To Whom It May Concern

Metallica Is Slipping

Metallica is releasing a new album this week, their first new material in a long time. Fans have already reportedly reserved an astonishing 1.5 million copies of the album. Unfortunately, I have a feeling they are going to be sorely disappointed in this cd.

I didn't get into Metallica right away when they made it big. The music was so hard that it took me a few years to really appreciate it for what it was worth. The first Metallica album I purchased was And Justice For All, and I bought the black album, and Load and Reload. Although others thought they sold out after "And Justice For All", I thought they did a good job of moving into a more mainstream musical approach. I have also intended on purchasing the albums from before And Justice For All.

I was driving around in my work truck the other day and the morning guys on local station 93.3 KRTZ (they are a couple of complete douchebags, but I won't go into that) were all excited because they had the new single from the upcoming Metallica album and they were going to play it. I was intrigued myself, looking forward to hearing what they were going to sound like, because all indications pointed to a return to harder metal like they used to play.

The song is terrible immediately. The drums sound like Lars is on speed or some other amphetamine of some sort, just hammering away on them with no real purpose at all, James Hetfield is ranting away out of sync also, and the guitar is just plain uncoordinated at best. I can only pray that the rest of this album has more substance and better songs, or this is going to be one of the most astonishingly huge musical failures of all time, regardless of how many they sell the first few days. They won't sell much more once people start realizing how terrible it really is.

The only reason the song is even being played by radio stations everywhere is because of the name Metallica itself, which is really sad. If St. Anger had been released by a no name band, every radio station in the nation would have laughed hysterically and never have played it, but oh, because it's METALLICA, they feel they have to play it, and not only that, retards like the morning guys on 93.3 actually talk about how great the song is and keep a straight face about it, to me that is just absurd. If they weren't being paid big bucks by Elektra to promote the song no one on earth would play it. It's THAT bad.