Revisiting Metallica’s Mid-‘90s Masterpiece.
Metallica’s Load is a masterpiece. That’s not meant to be a hot take or an SEO grab. It’s just one man’s opinion decades in the making. Now, I have it on good authority that Load recently turned 30 years old (released June 4, 1996), which makes this a perfect time to revisit this left turn of a record.
Full disclosure: the following is nothing short of a celebration, so fair enough if this is where we part ways. I get it, I do. You were there from day one, and then your favorite ‘underground’ band sold out, cut their hair, and swapped seething metal anthems for a batch of mid-tempo, grunge-indebted alt-rock gems.
Still, I’d encourage anyone who’s already made up their mind on Load to maybe go ahead and give it another listen; preferably, of course, after reading the following.
Like just about anybody who’s ever banged their head to a riff, my love for Metallica runs deep. As a just-under-the-wire Gen X’er, my first exposure to the band was via the music video for “One.” I, quite literally, couldn’t believe what I was hearing (and seeing). The cinematic black-and-white epic stood in stark contrast to the steady stream of hair bands and top-40 synth-pop that MTV tended to pedal. Kinda like catching an eight-minute clip from Apocalypse Now in between a Saturday morning run of Scooby Doo and The Flintstones.
I was all in, and spent the next couple of years tracking down ‘the rest,’ no small feat sans internet. A million people probably have this exact same story to tell: Master of Puppets rightfully blew my mind, though I quickly realized that Ride the Lightning might secretly be the better of the two records. Kill ‘Em All was an impressively raw collection of attitude, and the Garage Days (re-revisited) introduced me to the Misfits.
So, yeah, I was primed and ready for the Black Album, and despite the commercial leanings, it soon became a constant companion during my formative years. The band went on tour for a bit, and the Black Album singles saturated MTV and rock radio. Sure, they’d become a huge, dare I say, mainstream presence, but they still ‘looked’ and sounded like a metal band.
Of course, all of that changed the second Metallica dropped “Until It Sleeps” in the spring of ‘96. Sounding nothing like anything the band had ever released, I thought the song was freaking fantastic (still do). As a massive fan of bands like Soundgarden and R.E.M., the moody verses and super dark and arty video treatment somehow made complete sense to me.
Of course, the ‘new’ Metallica lost some long-time fans, for sure, but they also managed to redefine their sonic boundaries and broadened their audience. The move might’ve felt calculated to some, but I never personally bought that angle. After all, these guys were writing thrash anthems in their early 20s, so why wouldn’t they branch out in their 30s?
Anyway, I initially deemed Load an interesting, but uneven listen. In those first few years that followed, I consistently revisited the release only to draw the same conclusion: the singles were strong, the two long songs were among the best tracks they had ever written, and everything else was, well, kind of forgettable. ReLoad soon followed, and for a long time I would tell people that the best album Metallica never released was a single disc comp combining the best songs from those sessions. It’s a thought I still stand behind.
That said, as I routinely revisited the record, I eventually grew to appreciate every single second. It spoke to me on multiple levels, and it finds James at the top of his lyrical and vocal game. To that point, unlike so much of the band’s back catalog, much of the material on Load continued to resonate as I grew older and navigated those oh-so-murky waters of adulthood. And now, staring down the barrel of 50, I have to admit that when I’m in the mood for some James Hetfield-isms, Load is my go-to.
The band wrote plenty of metal in the years that followed, and I’m not here to tell you that this is the point where I dropped off, because I didn’t. But whereas Master of Puppets scratches a certain itch, and 72 Seasons certainly gave me something to drive around and listen to for a couple weeks, Load is the album that still moves me on an emotional level. Not in a nostalgic way that reminds me of what it was like to be 16, but in a this-is-what-it’s-like-to-be-a-father, a husband, a man grappling with mortality and the weight of responsibility kind of way.
Which brings me to the songs. Now, in celebration of this record, I want to try something a little different. It felt like it might be fun to rank them top to bottom.
A quick caveat: I enjoy every second of this release. That said, I’d be lying if I told you I enjoy every second equally. There’s material that works on the record, and then there’s material that just works period. And I actually think a strong contingent of my favorite Metallica material resides right here on this record.
Here’s my song-by-song ranking, worst to first.
14. Ronnie
For years, “Ronnie” was a throwaway track and an instant-skip. Still, I’ve grown to really like this song within the context of the album. This is the sort of thing that I always imagined might be what a James Hetfield solo record would deliver. As a Metallica song, it’s certainly an outlier, and if we started chopping songs away from this 79-minute beast, “Ronnie” kinda has to be the first thing to go.
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13. Cure
The placement has always struck me as odd. I feel like “Bleeding Me” would make so much more sense going right into “Poor Twisted Me,” but instead the band drops “Cure” in between the two. The song is fine. For many years I would just skip it, but recently, maybe over the last decade or so, I’ve come to find a new appreciation for it. It’s a cool mid-tempo rocker, and the solo is pretty rad. Unfortunately, on a record full of mid-tempo rockers, it’s probably the weakest one here.
