10 Most Underrated Albums From Legendary Hard Rock Bands

After the Black Album, it looked like Metallica could really do no wrong. Despite some of the more aggravated fans crying sell out over their switch to the mainstream, the legions of hard rock lovers won over by Enter Sandman and Sad But True was enough to bring metal to a much wider audience. Much like hair metal alongside though, things started to turn a corner once the grunge revolution got underway.

Refreshed from a well earned break on the Black Album tour, no one wanted to make a rehash of their older sound, instead going in an alternative leaning direction. As such, Load tends to hit a sour note with most Metallica fans, when in actuality it's probably one of their best albums of the '90s. When put alongside The Black Album, this feels like the natural progression from such a gargantuan release, having a more menacing growl on songs like Until it Sleeps and showing an influence from the heavier side of the grunge spectrum like Alice in Chains in the process.

Aside from a few strange detours like Wasting My Hate or Cure, this is probably the most fully realized experiment Metallica had made up to that point, which would come back to bite them in the ass just a few years later on St. Anger. It might have been a bit of a mixed blessing in retrospect, but once you start to look past the haircuts, this album still holds up.