Metallica is nominated for Best Metal Performance for the title track of St. Anger.

Metallica - the most successful musical metallurgists of all time with over 90 million albums sold in a 20-year career - are back after an eventful six year absence from recording, still very angry, even naming their raging '03 album, St. Anger. But while the band, especially lead singer/songwriter James Hetfield who went through rehab for substance abuse in late 1991, may have not yet made peace with personal demons, they have fully embraced one former nemesis, the Internet.

Having sued Napster just three years ago, Metallica is now offering free, unrestricted MP3 downloads of three full concerts worth of songs and other goodies from a new website to fans who buy St Anger, which also includes a free DVD of the band performing the album live in rehearsal - in all, over seven hours of delightfully nasty, aggressive music for the price of a single CD.

Powered by the Internet, another rock cornerstone Pearl Jam left the major label solar system to pursue a brave new world of its own. Metallica has chosen a tighter orbit, staying with their longtime label Elektra, betting they can entice fans to buy their music by adding - make that heaping - extra value into the traditional CD package.

Though early in the mission, the Metallica plan appears to be working with a vengeance. In its first week of release St Anger, the band's first new studio album since 1997's Reload, was the number one album in the U.S. and nine other countries when it wa released last June. Over a million bonus MP3's have been downloaded from the new "Metallica Vaults" site by eager fans who have purchased the album and obtained an access code, according to Edward Bender, spokesman for Speakeasy http://www.speakeasy.net/, the independent broadband provider that implemented and is hosting the site. Bender said he has the ideal job, since he "saved up lawn mower money as a kid to buy Metallica albums" and has been a huge fan ever since.

Perhaps Metallica and its vicious old-school audio assault can lead the record industry back to a consumer-friendly future with bonus packages and authorized downloads of such quality and value that unauthorized file sharing becomes immaterial, or at least reduced to a tolerably dull roar.

Not long ago this scenario would have seemed impossible. In 2000 Metallica sued the Napster file sharing service for copyright infringement and delivered to the now-defunct company the names of over 300,000 users - "fans" by another name - whom they accused of illegally making Metallica songs available over the network. Napster banned the fans from its service but told them they had a right to appeal the ban under federal law. 30,000 did appeal and the band either had to sue each one of them individually or throw in the towel.

Facing an absolute public relations debacle, a band that slogged its way to superstardom the blue-collar way with very little radio or MTV support through relentless touring, classic songs of sonic spite like "Creeping Death" and "One," and an flannel populist persona, relented and withdrew the suit.