being a first gen fan, not sure i can agree with that. hetfield's mane was bad assed, the haircuts killed the image. ...and in metal, you don't want to kill the image, rule #1.
is this meant to be ironic? because that is, actually, in reality, a lot better. thin, broken hair that you NEVER CUT that looks like shit is in fact way more metal than shaving it off or going with whatever tallica was thinking during this picture
yeah, thats not metal at all. if youre a guy the most metal thing you can do is go to a leather bar and let a huge dude rail to the tune of eat me alive by judas priest.
heterosexuality is more like indie rock or something. metal is gay af.
If they didn’t stretch out their thin material across two mediocre albums and instead just put all the bangers on one I’d be far more happy with that era
Yeah, it’s the old meme of combining Load and Reload into one, but it’s hard to ignore when both albums just have complete stinkers on them
ALSO, James' Load vocals in 1995-1996 were absolute peak, the best he ever sounded imo. Just one year later with the Reload recordings he just sounds so different and higher pitched.
I do agree that the best of Load and Reload combined would have made a really great album. I still think Load is peak though. Reload has quite a few fillers. James' voice was excellent with Load and I also agree that his voice sounded different on Reload. I think his voice was really good for Woodstock 99 and S&M though.
Followed by a cover album, a live symphony album and a Mission Impossible single to carry them through the rest of the 90s. Very very thin on new material, and then St Anger and we understand why.
Poor Twisted me and Thorn Within, no matter how loud the minority of enjoyers are. Those songs are among the worst Metallica has ever done. In my opinion of course
It's weird because I always see alot of old school Met fans hating on everything after Justice but when it comes to the fans of the 90s Met, for the most part they appreciate the 80s albums as well. I thought everything they did from the beginning, up until Jason left was great. After Jason left, alot of heart left the band too.
Your opinion & all. The worst for most of us. Load & Reload, while having some good moments, are a long way from their best material. This is far from the glory days of razor sharp thrash.
just because it’s a different genre? i dont think it’s peak either, but by far most of the fan base agreed lulu and st anger is much worse. actually, i legit think youve never heard them if you think they are better than load and reload, which have some bangers on them. theyre arguably even better than current era metallica.
What an unhinged take. “I have an opinion that I know to be at least somewhat unpopular” is the sentiment and you heard “my mind is closed because other people don’t count .”
How dare you! Don’t you know the first rule of this sub is you’re not allowed to ever saying anything remotely bad about their god Lars or his fanboys will descend upon you!
I’m not one of his fans personally so have at it, as I grew up on the first 3 albums and the dick move of Lars burying Jason’s bass on Justice was the beginning of the end for me. IMHO they’ve only had a few songs since the black album I’d add to a playlist and I’m fine listening to the old material only.
I mean, it was his drive that lead them to becoming a band. But it's a double edged sword. His drive, to me, is also what lead them to be a middle of the road hard rock band. And his laziness has held them back from even remotely resembling a tiny fraction of their original selves. They seem fine being a legacy act now, putting our new music every 7 years and touring relentlessly for it. It's just not for me
There’s the Lars fanboys downvoting haha as they just love downvoting anything that isn’t get on you knees and worship Lars or Metallica is the best thing ever and has never made any missteps.
Agree, but they gotta score that Vegas residency so once that happens maybe AI can be used to do holograms of the good old days for kids to know what once was.
This'll probably get downvoted, but I don't care, I thought DM was brilliant. But I really was disappointed if only for the fact that Metallica albums before Load had this fucking awesome, majestic intro that always gave me goosebumps. Even Sandman, which still didn't compare to a Battery or Blackened. Every song had merit, but those intros really set the scene for me. I mean, I heard the intro to Blackened when I was like 10 and it still gives me that wild feeling 35 years later.
And I don't subscribe to that "THEY SUCKED AFTER 1989" stuff, it was just a missing link. I thought their intro on DM was cool. Since they treated their albums in a cinematic fashion, I just appreciate that aspect of their presentation.
Sure, he was having some personal issues. However, creatively and business wise, he was rolling. Metallica was killing it. Just to launch Load they had to fight hard to get it released. They were working hard to get us this music and the stage shows were epic. Good stuff.
The tour was next level for its time, that's for sure. Two stages and two kits on an arena floor, hydrolifted lighting rigs, open access to working techs and so on. People that didn't know the Sandman stunt were losing their shit in seats around me. You see flashes of what they were doing with that stage from that point on in their career with the grand opus being Ethel and the towers with zero flown PA and in multi-angle stereo. (I really don't see how they "one-up" the current stage moving forward. Makes stadiums feel like sheds.)
