Video: Metallica Performed “St. Anger” Live in Poland

With sixteen years in the rearview, St. Anger is now approaching the age at which nostalgia might start to set in for a certain subset of Metallica fans.

Personally, I hear that opening riff and get extreme PTSD for the sadness and disappointment when that album hit my CD player. But I imagine if you were 12 years old in 2003 and St. Anger was your introduction to Metallica, maybe you’ll be happy to know that the band performed the album’s title track live in Warsaw, Poland last week. It’s a bold flex. I understand the band’s occasionally been dusting off cuts from that album lately… but still, bold flex to even touch any of it.

I concede this: the intro riff, once the band kicks in, is actually quite strong. But not strong enough to overcome the heaps of unpolished turds surrounding it, not the least of which is that snare drum — oh, that snare drum! — which I can still hear in my head clearly even though Lars’s snare sounds fine on this live version. Watch below and see if the nostalgia bug strikes you more than it did me.