What came next was as big a shock as my metal senses had ever had to absorb.
Part of the major outrage at Load from the long time Metallica fans was the huge change in musical direction this album took. Even given the changes that are obvious between ... And Justice For All and Metallica, even that could not possibly prepare the listener for the changes between that album and this. It is enormous, and I would think almost unprecedented in music, certainly in the heavy metal genre. There is no semblance of thrash metal nor speed metal on this album, but a lot of that had been watered down before we got to this point in time anyway. What really jumbles the pot here is that this isn't really a metal album of any description. This could be considered a hard rock album, mixing in a grunge element that by this release was beginning to fade out of existence anyway, and then some other unfamiliar elements as well. Call it anything else but Metallica, and you could probably sell it to some of the older fans. But this isn't Metallica. Barely a scrap of the music on this album is what anyone before this release would call Metallica. It might have been written and performed by the four members of the Metallica band, but it just isn't Metallica.
The tempo of the whole album is wrong for a start. I mean, you could pretty much fall asleep listening to this such is the flow. It's like a slow moving creek in a summer field, not the fierceness of a flood ravaged river bursting its banks. Songs start and end in a lull. There are very few song-defining solos shredding through the speakers, banging that head that will not bang. James' vocals have completely transformed to the lower, brooding variety, which no doubt he had to do to stop his voice blowing out again, but has taken away his energy from previous albums.
The crowning glory here in regards to change is that, six years previous to this release, Lars was hailed as the finest and most brilliant drummer on the planet, and with good reason. He was the innovator, the standard bearer, the one everyone was following. All kids playing drums were practising their arses off to be able to play the drums to his time changes and double kick on ... And Justice For All. Now, here on Load, it was simplified, untroubled 2/4 timing that a child could play with their eyes closed. It is the biggest and most audible change to Metallica's music, and one that does it no justice.
From the very beginning, this album lacks the energy and drive that all of its predecessors exuded. "Ain't My Bitch" might be a reasonable rock song, one that could almost find itself onto commercial radio, but it isn't anything like what you expect as an opening to a Metallica album. This is followed by "2 X 4", another simplified rock beat with repetitive lyrics. Already the album has signified a big shift in style, which continues to be enhanced by "The House Jack Built". The dreary and sludgy pace feels like walking through quicksand, it just never really kicks into a higher gear, even when James tries to lift the listeners impact in the chorus. It feels like a poor copy of a Soundgarden song, missing the ingredients that made that band one of the leaders of the Seattle sound.
"Until It Sleeps" was the first single, and for most people their first inkling of what was to come on Load. I still don't mind the song, most likely because it was imprinted in my mind before the album was released, and also it is a failsafe fallback having gotten three songs into this album without any great joy, this song comes in. "King Nothing" was the final single from the album, and one many fans enjoy, but it does nothing much for me (no pun intended). This is followed by another of the singles, "Hero of the Day", which to me is a really weak song. The slow, quiet casual build up at the start of the song just destroys it for, and even when it seems to build for about thirty seconds in the middle of the song, it falls back to the same style soon afterwards. It never fails to disappoint me when I hear it. What is then even more disparaging is that, for all intents and purposes, the best part of this album has now passed.
"Bleeding Me" is a long winded, overblown and frankly boring song, starting slow and soft and ending slow and soft. Is it emotive, or emotional? I don't know, because all it does for me is to wonder when it will ever finish. "Cure" goes on the same way, as with a number of songs on this album, as though it is one long jam session, and the song doesn't end until someone finally gives up, while James sprouts words over the top at random. "Poor Twisted Me" has a musical sound with a southern U.S.A twang, one which makes me almost expect to see rattlesnakes and banjos and slide guitars and people sitting on rockers on the front porch. "Wasting My Hate" must have been written knowing how this album was progressing, given that I'm probably wasting my dislike for this album on anyone in the band, because they obviously wanted to head in this direction. By this stage of the album I am really finding it hard to come to terms with the song and musical direction this Metallica album has taken. And, then, "Mama Said" turns up.
In the history of Metallica, we have progressed from "Fade to Black", a classic song that loses none of Metallica's metal roots, to "Nothing Else Matters", which to me was weak, radio-friendly fodder, to "Mama Said", this country-styled, steel guitar driven, vomit inducing spewfest.
I don't have a problem with bands and their members experimenting with their style of music, or in trying something different (no matter how different), or indulging in their passions. This whole album is a change of musical direction. But surely - SURELY - if James had wanted to do this, to write and perform what is nothing more or less than a country & western song, he could have put it on the B side of one of the singles from the album. Rather than creating a song that is so far from Metallica's fan base that it can only really drive a huge wedge between them and the band and putting it on their album, they could have indulged themselves with this, but put it somewhere where the real fans will still access it, but not be completely put off by it, because, (after all), it's just a B side song. No doubt they would say to me that it is their decision, and that they felt this was the right thing to do. I respectfully disagree.
"Thorn Within" is probably my favourite song on the album, but I have no basis on which to explain why it is. A combination of the groove and the rougher vocals from James probably lends itself to me more than the other songs on the album. Or perhaps it was always just the shock of "Mama Said" that any song following it HAD to be better...
"Ronnie" soon shoots any welling of good tidings through the heart. A return to the country rock vibe here is again as mystifying as it has been for most of the album. I truly begin to wonder where this complete change of musical direction occurred in Metallica. The album concludes with another monster freeform jam, "The Outlaw Torn", a song that mournfully drags itself out to almost ten minutes with nothing more than basically Lars play a simplified drum beat for the first seven minutes, James moaning out some lyrics, and Kirk and Jason almost rendered superfluous, until they appear to get a run in the back end of the song, but without any structure or orders to stop, so they just keep going until someone finally decides to fade them all out.
For all of the people who came into Metallica around this time, and grew up with this album, I still can't totally understand how they would love it and have trouble with how many people cannot "get" Load. In some ways I guess I wish I could enjoy this album the way they do. But for those of us who grew up with a different Metallica, this is such a quantum leap from what we knew of the band that it becomes impossible to digest it. It wasn't the last time I was lulled into buying a Metallica album in the hope of something brilliant only to be crushed in disappointment, but it is my most vivid.
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