I think it's a great hard rock/metal album along the lines of Skid Row's best material.

I'm in pretty much the same boat. Aside from some cool soloing here and there (Let It Roll, Just 16) I think the album is Slash's most uninspired work, not to mention you can barely him alongside Dave Kushner's farty guitar sound.

Yeah, I read something further from Bob Rock, where he said that the reason St Anger sounds like it does, is because their main songwriter (James Hetfield) wasn't there for most of it because of all the rehab stuff he'd gone through, and the head space he was in at the time. I think the majority was cut and paste in pro-tools by Bob and Lars to make them kinda sound like songs.

Bob Rock described them as having a 'back to the garage' vibe in terms of raw production like you mentioned, but I still don't recall anything about "returning to their roots"

I would've thought if you'd watched that movie you'd understand St Anger more anyway.
That documentary shows the band on the verge of splitting, and St Anger was the catharsis for them to get it all out and move forward so they could still be a band.
And that's the thing here too, most people don't realise, that if there was no St Anger, there would probably be no more Metallica.

Oh, and I dig St Anger, tin-can drums and all.