10 Things You Didn't Know About Metallica
7. Load And Reload Was Originally Supposed To Be A Double Record
After the rigorous tour across the world promoting the Black Album, Metallica certainly deserved a break from the craziness. However, once the band got back into the studio to record their followup, Load ended up being too much of a sellout for some fans to handle. Though the album and its followup ReLoad still get a lot of hate, it wasn’t originally supposed to work out that way.
Rather than releasing 2 monolithic releases years apart, the band had originally envisioned making a double record with the best songs from each of the albums. While there’s going to be plenty of people who hate everything about these records, the idea of having one free-flowing experience with this new style may have ended up working a lot better for them in the long run.
For as many great songs are on these records, there is plenty of filler that could have been relegated to B-sides. On the other hand, having something like “Fuel” alongside “King Nothing” as the next step after the most successful metal album in history could have ended up being just good enough to bring the band back.
Load and ReLoad are far from terrible albums, but it seems like a bit of lost potential that we ended up getting two records of tepid cuts rather than one badass double record.