In retrospect, was Metallica's Load really a bad album? Metalheads everywhere claimed it was metallica "selling out" and you heard comments like "alternica", "metallicrap", and even "countrytallica (because of mama said)". But looking back, it wasnt really all that bad, the first half of the album is great, and the second half, though it has filler, has some hidden gems as well like "cure", "ronnie" (one of their most underrated songs IMO), and "the outlaw torn". Heck, i even like "mama said" (though it was out of place and should have been saved for a b-side). Anyone else agree with me? (OTOH, Reload wasnt all that great, and hasnt held up that well, save for a few songs)

It was that bad.

Not *that* bad. There were chunks of good and mature songwriting on it.


Also consider, the source of the cliche is primarily a large group of people who only listen to Metallica and maybe 4-5 other classic metal/thrash bands, and that's the typical extent of their musical experience. :p A giant portion of Metallica fans have never heard of this thing called 'rock'. There won't be an unskewed vision to be found.

That sounds like a lousy Seattle hardcore band.

UNSKEWED VISION

Dreadful.

No, it was actually a good heavy rock record...had it been another band w/ the same songs, I don't think people would have such bad opinions of it. But, since it had the Metallica name on it and it was so different from anything they'd done, it was not well-received by many of thier fans.

Good point.

METAL-LIKIKA

It was an appropriately named album.

My take is the same as Shawn's. The album itself isnt a bad album. There are some good songs on it but it just isnt a Metallica album to my ears. I understand that musicians mature and grow and that is fine but I would imagine that with maturity comes a vision that would proclaim that you need to stay the course a tad to keep those old school fans. Metallica to me reached out to a few fan base and it just felt like they said "screw you" to the leather and denims of the early 80's (someone like me).

Changing their look so drastically didnt help either. I think their look was more detrimental to their original fan base then the music itself.

In retrospect Metallica was Metallica up until the self titled album. Some people say the end was beginning with Master of Puppets but I think maybe it was more evident on And Justice For All.

As you can see, I don't read all the way through sometimes.

The thing that makes it ridiculous is I've NEVER seen ANY album, in the metal world, get slammed as much as that album. Not 'Hear in the Now Frontier'.. not 'Chameleon'... not even 'Reload' or 'St Anger', though the latter does come close sometimes. It really did become a thing of, everybody copy and paste the cool thing to say about Metallica, which is, Load sucks, Master of Puppets is the best, blah blah blah. It was the gigantic extent to which the thing was put through the grinder which is so silly, you would have thought they put out a dance-pop album or something. I can certainly think of far, far worse 'sellout' type moments in metal. :p It got so old so fast, the first thing out of any metal fan's mouth concerning Metallica was the aforementioned, verbatim..

My only real problem with that disc and it's counterpart is the amount of filler on them. If they'd done it the way they'd done it in the past, and tossed out the dross, there would have been one FANTASTIC album between the two. I feel the same way about G'n'Rs Illusion discs.....

My take is about the same as Exo's... They should have dropped 3-4 songs off Load and it would have improved the album overall.

I still like it quite a bit.