St. Anger vs. Chinese Democracy, which album was worse/more disappointing?

Worst of the Worst: Metallica's "St. Anger" or Guns N' Roses's "Chinese Democracy"


  • Total voters
    56

JayPettryMMA

Danger Zone Aficionado
Staff member
Forum Administrator
Joined
Mar 13, 2011
Messages
41,723
Reaction score
22,563
Both of these albums were massively disappointing and released after long delays from popular bands.

Metallica's St. Anger came out six years after Reload came out in 97.

Guns N' Roses's Chinese Democracy came out 15 years after their cover album The Spaghetti Incident and 17 years after their Use Your Illusion II release.

Which was worse? It's a tougher call than I thought it would be.


St. Anger vs. Chinese Democracy, head to head, which one is worse?

st anger.jpg VS chinese dem.jpg

vs

I won't go into the specifics as you've probably heard enough about each in your lifetime.

Who takes it for worst of the worst?
 
I think it's a pretty easy choice. The worst of the two is Chinese Democracy (lame album name btw).

I didn't like any of the songs. I can't even remember them. That's a big fall from grace for a guy that wrote November Rain and bunch of other memorable tunes. Axl is the only original member on this supposed GNR record.

I wasn't a big fan of St. Anger when it came out. "Frantic" was the only memorable song.
 
Last edited:
Guns N' Roses for sure, it's just crap. I've never liked Axl's voice though so I might be biased.
 
I think it's a pretty easy choice. The worst of the two is Chinese Democracy (lame album name btw).

I didn't like any of the songs. I can't even remember them. That's a big fall from grace for a guy that wrote November Rain and bunch of other memorable tunes. Axl is the only original member on this supposed GNR record.

I wasn't a big fan of St. Anger when it came out. "Frantic" was the only memorable song.
I bought St. Anger just for Frantic because of this video

 
St. Anger

I thought Chinese Democracy was good on its own merits.

I guess it depends on expectations.

I didn’t have high expectations for Chinese Democracy and Its still funny that the wait fooled everybody into having high expectations. I love GnR but band makeovers matter. I didn’t view the forthcoming GnR album as a real GnR album. Axl wasn’t the sole writer and concept master or something, you remove the rest of the band and then have Axl write an album with a revolving door of studio musicians and such..that’s not my idea of a GnR album that stokes expectations. That said, the finished product wasn’t prime GnR but it was a good album put forth by Axl Rose and others. I haven’t bothered listening to it for several years but I felt no level of disappointment.

On the other hand, I expected an on par Metallica album(to the Load, Re-Load era atleast) and got an extremely corny album that still sounds terrible no matter how many times I’ve re-visited it in futile attempts to find magic.

It’s just a terrible album. The best takeaway from that record is mockingly singing lines like “my lifestyle..determines my deathstyle” or “Saaaiint AanGUR roun muh neck”. It’s like they were making fun of themselves.

Why the hell were the songs as long as normal Metallica songs with few changes in tempo, no progression, and zero guitar solos? If the songs were shorter it might’ve been neat....but that fuckin snare drum.
 
Last edited:
Its a toss up and probably depends on my mood but I'll go with St. Anger. I was expecting better. I didn't really have high expectations for Chinese Democracy.
 
Why the hell were the songs as long as normal Metallica songs with few changes in tempo, no progression, and zero guitar solos? If the songs were shorter it might’ve been neat....but that fuckin snare drum.

The only good thing about that album was the parody where some guy recreated the drum sound by banging on a steel chair.

 
Chinese Democracy, only because GnR spent more time and money on it.

But I recently listened to St Anger again and was just blown away at how bad it is. Beforehand I was thinking that a few guitar solos and better drum sound would make a huge difference, but forgot how weak the songs are. So much worse than Load and Reload, which were not that good to begin with.
 
Did Chinese Democracy finally come out? I never would have thought so.
 
They were both pretty shitty given what those bands accomplished. I'll go with CD for Axl trying to sell us a GnR record with a guy with a bucket on his head playing guitar.
 
I hated st anger most just a lot of garbage in that record only song I could stand was frantic.
 
It depends on how we're judging it. I could hum the tune/sing the lyrics to a lot of St. Anger songs because they're so memorably bad, but I really couldn't do the same to Chinese Democracy. In the end St. Anger is bad but memorable, but Chinese Democracy is below mediocre and forgettable.
 
This one song off St. Anger is better than the entirety of good/decent parts off of Chinese Democracy.

 
As a HUGE fanboi, it pains me to say this, but GnR for sure. They left on a good note, so to go from Use Your Illusion 1+2 to that crap is a much bigger disappointment compared to Metallica. They were producing junk for the past few previous albums.
 
It depends on how we're judging it. I could hum the tune/sing the lyrics to a lot of St. Anger songs because they're so memorably bad, but I really couldn't do the same to Chinese Democracy. In the end St. Anger is bad but memorable, but Chinese Democracy is below mediocre and forgettable.

That is one way to look at it. I do remember just about every song and every lyric on St. Anger but I also gave it far more spin than Chinese Democracy because at the time I didn’t want to accept that Metallica bricked so horribly. I expected a GnR in name only album and got one. It wasn’t bad, nor anything I’ll bother re-visiting...but I’ve never wanted to like a bad album as much as I wanted to like St. Anger.
 
St. Anger by far.

By the time Chinese Democracy was released the hype wasn't at its peak and how can you have a GNR album without Slash?

St. Anger is so terrible. I remember throwing it out the window after buying it. It just couldn't be. I could write better riffs. Load and Reload were different but this was terrible.
 
St. Anger had a so-bad-it's-good vibe. I found the title track and "Frantic" hilarious.

Chinese Democracy was pure crap. It's way worse than St. Anger.
 
Load and Reload were different but this was terrible.

I could never understand the Load and Reload hate. It's a couple of really fun blues/rock/metal albums. Perfect for a cruising and smoking a joint.

Metal nerds are the worst.
 
to my knowledge I've never heard anything off CD, bought St Anger, when it was released, don't think I've played it from start to finish.
 
I could never understand the Load and Reload hate. It's a couple of really fun blues/rock/metal albums. Perfect for a cruising and smoking a joint.

Metal nerds are the worst.

I wish Load/Reload were a double album with maybe a few songs shaved off. The Unforgiven 2 is my favorite one out of the bunch. You have some bluesy but heavy as hell riffs all throughout, stuff that would make Iommi proud. It just wasn't fast.

The change for me with Metallica already came with TBA and I probably prefer Load/Reload over it if you picked the 12 best songs from each off those records. Bleeding Me is a great tune and a dozen others too. There are some major riffs on that album and Hetfield still had a voice. Garage Inc was phenomenal aswell, so the band still had a lot of fuel left in the tank. I Disappear is even a catchy song.

They already gave us the best thrash/melodic/heavy metal from 83'-88'.
They weren't topping that, plus if you know the band's history, Cliffs death was a big deal in terms of songwriting but Hetfield could hold his own. He taught both Kirk and James adding melody to speed. Notice in The 4 Horsemen how the middle broke down and slowed while The Mechanix just rips through. I prefer the guitar chunk and pace of the Horsemen.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top