10 GUTSIEST Moves Metallica Ever Made (And Whether They Paid Off)

By the time Metallica reached the end of the '00s, they had weathered more than their share of musical firestorms.

From dealing with the backlash from the Load era to the much maligned St. Anger album cycle, the band had seemed to have gotten on the right track on the album Death Magnetic. Once their batteries were recharged, their decision to go in a brand new direction with Lulu yielded disaster from the very beginning.

Going into the studio with Velvet Underground legend Lou Reed, the resulting album was a musical experiment that should have never seen the light of day. While each of these acts are legends in their own right, the thought of putting one of the founders of artistic rock in the same room with thrash metal titans made for a lot of potentially great material that was never executed properly.

Though the band has since spoken highly of their experience working with Reed, people were lining up to bash this album from the moment it was released. It did end up garnering some praise from artists like David Bowie over the years, but as far as the mainstream rock crowd, this was the first Metallica release that was destined for the bargain bins.