See also a review of their 1991 album
There are no new songs on this album. It only has some various performances of old Metallica songs.
The CD came out for the movie by the same name. Although we have not seen it, we can say right now that we do not see any proven effectiveness of psychiatry or group psychiatry for social situations such as the tensions among band members. MIM handles that question in MIM Theory 2/3. In fact, anger management therapy has evidence pointing to its doing more harm than good--meaning that it is not just ineffective but downright bad for you. Progressive people should avoid promoting psychiatry, because it is simply an ideological smokescreen of individualism leaving social problems in place. The more people believe in psychiatry for problems like Metallica's, the more the underlying social causes of problems find no place in our thinking.
In 2003 in Amerikkka we live in a world that might as well be the "Matrix" for all the dissatisfaction that exists among the vast majority. Along comes Metallica to remind most people of anger. True to the album title, this CD/DVD is a mixture of Christian residuals, typical heavy metal psychology and the righteous cry for justice.
Indeed, for an Amerikkkan audience, Metallica hits the right chords. From the first song, we have a call to live, for "my lifestyle determines my deathstyle." Even though we have no tolerance for lifestyle as a substitute for real politics, we recognize that musicians have as a legitimate subject matter the subjective element, including the very desire for justice itself.
By itself, "St. Anger" would be a typical heavy metal song diverting the oppressed from the targets of their true anger. The typical bourgeois heavy metal song treats anger as something just to let out without doing anything about the injustices that cause or should be causing anger. However, in this album, the following song titled "Sumkinda Monster" gets great airplay. Too bad there is no proletariat in the imperialist countries to pick up the message about the people.
"Dirty Windows" and much of the album is about ultra-purity and how no judges are clean enough to be passing judgement. As this is something Christians noticed 2000 years ago, we at MIM would like to add that someone is feeding those pigeons to poop on all those windows of glass houses and stones. It's no longer interesting to say that all the windows are dirty, which would be a perfect but aimless anarchist/Christian anthem.
Perhaps the most amazing part of this album is that it is true to Metallica roots. Somehow "Metallica" maintains its intensity. "Metallica" fans will find nothing missing from this album. On the DVD, that's not a "Metallica" t-shirt the singer is wearing. It's "MC5," the revolutionary hard rock band of the 1960s, which promoted the Black Panthers and gave concerts at anti-war rallies.