Metallica: Ranking Their Post-Black Album Work

4. Load

In the late 90s, the guys in Metallica cut their hair, slowed the tempo, and opened the book on a bluesy doom-and-gloom period in which the roots of Thrash were buried beyond recognition. Lars has stated that exploring new frontiers is what Metallica is all about, but I still feel they missed the mark on this one. Hetfield€™s songwriting dwells on familiar themes of festering anger and unresolved issues, both of which were dealt with in more convincing ways on previous albums. He appeared to live in a perpetual state of agitation toward everyone around him at this point in his career, and the listener experiences that consternation first-hand on Ain€™t My Bitch and King Nothing. Ultimately, anyone who held out hope that The Black Album was an aberration wasn€™t likely to find solace in anything Load had to offer. The Outlaw Torn, however, is a minor gem in the catalog that isn€™t revisited nearly as often as it should be. Load is also more personal than fans were accustomed to, evidenced by Hetfield's decision to address his maternal relationship in Until it Sleeps and Mama Said. Both songs suggest a bitter love/hate dynamic that only got worse following her death from cancer in 1979, when James was only 16 years old. The former is my favorite song in the bunch, because cancer is a tragic illness that has impacted everyone in one way or another, and for him to be so transparent in his emotions is stirring, to say the least. Perhaps my biggest gripe with the Load/Reload era is how much the cloud surrounding Metallica began to signify the business side taking precedent over the need to stay true to the Thrash philosophy. They became just another band whose place in history was set in stone early enough that it wasn't considered necessary to keep getting better, and, as a fan, that didn't sit well with me. I hate to ponder the possibility that they peaked with Master of Puppets, but the case against that claim just isn't very strong. When you go from mammoth compositions in the vein of Orion and Battery to the rather pedestrian Hero of the Day, what do you expect people to think? The bottom line is that this album should have been beneath them musically, because, when you take their previous triumphs into account, nothing about Load remotely measures up to what came before it.