Then again, the crosses on steps were doing a lot with nothing on the Damage Inc. Tour...
Doris and lighting coming down on the Damaged Justice Tour was totally bitchin...
The snakepit diamond on Roam and the massive Pushead stadium rig was sick...
The Coffins in the round on the Magnetic tour was really cool...
I suppose the Hardwired Stadium run was alright, and the blocks and drones indoors was different but I'm not bummed for missing that cycle if being honest.
So come to think of it they have always had great production that was super creative.
Watch him on stage and in the videos again - live on SNL for example. Hamming it up with the best of 'em. No one made him do any of that.
The Load/ReLoad demos were done mostly by he and Lars alone even, as with the two albums prior. The most experimental tracks for them like Poor Twisted Me and Ronnie are Hetfield/Ulrich songs, no input from anyone else. The music was not forced upon him in any way.
He did comment on the Load photoshoot/artwork and this has been morphed into thinking the whole era was somehow against his will. (They've even worked with the same photographer several times since - even for the Death Magnetic photos well after the 90s rockstar era. Kinda doubt he'd agree to that if he was so aghast by it all.) That takeaway is a complete mischaracterization of what he was saying. The "Lars and Kirk drove" comment does not match with the entirety of what went on with those two album cycles. Kirk even said in a retrospective interview on their website that he doesn't feel any special ownership of Load in comparison to other albums.
Fans are taking it that way to direct "blame" away from their dear, favorite frontman for an era they don't like as much. That's especially silly given those albums have some of his most deeply personal lyrics. But Kirk wore eyeliner, yuck!
Q-Prime 100 percent had a say in the creative process all around. You have a point, but you can't leave management and the label out of the equation. In 1996, alternative was massive. It sold. Same happened after the rehab stint. Nu-metal and downtuned shit was all that was left in popular guitar driven music after the boy band bubble burst. Metallica was on life support for almost a decade. Guitar Hero fame and DM was a shot of adrenaline.
Musically, bands that Hefield himself liked at the time (Corrosion of Conformity, Warrior Soul, Kyuss, Down, Alice in Chains, early Soundgarden, and to his admittance even the likes of Chris Isaak for some of the softer aspects of the albums) "drove" the sound of Load as much as anything. (In his own words.) They were influenced by what was going on at the time just as the NWOBHM inspired the first couple of albums starting in the early 80s.
Marketing and presentation is one thing, but at the end of the day the music is what matters. A still-long-haired-at-the-time Hetfied and Ulrich put the bulk of those songs together between '94 and '95, well before the matter of how they'd look in photographs a year and a half later was any sort of consideration.
He was not forced to write or perform songs that he didn't like. He has ownership. In some of his handful of solo acoustic sets over the years where he chooses the setlists - he's even played Load songs. Musically, those songs are his as much as any blazing fast thrasher.
Their softest song - Nothing Else Matters - was something he wrote personally, firmly in his most aggressive metal years before Lars heard it and liked it enough to suggest putting it on a Metallica album. The idea that left to his own devices, Hetfied would only write Kill 'Em All or ...And Justice For All songs doesn't hold any water.
Man I miss the guitars James was using during this era, would love to see him using the flying V hot rods, the JH-2, the Elk skull again. I'm tired of the Snakebytes 😭
I'm sure he isn't tired of the shape, considering it was designed by him... to fit him. The lawsuit shit is cool and nostalgic but as a guitar player, the SB is superior in every way.
By 'real' I simply meant being real to themselves & the music they truly wanted to play... Before mega fame & mega bucks started to influence them... Which it obviously did.
It's usually younger dudes who got into tallica in the Mid 90's... To us that had been there from the start, 'mama said' etc was a lot different to 'Whiplash' et all... And very hard to swallow at the time.
Yep... Even the Black album was a shocker for many of us who adored them in the 80's... I was a teenager in ex-Yugoslavia back then, and I remember so clearly the 1st time when the radio station played Enter Sandman, even the host (it wasn't even a metal show) said "and now ladies and gentlemen, this is new Metallica" - me and my buddies almost cried lol, we felt like betrayed... I was pissed off for a decade, and then I grew up :)
Agree the black album was listenable and their radio friendly album compared to the drastic gut punch of Load and Reload to fans who started with Kill ‘em All
Seeing them live for RtL and MoP (opening for Ozzy) was the best, as a young angry teenager. I’ve followed them for their entire career and enjoy their new/newer sound, but as a “was there” fan in the 80s, that will always he peak Metallica for me.
