RECORD REVIEW - METALLICA “LOAD” AND “RELOAD”
1996 + 1997, Vertigo

Picture the scene. You’re in the world’s biggest heavy metal band. It’s 1996. Five years ago, you released a self-titled album which defied all expectations and sold more copies than most of your fans have had hot dinners. You’ve changed the path of heavy music several times with a series of increasingly complex and punishing releases. You’ve just finished a four-year tour in support of said eponymous album. You’re tired, angry and coming to terms with your status. What do you do?
Well, if you’re Metallica… your guitarist and drummer wear eyeliner, you cut your hair and piss off countless people by releasing a relaxed, alternative rock-influenced album called Load, which still sells umpteen squillion copies, then follow it a year with more of the same, called RELoad this time.
But lets not be too hard on Metallica. In their defence, both are fine records, and if they’d put out more trash metal, they would have been dubbed one-trick ponies. There are many fine songs here; different but fine. There are heavy, raucous rockers (“Aint my bitch”, “Fuel” and “Better Than You”) huge, sprawling epics (“Bleeding Me “and” “The Outlaw Torn”, the latter of which is still one of the finest Metallica songs ever) and even blues and country excursions (“Low Mais Lyrics” and “Mama Said” respectively). The only problem is, most of Metallica’s fanbase at the time was extremely narrow- minded, and not all of the band’s experiments here work: “Ronnie” (from Load( is dreadful sub-Lynyrd Skynrd crap, and possibly the worst song Metallica have ever recorded.
Frontman James Hetfield was also criticised for making his writing more personal, but this is unfair – a man in his mid-30s writing songs like “Seek & Destroy” and “Creeping Death” would be widely jeered as well.
All in all, Metallica deserve full marks for trying something new, but theory and practice are seldom the same. At least both these records are better than St.Anger and everything Metallicas rivals Megadeth have ever put out.

LOAD: FOUR STARS.
RELOAD: THREE STARS
LOAD AND RELOAD: FOUR AND A HALF STARS.
KIRK HAMMETT AND LARS ULRICH’S MAKEUP: NO STARS

Author: Gregg Mather
Manchester iJourno Group