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9: Load
10: 72 Seasons
11: St. Anger
Total score: 85
Highest score: 9 (
@Diesel 11)
Lowest score: 1 (
@KiDDo)
One of the things I was very curious about going into this game was where Load/ReLoad would place. How close would their scores be and if they would get any unusually high rankings. A lot of this will be revealed when we get to ReLoad, but one thing I will say is that both of these albums were very polarizing. For one thing, it actually surprises me that we're still seeing last place rankings for albums from the band that released St. Anger. With that being said, unlike 72 Seasons (and obviously St Anger), these albums actually have some pretty strong supporters on the board. While Diesel was the only member to put it in their top 3, there were quite a few lists that had it in the top five. Needless to say, there is a contingency of Metallica fans who rate the album just outside the classic period, with a few even ranking it above some of the classic albums. On the other hand, the most common rating for the album was second to last, which speaks to Load's relatively weak showing overall. At the end of the day though, for post-Black Album Metallica it's realistically only a battle for the middle tier of the discography.
A lot of my comments on Load will apply to ReLoad as well, but I will say specifically to Load it doesn't surprise me that this album scored worse than its counterpart. Obviously they are tonally similar albums, but I think Load really lacks some of the band's tighter and more anthemic headbanging tracks. Like 72 Seasons, Load spends a little too much time in the mid tempo sludge rock zone. Songs like Poor Twisted Me are just slogs to me and don't really go anywhere. The slide guitar bluesy sound just doesn't really work for them imo. Songs like Wasting My Hate, Ain't my Bitch, and King Nothing are clear standouts on this album for me, and generally this album does better when it is more uptempo and riff driven. They're trying a lot of stuff here, which I can respect, but I do wonder about the merits of releasing two 90 minute albums that are very musically similar and are, at best,
very hit or miss. Obviously the stereotypical thing to do with double albums is experiment with condensing them down to a single album, but imo the secret to Load/ReLoad is to condense them down into a single
40 minute album. In this alternate universe, I think this material would have been given a bit more credit for how bold and creative it can be without all the tired fluff around it. And then the 2+ hours of outtakes would become storied bonus material and b-sides that kinda became ubiquitous with the 90s alternative rock scene that Metallica apes on this album.
I don't begrudge Metallica for making these albums. I have always been kind of agnostic on Metallica in the sense that I don't buy into the criticism that they sold out, but I also don't think they made creative decisions that benefitted them as artists or even commercially. Mama Said is a pretty good example of this. You want to write a country song? OK, kind of a weird choice but I don't hate it. Especially on a near 90 minute album, like I said before it's refreshing to hear them try new things and those are moments where the album's length feels a little bit more justified, but I'm not sure if Mama Said really succeeds in what it sets out to do. I have a hard time calling it a sellout when the song wasn't a big single for them (it didn't even chart AFAIK). I almost feel like it was a missed opportunity to have some real Nashville songwriters come in to workshop the song with Het and get the band working on some tighter arrangements instead of Kirk's bluesy noodling and the stock drumming. The song's five and a half minute length also just makes it a commercial non-starter. So it kinda calls into question what they were actually going for there. And that kinda sums up the whole album for me. Like, sure try taking Metallica to strange new places, but maybe put some more effort into making it sound good?
At the end of the day this album's downfall is the same thing that is always Metallica's downfall. Songs that are kinda just slapped together with needlessly dragged out sections and no real care for arrangement. An album where anything goes, which at times is both exhausting and also disappointing that it ends up sounding so bland.