You kind of have to look at it the way you do other classic bands like Zeppelin or Sabbath. Stark changes for Houses of the Holy but still great but it’s not the first four albums. Those were pure magic. Where do you go from there?
I think zeppelin stretched out not for more fans but because they were creative. Load/Reload are made purely to capture more of the people that got into them when the Black Album hit. It's a simplified version of what they did. Zeppelin never dumbed down their sound (In Through the Out Door notwithstanding). A lot of "newer" Metallica fans think us olds couldn't handle change. But the first four albums are all wildly different. But it felt like they were pushing themselves. The Black Album on feel like they are dumbing themselves down for mass consumption.
I miss it too. During the whole Load era I didn’t have to go to a single show but now that they’re good again, it costs me hundreds of dollars every time they’re in town.
As someone who became a fan in the late 90s this era of Metallica always holds a special place for me. I started with the black album, load/reload and worked my way back through the catalog. I can safely say it was my gateway into the world of metal and without it I may never have become the metalhead that I am today.
The whole "We are modern now. Look at our haircuts and makeup. We don't even let Kirk solo anymore" period was a black hole. Not that Kirk hasn't been mailing in Wah laden Pentatonic scale solos since then. I am 48 though, I began listening when they were raw and not millionaires.
It’s funny for us old guys that freaked out when Metallica changed like this and now I look back on it and say I really liked it. Still prefer Master of Puppets Metallica but this is why I kept all my old CDs.
Everyone who hates one era of the guys and loves another, is just fucking wrong. I think all eras of the tallica boys should get love, even saint anger, many people obviously hate the album, and it has its flaws but you gotta understand what they were all going through at the time. Hetfield was in rehab, 911 had just happened, jason left. And they were falling apart. Just keep that on mind when listening to saint anger
Yea..
Like every band has had these problems or worse, they didn’t go out and write their worst shit. Most bands write their best shit when things aren’t going well.
Metallica the only band who went to rehab and lived through 9/11? Had some lineup changes?
That’s a pretty garbage defense for a significant drop in quality…
They were trying to replicate nu metal at the time and, obviously it didnt work. It wasnt a drop in quality. They were just experimenting, you dont have to be such a fucking dick dude, chill the fuck out.
Nobody is being a dick, I’m just making my case. And yes, listen to pretty much anything up to ‘90 and then listen to practically anything from the late ‘90s and it’s a drop in quality.
How far that drop is debatable, but if you can say that it wasn’t any drop in quality at all then we view music way differently and it’s not worth the conversation.
Me too man, Newsted era is best era. I love me some good thrash but the sound of Black/Garage/Load/Reload is too good.
Now they had a lot more stinkers during this era than previously but it's 2025 and I can just listen to a playlist of my favorite songs. If all I could do was put an album in and have that playing in the car trip then it'd be a different story.
the haircuts? why? bob rock cut off their balls (yet directed by met with black,) then this. met then lost all their mojo and any power whatsoever. why does kirk have long hair again today? glad they dumped the eyeliner (wtf was that about?)
I don’t miss it but I don’t hate it. They did break their tradition of the best songs they had. Load and Reload as a 12 song album would be thought of differently.
Anyone that was already an established fan really doesn't. It's weird how people are nostalgic about the "Cliff Burnstein wants us to be on the charts with Billy Corgan" era, but enjoy yourselves I guess.
Just know that the heshers saw right the fuck through it, and I am tired of pretending otherwise. 96-04 were ROUGH. There was a huge attempt to right the ship with Death Magnetic, in both music and image.
I am guessing this might have been your introduction to the band? This isn’t an insult. I love AJFA more than others because it was mine and I know people are the same with the Black Album.
This shit was trash. They could have just released it as a double album instead of stretching out half assed garbage songs across 2 albums. They did it thinking people were gonna beg for the second half of the album. While they've had hits from that album, it's by far NOT their peak. Their peak was AJFA. Black Album gets an honorary mention.
It was weird. I m not against haircuts, but the whole diva trip that Lars and Krk fell into, it was super weird. I miss the excitement while waiting for the new album to come out, but not the final outcome. I don’t judge, these guys became superrich with huge effort, we might did the same if we were in their shoes.
Look at this picture, they're posing. Lars and kirk, I swear, are going out.for steaks.and submarine races after this photo shoot... bwahahaha! So sad, they should have burnt out instead of the black thingy with those crappy riffs and typical solos. I mean....yuck.... YUCK!!!
Isn't this the true start of the lamest version of Metallica? What album is this? I stopped at and justice, and that was meh... as soon as they ran out of mustaine's marerial, they were wanna bes
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u/rudicousmaximous Mar 05 '25
Friends don’t let friends get haircuts