Metallica....maybe smarter than you think

As you may or may not know, I am a fan of the band Metallica. I think that they are the last important metal band after Sabbath, Maiden and Priest in the formation of 80's thrash. And they ruled the metal world in the 80's and 90's until the whole Napster thing. Now history has, unfortunately, proven them right and they have gotten softer on the whole leaked album thing culminating with Lars, the evil face of Napster's destruction, illegally downloading the latest Metallica album, Death Magnetic.

But Metallica was Public Enemy #1 over the Napster and they were pretty hated at that time. That was in 2000. In 2003, after much turmoil and a near break-up(as in Some Kind of Monster, unseen by me but I want to) they released the horrible St. Anger album. That album had lazy lyrics, bad arrangements, a horrible drum sound and all the songs there all sound the same which was never the case before. Now people hated that album and it deserves to be hated, a lesser band would never survive that.

So now you're thinking what's the connection I have with Napster and St. Anger. I have just thought of something that may make St. Anger make sense in this or maybe I'm just crazy. What if Metallica decided to make a crappy album to get the heat off Napster? I mean, St. Anger is so un-Metallica that them thinking that this was going to be a good album is just a huge Wallbanger. That has to be the only reason for this, so people could hate something from them that wasn't Napster. And it worked! If someone wants anger up Metallica fans there's a better chance of success with St. Anger than with Napster. If I'm right, which I doubt since I'm me, that is a brilliant strategy.