Metallica
St. Anger

THE REVIEW

Remember the song "Silos" from the first album by Elio e Le Storie Tese? Well, in that track, it highlighted the important role that poop could have in the future when food supplies would drastically decrease. The good Elio wanted to point out that it's easy to say that poop is gross, but that's not an objective fact. Well, Metallica with St. Anger managed to elevate the role of crap beyond levels that even Elio couldn't imagine.

Now, the fecal universe is full of different types of poop: there's the phantom one (when you feel like you're about to evacuate, but when you sit down, nothing comes out); the perfect one (when you evacuate, wipe, and see that the toilet paper is perfectly clean, ready to blow your nose); the explosive one (accompanied by loud gas and usually heard by everyone in the house, building, or nearby—it caused a lot of false alarms in Baghdad); the so-called difficult birth (so painful to come out that you wonder if it's really an excrement or something like the "Alien" monster); the exorcist (half green and half yellow, making you think your intestine is possessed by a demon); the spy (the one that, after flushing, reemerges unexpectedly); the exhibit (the kind of colossal poop that's hard to believe was produced by a human being; the author leaves it in the bowl for everyone to appreciate and avoids wetting the toilet paper to not obstruct the view of their masterpiece); the so-called candle drop (marked like a seal in the underwear); the stalactite (the one that seems like it comes out all at once, and no matter how much you clench, it doesn't break; usually hangs until you start moving your hips); the surprise one (the type of poop you think you can hold back, so you decide not to go to the bathroom; but guess what... Surprise!); the Santa Claus (so voluminous that you wonder how it'll fit down the drain once the button is pressed); the anonymous one (mysteriously appears in the toilet and no one claims it); the umbrella poop (when it's so soft and expelled at high pressure that it dirties the entire bowl except for the water at the bottom. Practical advice: never have an umbrella poop in Turkish toilets, your pants and legs will pay the price!) and many more, but never could one have imagined producing a reflective, round one with a diameter of about 10 cm.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, here is St. Anger!!! Let's take it easy; many will present this album as a masterpiece, a rebirth, but don't believe it: crap it is and crap it will remain, simply based on a fundamental principle of human existence: if you poop once, sooner or later you'll poop again!

A few days ago, I was having a drink with Kai Hansen when the German says to me: "Do you know why in the new Metallica album the drums sound so horrible and there are no guitar solos?" I shrug, and Kai continues: "Simply because the dwarf..." "Dwarf what..." I reply. Kai resumes: "The dwarf, the dwarf, in the metal environment, no one calls him Ulrich, just the dwarf... I was saying the little dwarf plays with a drum set of pots!" "Noooo..." I exclaim surprised. "But it's true," Kai continues, "The dwarf sold his drum set due to debts, and Hammett did the same with his guitar, which is why he practically doesn't play in this album." A bit skeptical, I reply: "But, come on, these guys are billionaires; I don't think they can have financial problems affecting an album's production so heavily." Kai bursts out laughing: "That's the funny thing: bad investments, and they went bankrupt! It seems that Hammett and the dwarf started a side business, but it didn't yield the expected success." "What kind of business?" I ask, now caught by curiosity. "They simply produced condoms and tried to sell them directly to prostitutes to bypass the tax hassle, but over there in America, things aren't like in Italy, if you try to trick the tax authorities, they'll get you in trouble like you can't imagine, so while the two were driving around distributing condoms, they came back to find everything seized!" Sounds absurd, right? Yet listening to those drums, you can't help but realize it's pans and dishes! Then I wonder, couldn't those sons of bitches use them to make spaghetti instead of annoying us poor listeners?

These days, a mutual friend should set me up with a meeting with Jason Newstead, who knows, maybe I can get something interesting out of him about the real reasons for his departure from the band...