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12. Thorn Within
Super cool riff, even if I’ve always had a hard time not hearing Ozzy’s “No More Tears” when it kicks in. Maybe the band figured that by adding that little turnaround, they were making it their own. Either way, there’s some really cool vocal work from James here, and the song has a ton of dynamics.
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11. 2 x 4
At the time, this felt like one of the more jarring departures on the record. For a band that had literally perfected the art of metronomic down picking, they certainly proved here they could swing. The riff is great and the song has a ton of swagger. This was probably one of the ones I skipped early on, but I’ve really grown to appreciate it. One of Kirk’s more interesting solos as well.
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10. King Nothing
Yeah, I know. This massive single showing up here is probably the most controversial part of this list. Most fans would tell you this is one of the two or three things worth listening to on this record. The band still plays it live to this day, and it’s certainly become one of this era’s most reliable calling cards. I like “King Nothing” a lot. But again, it’s a mid-tempo rocker, and the arrangement is essentially a carbon copy of “Enter Sandman.” Cool song, cool lyrics, cool video. But of the singles released from this record, it’s the one I’ve always been least impressed with.
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9. Wasting My Hate
Super cool in a punk sort of way, and it certainly gives the album some much-needed meat in the tempo category. I’ve always figured that if there were four or five songs like this, people would have reacted a lot better to the record. That said, I like the moody, downtrodden feel of Load. “Wasting My Hate” is just a really good way to kick off the final third of the record.
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8. Poor Twisted Me
I freaking love “Poor Twisted Me.” I love everything about it. The song is great and the guitar tone is just tremendous. We’re now entering territory where a lot of these songs feel like a toss-up, and this is where my favorite mid-tier cuts start to blur together in the best sort of way.
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7. Ain’t My Bitch
Super cool song, and hard to rank. Metallica has always had strong album openers, and I personally love this one, if for no other reason than it loudly announced that Load was going to be something completely different from everything that had come before it. I’ve also become a big fan over the years of Hetfield doing Hetfield, leaning into the things that almost feel like a caricature, and this song is no different. I still have no idea what the lyrics are about. But it’s a freaking great way to kick off a record.
Okay, so that leaves a handful of songs I consider to be among Metallica’s best work, period. “Mama Said,” “Until It Sleeps,” “Hero of the Day,” “Bleeding Me,” “The House That Jack Built,” “The Outlaw Torn.” Taken by themselves, these are among my favorite crop of Metallica tunes. This is the stuff I keep going back to.
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6. Until It Sleeps
A tremendous single, and what a great way to reintroduce Metallica to the world after the success of the Black Album. A lot of OG fans hated it. And a lot of new fans suddenly took interest. There’s literally nothing in their catalog that sounds like it, and I still think it’s one of James’ best lyrics to date.
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5. The House That Jack Built
Such a cool mid-tempo, driving, haunting rocker. Again, there’s vocal stuff on here that was brand new ground for James, and I can’t tell you how much I love this song. The talk box solo in the middle is incredible.
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4. The Outlaw Torn
I’m really, ahem, torn on this one. I can’t believe “The Outlaw Torn” is going to come in at number four. On any given day I could tell you this is my favorite Metallica song, but today there are three that rank above it. Honestly, it’s pretty much interchangeable with the three ahead of it. The solo is one of Kirk’s all-time best, and Jason really shines on here (and for much of the record). Fans have long speculated about this being an ode to Cliff Burton, but James has never been one to really dive into his lyrics.
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3. Mama Said
Again, there’s nothing in the catalog that sounds like this. The James Hetfield record that never happened would have been the perfect place for something like this. The song is incredible, the lyrics are incredible, the guitar work is incredible. This is an amazing James performance. I’ll take this over “Nothing Else Matters” any day of the week.
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2. Hero of the Day
Metallica in a major key for all of four minutes. The song is hardly the sort of thing the people driving around blasting Master of Puppets were looking for, but a good song is a good song, and a great song is a great song. This one’s great, and I’ve loved it from day one. As a table setter for “Bleeding Me,” it makes for an incredible one-two punch.
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1. Bleeding Me
Quite possibly my favorite Metallica song, period. From the lyric, to the vocal performance, to the arrangement, to the solo, to Lars’ drumming (so much ride cymbal), to Jason’s incredible bass work, this thing is everything Metallica had done before it wrapped into one package. To me, this is their best eight-minute-plus epic. Yes, I’d put it right on par with “Master of Puppets” or “Ride the Lightning.” If you had to sum up the band’s entire career, from thrash to alt-rock to whatever the hell St. Anger was supposed to be, this is probably the song I’d choose.
Thirty years on, I don’t reach for Load because it reminds me who I was. I reach for it because of who I am now. It’s the rare record that seems to have grown up right alongside me, and maybe got there a step ahead. Call it a masterpiece, call it one man’s opinion. I’ve had three decades to change my mind, and I never have.
Happy 30th, Load.
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