Megadeth Risk- Throwback Album of The Week

Throwback Album of The Week is posted every Wednesday

    For last week’s Throwback review I looked at the universally hated St. Anger by Metallica; this week we are looking at the biggest flop by fellow Big 4 band Megadeth. While Metallica’s worst effort was due largely to under production and being extremely un refined, Megadeth’s worst album kind of had the opposite problem. Megadeth’s 1999 album Risk strayed far too close to mainstream rock, mixing in a lot of Alternative Rock and Industrial elements that made a lot of Megadeth fans very angry. Dave Mustaine has said before he believes if the album had not had the Megadeth name on it, it would have been a huge success; today I aim to put that to the test.

    As I have never really been a huge Megadeth fan I feel that I can be impartial in looking at this album as it’s own entity. Honestly I kind of see what Mustaine meant, listening to the first couple of tracks it doesn’t really sound bad so much as weird. The first track Insomnia has a definite Nine Inch Nails sound to it, with some driving synths under some downright nasty sounding guitars. The thing that will sound familiar to Megadeth fans here is Marty Friedman’s epic guitar solo on the bridge of this song.

    Moving on to Prince of Darkness I’m seeing a very specific style for this album, kind of a blend of old school Metal and 90’s Industrial. Prince of Darkness is really close to Insomnia in style, but as the album goes on tracks start to feel more Ozzy Osbourne and Iron Maiden influenced. One track in particular sounds like it draws heavy influence from a particular Thrash Metal band by the name of Metallica. I’m honestly surprised no one has brought this up before but The Doctor Is Calling main riff sounds extremely similar to Metallica’s One. Maybe it’s just me, but it’s kind of shocking that as petty as Metallica fans can be that no one brought this up.

    Honestly though, I kind of dig parts of this album. Not going to try and say this album isn’t still pretty bad, but it’s nowhere near as bad St. Anger. The biggest issues on this album is that this style isn’t Megadeth, it feels like a half hearted attempt to sell out by incorporating popular elements such as Industrial and Alternative Rock without going full bore into those genres. On top of that, a lot of the lyrics and deliveries on this album are really cheesy without the full bore Metal attitude that would normally cover that up.

    For comparison to Metallica I’d say this is better than St. Anger but worse than Load and ReLoad, mostly because Metallica went a little more hardcore when it came to jumping around new genres and ideas on Load and ReLoad. So I’d say Risk would have been an average album by anybody else, but from Megadeth it’s confusing and kind of disappointing.

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Metallica St. Anger- Throwback Album Of The Week

Today we are looking at an album considered to be one of the worst of all time. Not only is this album considered objectively bad, but even more disappointingly it comes from one of the greatest Metal bands of all time. Today we are looking at St. Anger by Metallica.

The biggest issues on this album have very little to do with the music, with production and runtime being the biggest issues here. Metallica decided to take a very lo-fi approach to this album, attempting to convey the anger and frustration present during its recording. Because of their dedication to keeping it as raw as possible none of the songs are polished beyond their simplest forms, featuring no solos and a raw Garage Rock aesthetic.

Unfortunately these choices, while keeping the music very raw sounding also doesn't cover up mistakes or disguise bad choices, like Lars Ulrich's loose snare sound. While a loose snare sound on it's own isn't bad, the recording techniques used mean that not only can you hear this horrible pinging noise every time Lars hits the snare, but you can hear the loose snares rattling in the background of most of the songs. This album also features some of the least complex bass playing to ever appear on a Metallica album since producer Bob Rock actually played the bass for this album.

These recording issues and bad drum sounds are only exacerbated by the length of a lot of these songs. Simple and straightforward tracks like St. Anger and Some Kind of Monster are stretched to over 7 minutes when they should only be 4 at most. They keep the same length from their usual songs without having the complex layers. And just to add insult to injury, not only is the music not of a particularly high quality, it also sounds extremely dated as the band sound like they were trying way to hard to fit in with the Nu Metal trends of 2003.

    Despite these numerous issues, I'd still recommend the tracks Some Kind of Monster and St. Anger. While they should only be about 4 minutes long, they are both pretty good songs and, for me at least, overcome the recording issues. Even with a few tracks that I actually like on this album, it’s still the worst Metallica album of all time. While a lot of people don’t like the style of Load and Reload, St. Anger is objectively a horrible album.

Why Would You Want To Buy This?Like Seriously...
Just...Why...?