In 2003, Metallica heaved a big, ugly slop of identity-crisis metal called St. Anger into the world. Its bizarre lyrics and unpolished production captured the band attempting to update their sound for the nu-metal crowd while also struggling with their own issues, including James Hetfield's stay at rehab, their spat with Napster, and various interpersonal conflicts. Critics liked the resulting rawness, but Metallica's longtime fans, having been taken for a ride with the Southern-fried radio rock moves of Load and Reload (crazy how Metallica predicted the Matrix films) weren't so pleased, most likely because their ears had been ruined by Lars Ulrich's trash-can snare tone. St. Anger remains something of a punchline, which is where Family Feast come in.A loose collective of Canadian musicians from bands you know and love (PUP, Whimm, Kurt Marble, Grounders), Family Feast seem to have made a career of sorts making novelty cover albums and their most recent release is the incredibly titled and designed St. Angrier. Far from a straight cover of the album, Family Feast go the Weird Al route and do style parodies of these oft-maligned tunes. Witness "Frantic" warped into a circa 2002 DFA Records banger a la LCD Soundsystem, complete with monotone gang vocals. "Purify" sounds as though it's ripped from OK Computer, all ghostly vocals and ambient backdrops. Most perturbing of all is "Some Kind of Monster," which careens drunkenly through what sound like YouTube-ripped big band jazz samples and iPhone-recorded Sinatra crooning. To listen to St. Angrier is to understand the theory of parallel universes, so we reached out to Family Feast member Mike Searle to find out what in Kirk Hammett's eyeliner is going on here.Noisey: Off the top, the burning question. Why St. Anger?
Mike Searle: A little over a year ago my band Grounders had all recently watched Some Kind of Monster [the documentary about creating St. Anger]. It's fascinating and hilarious and sometimes even moving. I think most people don't like St. Anger, which is fair. I think it's kind of like a musician's inside joke for being objectively shitty but it became an even bigger inside joke for our band. One day on tour we were bored on a drive and read the Wikipedia page for the album aloud and it snowballed into "hey, it would be funny to cover this!" And it was!What's your favourite Metallica album? It's fine if it's actually St. Anger, I'm not judging.
For me, now it would be Ride the Lightning and the older more thrash-y stuff. My 13-year-old self would definitely have picked the self-titled though. "Enter Sandman", "Sad But True", "Holier Than Thou", "Nothing Else Matters". Lars and the boys were on their A-game. Also shoutout to "I Disappear" from the MI:2 soundtrack – I want to recreate that video.I noticed that a couple of the songs sound like they're covered in the style of other bands. Was that intentional?
For the "cover" type albums that we do, everyone's assigned a song and you're free to re-interpret as you wish but I would say yes, at least a little bit. I think it's fun to say "what if Metallica sounded like [blank]?" and then try it out. There's some humour in that juxtaposition. Also, I think we like to take opportunities to shamelessly copy our favourite bands and learn a bit from that process.So you guys have more of these albums, right? Tell me about this project/band.
St. Angrier will be our eighth release. Family Feast is a group of friends – some who play in bands, some who don't. We start a project when we feel like getting our creative juices flowing and try to challenge ourselves. We've done albums about Valentine's Day, KFC, Jock Jams, sometimes it's a cover album like this one or the Eagles' Greatest Hits Vol. 1. The project originally started with Andrew from Grounders and our good friend Duncan when they made Miracles which was a Christmas album. We've grown to add new people over the years and it's just a big happy family.Do you plan to play the St. Anger covers live? Tour them, even?
Uh, no, should we? Would Vice pay for it?What do you think or hope Metallica would say if they ever heard these?
I'd hope they'd say "I'm madly in anger with you."Phil's lifestyle determines his deathstyle. He's on Twitter.
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Mike Searle: A little over a year ago my band Grounders had all recently watched Some Kind of Monster [the documentary about creating St. Anger]. It's fascinating and hilarious and sometimes even moving. I think most people don't like St. Anger, which is fair. I think it's kind of like a musician's inside joke for being objectively shitty but it became an even bigger inside joke for our band. One day on tour we were bored on a drive and read the Wikipedia page for the album aloud and it snowballed into "hey, it would be funny to cover this!" And it was!
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For me, now it would be Ride the Lightning and the older more thrash-y stuff. My 13-year-old self would definitely have picked the self-titled though. "Enter Sandman", "Sad But True", "Holier Than Thou", "Nothing Else Matters". Lars and the boys were on their A-game. Also shoutout to "I Disappear" from the MI:2 soundtrack – I want to recreate that video.I noticed that a couple of the songs sound like they're covered in the style of other bands. Was that intentional?
For the "cover" type albums that we do, everyone's assigned a song and you're free to re-interpret as you wish but I would say yes, at least a little bit. I think it's fun to say "what if Metallica sounded like [blank]?" and then try it out. There's some humour in that juxtaposition. Also, I think we like to take opportunities to shamelessly copy our favourite bands and learn a bit from that process.So you guys have more of these albums, right? Tell me about this project/band.
St. Angrier will be our eighth release. Family Feast is a group of friends – some who play in bands, some who don't. We start a project when we feel like getting our creative juices flowing and try to challenge ourselves. We've done albums about Valentine's Day, KFC, Jock Jams, sometimes it's a cover album like this one or the Eagles' Greatest Hits Vol. 1. The project originally started with Andrew from Grounders and our good friend Duncan when they made Miracles which was a Christmas album. We've grown to add new people over the years and it's just a big happy family.Do you plan to play the St. Anger covers live? Tour them, even?
Uh, no, should we? Would Vice pay for it?What do you think or hope Metallica would say if they ever heard these?
I'd hope they'd say "I'm madly in anger with you."Phil's lifestyle determines his deathstyle. He's on Twitter.