Thanks! I haven't heard it before. If you're a hardcore fan, you'll probably going hate what I will say.. but, I actually haven't heard or liked anything else after S&M -- meaning that St. Anger and Death Magnetic; those weren't really of my taste. I prefer old Kill Em' All, Ride the Lighting, Master of Puppets etc. I still think they are quite good, I mean they are amazing. Who am I to say they aren't great musicians? I think they are, but I liked the old albums better. Although, bands and music must change, it is needed to survive in the industry. I still love them and always will -- this one is actually not bad at all!
They aren't great musicians. Well, Hetfield and Rob are, but Ulrich and Hammet are awful.
I'm in a group that gets all of the live shows from LiveMetallica.com, and there isn't a show that goes by that Hammet can nail all of his solos. The disconcerting thing is, they are pretty simple solos. The intro to One, the slow solos to Sanitarium etc. Other solos like Blackened, forget it, he's not even close.
I don't expect musicians to be perfect but the amount of mistakes he makes combined with the dreadful tone ....... He still does shred most of the solos, but overall he's not very good these days.
St.Anger i like on occasion. I like DM , but it could have been better. The production is terrible (thankfully there are guitar hero rips without clipping) and there are too many riffs in some of the songs. They copy/pasted too many riffs into various songs to make em longer etc. and sometimes it doesn't mesh. Overall though, it's a good album, IMO.