...Blabbermouth posted an interview with Kirk on why no guitar solos are on St. Anger:


"The reason for that is because again we wanted to move together all four of us in the same musical direction," he said. "We also wanted to preserve the sound of the album. When we tried to put overdubs on the album and put guitar solos on the album it kind of…it sounded like an afterthought, you know? Like something was put on after we created it. It stood out. We wanted to preserve the sound of all four of us in a room just jamming. Spontaneously together. To put production stuff on top of that just didn't sound right. We tried to put guitar solos on, but we kept on running into this problem. It really sounded like an afterthought." Asked if he's satisfied with how the record came out, Hammett said, "Oh yeah, absolutely. I'm so proud of this album. It freaks me out. I haven't been this proud of an album since 'The Black Album', I must say. I mean, the 'Load' and 'Reload' era for us was such a reaction to our first five albums. We didn't want to do what we had been doing: play fast, over the top and aggressive. If anything, the 'Load' and 'Reload' era was a big experiment in hard rock. We needed to do these two albums for us to make 'St. Anger'. If we would have made 'St. Anger' in the mid-nineties, it wouldn't have been fresh and as exciting for us as it was now. It would have felt like doing the same old thing. We needed to balance it out. When we finally got around playing fast and aggressive again, it sounded fresh. You need to get to point A to be able to make point B sound better, you know?"

i know