10 Rock Albums That No One Was Asking For

There’s always been a sort of debate going on as to when Metallica actually started to go drastically wrong. While there’s a strong case to be made for albums like St. Anger being trash from beginning to end, some of the more hardened metal fans point to the band’s self-titled Black Album as the moment where they crossed a line, going for mainstream success and turning into one of the biggest metal bands in the world. The Black Album deserves its place in history, but the next few years would see Metallica changing in many different ways…starting with a few trips to the barber.

Although the band’s group haircuts shouldn’t have an effect on the music, Load became every fans’ worst fear coming true, with the band catering to the more alternative flavor of rock and roll and making something that felt like it was destined for hard rock radio than something genuinely thrash. If you take away the expectations that come with a Metallica record though, this is still a solid set of hard rock songs, putting a little more bluesy flavors into their delivery and James Hetfield actually writing some of his most candid lyrics of his career, like dealing with his alcoholism on The House That Jack Built to making peace with his troubled relationship with his mother on the country tinged Mama Said.

Granted, it’s no surprise why this didn’t resonate with the same guys who got on board with Master of Puppets, with half of the band’s fanbase criticizing them for going soft and not living up to their namesake as one of the heaviest metal acts in the world. Given how their return to heaviness on St. Anger worked out though, Load is definitely more underrated than most Metallica fans give it credit for.