The very innovative YouTuber Music Dungeon has reimagined Metallica's other very divisive album, St. Anger—snipping a near 25 minutes off the original release to create some kind of lean and mean monster, and sharing it to the video streaming platform.
"This was a little project that I had started last year and kinda had sitting around for a while," Dungeon explains. "I [decided] to upload it, since I feel this does give the album a much needed 'trimming of the fat'. There's a lot of good ideas here that are either poorly executed or just overstay their welcome (those bloated song lengths). The idea was to keep the songs intact, while getting to the point, essentially.
"For the most part, this works very well and makes this album less of a slog in my eyes. Is it as revelatory as I'm making it out to be? That's for you to decide, but just remember this was mostly for my own personal use at first. If you enjoy the edits I've done, I may upload my condensed version of Death Magnetic (not all of the tracks are cut down, as this was again, for my own personal use)."
We have to admit it is a pretty interesting concept. But what it also illustrates is that good ideas aren't really enough to carry an album over the finish line, even with some clever editing. There's also the fact that St. Anger wasn't exactly epic in length—especially compared to tracks on previous albums like Master Of Puppets and …And Justice For All. In fact, the average length of the tracks from St. Anger is just under 7 minutes.
The reality is that, at the end of the day, St. Anger still remains Metallica's poorest batch of songs, written during a time when the band is hanging on by a thread and its future in doubt. So, I think we can forgive the band for the finished product, but an old adage certainly applies here: There's no polishing a turd.
You can check out Music Dungeon's creative editing below. Share with us your thoughts in the comments section!
