Pre and Post St. Anger Metallica is such a huge change. They really needed to stop and get therapy after everything they experienced. I'm glad they realized how fucked up they were. Jason basically ended saving the band by leaving them to deal with their own shit.
Something I forgot until watching old footage of the band on YouTube today (live in Illinois, 1983) was just how young they were when
Kill 'Em All launched (James and Lars were 19, Kirk had not long turned 20 and Cliff was the oldest but still not even 21). They'd been playing together and recording demos since they were 18, and once
Kill 'Em All hit they pretty much didn't stop, then had to deal with losing a friend in a horrendous accident, bouncing back from that to follow up on the critical and commercial acclaim of
Master of Puppets while trying to integrate a new band member, then hitting the massive success of the Black Album going into their 30s, essentially playing out their midlife crises in public view on years-long tours and the back of Load/Reload.
There's stuff they did, and ways they behaved, during those periods that appealed to me as a teenage boy having a pretty rough time, but that I later came to identify as pretty fucking awful and toxic, and
Some Kind of Monster worked for me on the level of scraping everything back and showing that Metallica as they were was not necessarily something to be emulated or admired, and I think credit is due to the band for recognising that too and doing the work. I think the band that came out the other side are the better for it, and while I don't think the post-
St Anger albums are ever going to be my favourite Metallica, there are some
fantastic tracks on them that stack up against a good bit of their earlier catalogue, and that's something I didn't think I'd be able to say in 2003/2004.
I still fucking hate "Papa Het" as a nickname though - but then, I loathe it when UK comic fans call Pat Mills "Uncle Pat", so that's not an exclusively Metallica thing :-D
