FOR a while then it seemed that the undisputed heavyweight champions of metal had settled into an inevitable decline from their commercial and critical peak of the Black Album in the early 1990s.

There were the unremarkable Load and Re-Load albums, a steady watering-down of the band's sound and, finally, the acrimonious departure of long-serving bass player Jason Newstead - while all the while, rock fashions were changing towards "nu-metal".

To add to their woes, frontman James Hetfield spent the mandatory spell in rehab. Yet Metallica have found strength in adversity - St. Anger is effectively an hour of primal scream therapy - Hetfield bludgeoning his personal demons with a musical baseball bat, before emerging bloody, but triumphant, at the end.

Dispensing with Metallica's usual meticulously-produced rock opuses, this is a red-raw, stripped-down, brutal, back-to-basics album.

It was written and recorded with producer Bob Rock filling in on bass - and you suspect lead guitarist Kirk Hammett was bound and gagged in a cupboard somewhere, as there are none of the fiddly guitar solos of old.

Musically, Hetfield's bomb-blast guitar riffing and mighty vocal growl are to the fore, while Lars Ulrich seems to be on a mission to win back his rock's-most-worshipped-drummer crown, hammering his kick-pedals like machine-gun fire.

OK, only a few of the songs are likely to find classic status in the Metallica catalogue (although the title track definitely will), and some of the lyrics would be cringeworthy in the hands of a lesser band. But, as a gleefully-rampaging fast and furious masterclass in How To Rock, it's the sound of a legendary band rediscovering what they do best and absolutely revelling in it. Just don't listen to it with a hangover.

Metallica headline the Main Stage at the Carling Weekend, Leeds Festival, at Bramham Park, on August 22.

Updated: 10:27 Thursday, July 10, 2003