10 Artists That Changed Music Genres (And Everyone Hated It)

The entire career trajectory of Metallica in the '90s was an extremely mixed blessing for metal fans. For all of the fans that they won over when making the Black Album, there were also a lot of thrash purists that were furious that the band had sold out, making the sounds of metal accessible for a mainstream audience. And if the signs weren't already there, the next two projects had the greatest sin of all: HAIRCUTS!.

As much as the change in hair styles may have been a big deal at the time, fans were much more pissed about what happened on Load and ReLoad, which saw the band get labelled 'Alternica' by fans for thinking they had started to jump on the grunge bandwagon. If you go back and listen to these records though, they aren't really grunge at all. Looking to flirt with some new sounds, these records are a lot more influenced by the likes of old school hard rock and even traces of stoner rock in the mix.

While there are definitely a few too many ballads sprinkled throughout these albums like Carpe Diem Baby, you can see the original Metallica still in there as well, like when they kick the door down on a song like Fuel or when they try to capture the same kind of beefy badassery of Sad But True on a song like Devil's Dance. For any Metallica fans that swear off these albums, you might want to give them another try. They might not be your particular kind of Metallica, but you're leaving a lot of great music behind if you decide to just sidestep all of these songs.