across it.
Quote Gordon Rekcikssa Pailhead - Trait
Wax Trax! Records, 1988
Pailhead is one of those things I always meant to buy but never did. Maybe I need to move that higher up on the wishlist. Kinda funny that Ian worked with Jourgensen, who at one point probably became more well known for his drug problems than his music. From what I've read recently he has been clean for years now and is doing much better.
I pulled out this tape last night and listened to it a couple of times, and it's so much weirder than I remember it being when I picked it up a few years ago. It's not metal in a traditional sense at all. There's lots of electronics and punkish guitar lines here and there. For the most part, the vocals sound like a cross between Ian Curtis and John Doe of X. The music varies between a goth/death-rock vibe and a spaced-out black metal one, without actually being either. Like I said, it's just kind of weird, but in a really good way.
The video below is the only one I could find of this band. Being a cover song, it doesn't really give the feel of the whole album, which is well wort picking up if you're into the stranger side of metal.
So, yeah, I'm actually going to talk about this album now. And it might get a little long-winded. If you don't feel like reading that much and just want my opinion, it's this: St. Anger doesn't suck.
To be honest, I personally think that Metallica's last great album was And Justice For All. I think if you took maybe one or two songs off every release between 1991's self-titled LP and last year's Hardwired...To Self-Destruct, you could end up with one pretty decent album. That being said, St. Anger is my favorite of the albums they've put out in that interval.
Let me start off with my only real complaint about this album, and that would be the lyrics. Now, I'm not coming to a Metallica record looking for the thrash equivalent of Proust, but the lyrics here are just plain bad at times. Then again, they're really no worse than some of the ones from Kill 'Em All, either.
I also really disliked the documentary Some Kind Of Monster that followed the band through the making of this album. To me, the band came off as a bunch of pretentious, whiny douchebags in that movie. However, if I let my perceptions of every musician's personality color my opinion of their actual music, I wouldn't have a whole lot left to listen to. And to be fair, there are most certainly people in the world that think I'm a pretentious douchebag, too.
One of the most commonly voiced complaints is the drum sound. I actually like it. It's one of main things that sets the sound of this album apart from the typical metal style of the time. In case you're curious and don't feel like googling it, that flat, hollow thudding comes from Lars Ulrich turning off the actual snare part on the snare drums. This makes it lack the crisp, bright sound typically associated with hitting the drum head.
I have also heard a lot of people gripe about the lack of guitar solos, and that may be a valid criticism, but I don't think it distracts from these particular songs. This album was meant to be a pure riff-fest, and that's exactly what it is. Can it be repetitive and monotonous? Sure...but I don't listen to it often enough for it to ever reach that point.
Next up, Hetfield's vocals. Again, they don't bother me in the least. I don't expect him to sound like Freddie Mercury, and he doesn't try to. The somewhat off key tone of his voice matches the whole claustrophobic, breathless, train-wreck-waiting-to-happen feel of the songs.
Finally, there's whole situation with Jason Newsted's departure from the band that ended up with producer Bob Rock playing bass on this album. I think it was a bad thing for Metallica's overall sound that Newsted left, but Rock does a competent job, neither under- nor overachieving at any point. The bass provides a solid foundation for the main riffs. That's all.
At the end of the day, this record in particular and Metallica in general are what they are. No amount of wishful thinking is going to change that. For those interested, the version in the picture above comes with a bonus DVD that captures the band rehearsing these songs after the recording sessions for the album were complete. Robert Trujillo had joined by the time of the filming, and his bass playing adds some punch to the sound that may have been missing on the album. The drums also have a more traditional sound, so some people may prefer to hear these songs in that context. I'll link to videos of both the album and the DVD below so you can judge for yourself which is preferable.
