Angry rock with a Zen attitude

Metallica has been singing about, oh, this grim reaper or that dark abyss for two decades now, and in 2001 the band seemed to be finally facing its own doom from internal strife. But after some rehab time, the departure of one member, much soul-searching and the recording of a new album, a reconstituted Metallica found itself this week at the storied Fillmore Auditorium for a series of shows that, clearly, were too loud to be a wake.

“Yeah, we made it,” lead singer James Hetfield told the audience a few songs into Wednesday’s show, the third of four nights. He may have been talking about the set’s late start, but the jubilant crowd heard a broader statement. Later, beaming, Hetfield added: “We’re very grateful to be here alive and well.”

The Fillmore shows have been a dress rehearsal of sorts for the band’s headlining run with the Summer Sanitarium tour (Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park are also on board for the tour that visits the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Aug. 9). On Wednesday, the band was loose, energetic and giddy. When Hetfield stumbled on the lyrics to the Misfits song “Die, Die My Darling” during an encore, the grinning band members even pulled two fans up on the stage to sing a second run-through.

After the show, guitarist Kirk Hammett said the performance was hardly flawless, but it was pitch perfect in reflecting the mood of the band. “It was good fun, and we’re still getting rid of the cobwebs. I’m just glad we made it to here, to this point.”

Not everyone made it -- Jason Newsted, the band’s bassist for 14 years, walked away disenchanted in January 2001. The badly rattled band did not name his replacement until three months ago, when former Suicidal Tendencies member Robert Trujillo officially came on board, and at the Fillmore, the stocky, affable Trujillo was still learning the band’s songs.

The upheaval of 2001 and the dramatic healing of 2002 are vividly documented on the band’s new album, “St. Anger,” which is due June 10 from Elektra Records. The raw music has a wider palette of styles than early Metallica songs that barrel along like runaway trains from start to finish. Now there are more breaks, rhythm changes and mood variations. There is also a sense of jagged improvisation that is far removed from the carefully constructed theater of its 1991 hit “Enter Sandman” and many of the signature songs since then.

The sound would seem to fit well in the hard-music scene today that has room for the meandering spirits of System of a Down, Tool and Linkin Park, but Bob Rock, the “St. Anger” producer and session bass player, said there is an exciting uneasiness anytime a juggernaut like Metallica changes course.

“It’s funny, it’s nice being a little scared, waiting to see how people are going to react to it,” Rock said. “I’ve been doing this 25 years and this is the purest thing I’ve ever recorded. We didn’t go back to fix things, it was one take and, if it works, it works.”

Rock, who has worked with Metallica for more than a decade, said the “St. Anger” sessions found not just a new sound, but also a new band. “I can’t explain to somebody how different they are,” he said. “I was there with them through this period of therapy and what it’s done for them -- the freedom, the communication -- is amazing. There’s been a rebirth for them.”

The rebirth was painful. Newsted’s decision to quit shocked the band. The bassist has said in interviews that he was chafing because his passion for side projects was viewed by Hetfield as betrayal behavior. So the bassist exchanged a spot in one the biggest rock bands ever for the freedom to play in bands such as Echobrain and Voivod.

The Newsted departure is an undercurrent on a new Metallica song, “All Within in My Hands,” the nearly nine-minute epic that closes the album.

“It’s really about loving things to death, you know, choking things out -- it’s essentially about Jason,” Hetfield said in an interview at Metallica’s two-story headquarters in an industrial district of San Rafael. “When he said he wanted to do other music, other bands, I didn’t get it. I just saw it as an attack. I wanted to squeeze tighter. We grieved that loss for a long time.”

Newsted exited when the band was still reeling from its public battle with Napster, the file-sharing hub that became synonymous with downloading free music. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich’s stumping against Napster opened him up to withering attacks that portrayed him as greedy or a dupe of the record labels -- the latter an especially exasperating charge for a proud iconoclast.

The band, reduced and rebuked, took another blow in July 2001 when Hetfield checked into rehab. On Sept. 12 of that year, the band was scheduled to reconvene in San Rafael where, as Ulrich puts it, “the amplifiers were still on, waiting.” But the night before, on a fateful date for the world, Ulrich got a distressing call from Hetfield.

“He said he didn’t want to hear from anyone and that the next communique would be from him,” Ulrich said. “That was a pretty heavy thing to hear. I certainly was numbing myself to the potential that he was going to call back and say, ‘Well we had a good ride, thanks a lot, see you around.’ ”

The reconnection, though, was made. In December 2001, the band announced Hetfield back in the fold. To get to that point, though, the other band members had to meet the recovering Hetfield’s need for more structure. They also had to change the dynamic that put the group above the needs of individual members, the mind-set that had propelled them to the top of heavy metal but also set the stage for Newsted’s revolt and plenty of built-up angst.

Some of the changes would be practical-minded but telling. Instead of bleary all-night recording sessions, the group would have structured studio time and Hetfield would be home for dinner. Mondays were “family night” -- all the crew would bring their youngsters, as would fathers Hetfield, Ulrich and Rock.

Nowadays, some corners of the band headquarters are littered with toys. Between a bright and airy kitchen and a small living room area you’ll find a DVD collection that includes Judas Priest concerts and Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.”

Hetfield is mulling the departure from the sanctuary for the upcoming tour because it will be “a constant vigil, I need to be aware of the surroundings and what they mean to me now.” He says of his rehab: “I found out that people try to fill that hole in their soul with something other than connection or love or higher power or human kindness, their family, their passions, whatever. I found out there are a lot of lost people. For me, learning to trust people was a big thing.”

One jolting example of that trusting behavior was Hetfield’s surrender of his role as Metallica’s lone lyricist. The convention had been that Hetfield would toil alone on lyrics and record them over nearly completed music. On “St. Anger,” lyrics were done day to day, often pulled from a stack of notes that reflected the idea shards of everyone involved.

“To describe this change, I think we need a superlative like ‘mind-boggling,’ ” Ulrich said. “James Hetfield had been protecting the vocals of Metallica so much that, if he was getting ready to sing, police tape went up. Everyone had to leave the building. So when he asked if we would actually help with lyrics well, I hate to be so dramatic about, but that’s when I believed the guy really did change.”

Ulrich, a self-avowed “control freak” himself, and Hetfield will both turn 40 this year. The pair hooked up in 1981 in Southern California with little in common other than a love of heavy metal. Ulrich was a native of Denmark, the son of a pro tennis player and living in Newport Beach. Los Angeles native Hetfield’s father was a truck driver. Their union led to a band that has sold about 80 million albums and stands as one of the 10 bestselling album acts in U.S. music history.

If there is any suspicion that this band which now speaks in Zen-like platitudes is somehow less gritty, it should be noted that the video for the blistering title track was filmed at San Quentin State Prison in a concert for the prisoners”We’re in our most confident and serene place now, and we’re putting out an album called ‘St. Anger,’ ” Hetfield said. “This album isn’t in your face, it’s through your face. What does that say? I have no idea. All I know is there is no end in sight. When you use your energy together -- instead of using some of it against each other -- you go in the same direction. When you get four guys going in the same direction, things go fast. And the music shows that.”

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Metallica

Where: L.A. Coliseum, 3911 S. Figueroa St., L.A.

When: Aug. 9, 3 p.m.

Price: $55-$75

Contact: (213) 748-6136