25 Years of ReLoaded by Met

When I decided I wanted to recognize the 25th anniversary of ReLoad, I went to Metal-Archives.com and found this page: ReLoad - Metallica. I initially felt like I bit off more than I could chew because there were SO MANY strings of words that were strung together into a writer's paradise. I can't pretend that the following quote is "the best" or "the one that matters" but it is the one that I gravitated to, mainly because MANY of my friends have said the first 7 words in the quote to me.

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My favourite Metallica album - 87%
RageW, August 17th, 2012

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"I only like Metallica's first four albums!" It's a phrase many people have heard when discussing this band. It's a statement usually taken to mean the metalhead in question is truly, absolutely only into metal and will take none of that sell-out crap. That they only enjoy, of course, their early thrash metal albums; the only good Metallica albums. Is it a matter of them being pure and unscathed by the forthcoming commercial breakthrough that culminated in the sell-out albums that followed? Is it because their songwriting and riffwork prowess was inherently superior? Or is it simply because they're metal? Now, I'm not here to make a case for or against those first four; everybody has heard them, everybody knows what they sound like, and consequently everybody has differing opinions about them. Maybe you only like the first two, maybe you only like the debut, maybe you don't like them at all. It's not a big deal, because discussions regarding Metallica aren't very interesting these days. I, for one, like a few songs here and there, but listening to those albums as a whole doesn't do much for me.

In any case, there's this widely shared view by the metal community claiming that, after ...And Justice for All, the band sold out and began sucking. Maybe some fans still like their self titled, or some tracks out of it, since even if it's poppy and commercial, it's still metal. However, once you get past that point, very few actually find some worth in Load. It isn't a metal album; not at all. It is, at best, a hard rock album with some experimentation with other genres thrown in. Even then, a small group of people still like it, or at least one or two of its tracks. I've even met a person who once claimed it was their favourite Metallica album! Strange, huh? But then it may still be at the very least understandable, since they probably like the new adventurous take on songwriting the band took on the album, or something like that.

But then you get to ReLoad, and shit hits the fan.

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