Recreating the 'St. Anger' Snare Sound | What's That Sound? Ep. 22

In this episode of What's That Sound, Noam & Jessica took on a monumental task: recreating one of your most requested topics: The iconic drums of Metallica's St. Anger, which is seeing its 20th anniversary. They're heavy, they're aggressive and they ring out with an intensity that has not been rivaled in the history of recorded music. Did Noam & Jessica live up to the challenge?

#stanger #whatsthatsound #metallica #drums #recording

[ileutur]

This actually makes the drum sound of St Anger even more perplexing. The sound didn't come from carelessness or rushing or incompetence, someone purposely made it sound like that and went "yes we're using that"

[Qixo_]

The St. Anger snare is one of the snares of all time

[roscoechance]

Guy is trying not to laugh when describing the sound 😂

[paulbadoo]

I love the sarcasm all throughout. That you guys managed not to crack up enough time to actually shoot the video is amazing. Please, do an outtakes video.😁

[harryhewson]

The snare is a goregrind legend (and honestly the least of St Anger's problems).

[I_dont_even_like_money]

Thats the perfect Grindcore snare. If it doesn't sound like a spanner being thrown into a tin can, are you even grinding?

[SpellhausChannel]

Lol I’m not even a metal fan and I’m aware of how infamous the snare on this record is.

[jacobreece]

This should've been an April fools video

[eDWICHt]

You got it pretty f'ing accurate, good job!
And still I insist, take that snare sound out of the million dollar production context of a Metallica record, put it into the context of an absolutely filthy crust type of album instead and you've got yourself a perfect match that works like a charm.

[ryanstauffer]

Other episodes: "What's that sound?" (wide-eyed, inquisitive)

This episode: "What's that sound?" (fingers in ears, grimacing)

[Lol-hgo]

"St. Anger" snare sound will be remembered for generations.

[DTM-Books]

This was fantastic. I always enjoy music more when I understand all the hard work that goes into creating those sounds, and as this demonstrates, creating that infamous "trash can" drum sound takes quite a bit of effort. Personally, I love that sound, it's almost like steel drums, and those harmonic resonant tones balance out a mix of guitars that are all bubbling and gurgling underneath. It's brilliant and clever in a deliberately low-fi way and remains criminally overlooked by metalheads who just cannot escape from the year 1986.

Metallica's St. Anger is much like the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, where it just becomes something that "fans" are supposed to hate. It's required in order to fit into that little high school clique, and isn't really based on anything beyond that. Seriously, these kids have never heard a challenging album in their lives, like, oh, I dunno, Trout Mask Replica, White Light/White Heat, On the Corner, Metal Machine Music, Daydream Nation, Loveless, anything by Stockhausen or Varese or even Stravinsky. Again, they just want to listen to 1980s heavy metal, which is fine, but it's a bit like living on a diet of meatball sandwiches and nothing else. Whatever, as my generation used to say.

[vwharman]

It’s so funny that the snare sound on this record is so infamous. As if the thing that made Fran tic tic tic tock a bad lyric was the snare sound.

[raistaparta]

I was at a summer festival in august 2003 and this would play on the PA at EVERY change over, every day, for 4 days. I'm pretty sure it was a prank from the techs.

[andrewpappas]

Honestly I feel like this was bound to happen one way or another considering how infamous that snare is, but still a great video

[Malum]

I remember a comment on a Helmet video saying that Metallica St. Anger snare wishes to be the Helmet snare.

[thebreakfastmenu]

You need to do Nick Mason's DSOTM drum sound for the 50th anniversary of the album!

[stupidjubei]

Everyone wants to know how to make that sound, so they don't end up accidentally making that sound!

[lotsofgreendrums]

yeah Noam!!! You cracked the secret to the PERFECT snare sound!

[GooseDogDabrowski]

Great video, would LOVE to see Pixies Doolittle recreated!