10 Musical Shifts That No One Saw Coming

You could honestly throw a dart at any of Metallica's '90s albums and have gotten a few conflicting opinions. Despite having one of the best selling metal releases in the Black Album, there were many thrash purists who considered the band sellouts for daring to work within the radio rock format. Little did they know that their favorite thrash band had not yet begun to mess with their sound.

While it's easy to call Load a rehashing of the radio rock format, there's a lot more influence from the alternative community than most fans probably remember. From the sounds of the opening single Until It Sleeps, the moodier tone of the band is a lot more prominent, almost like they took the raw emotion of the Unforgiven and stretched it out for over an hour on CD.

That's not to say there aren't any bright spots, like James Hetfield's powerhouse vocal performance on Bleeding Me and the weird left turn of Jason Newsted's slap bass line on the song Cure. Then again, the people who hated the Black Album might have spontaneously combusted the minute they heard something like King Nothing on the radio. Hell, even the first single off of ReLoad, Fuel, feels like a deliberate attempt to say "we're sorry" to the fans who got bored silly from this. Still a good Metallica record, just not for the impatient.