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Load
Studio album by Metallica
Released	June 4, 1996
Recorded	May 1995 – February 1996 at The Plant Studios, in Sausalito, California
Genre	Hard rock, heavy metal
Length	78:59
Label	Elektra, Vertigo
Producer	Bob Rock, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich
Metallica chronology
Metallica (1991) Load (1996) ReLoad (1997)
Singles from Load
"Until It Sleeps" Released: May 21, 1996 "Ain't My Bitch" Released: July, 1996 "Hero of the Day" Released: September, 1996 "Mama Said" Released: 1996 "King Nothing" Released: 1996 "Bleeding Me" Released: 1997

Load is the sixth studio album by American heavy metal band Metallica, released June 4, 1996. It spent four consecutive weeks at #1 on Billboard 200. The album has sold over 5 million copies in America, and is certified 5x Platinum by the RIAA.^[1] According to drummer Lars Ulrich: "This album and what we're doing with it - that, to me, is what Metallica are all about: exploring different things. The minute you stop exploring, then just sit down and fucking die."^[2]

History

Musical style

Released approximately five years after the international smash success, Metallica, Load saw the band embrace a collective sound and identity closer to traditional heavy metal and different from their thrash metal roots. As on previous releases, the fourteen songs that would eventually make up the album began as rough demos created by principal songwriters James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich in Ulrich's basement recording studio, "The Dungeon." The band took over 30 demos into The Plant Studios in the spring of 1995 where they would work for approximately the next year. Once again, Metallica teamed up with famed producer Bob Rock, who had been at the helm during the recording process for Metallica.

The songwriting dispenses almost entirely with the thrash metal style that characterized the band's sound in the 1980s. In place of staccato riffs, Hetfield and lead guitarist Kirk Hammett experimented with more blues-based tones and styles. Additionally, Ulrich adopted a minimalist approach to his drum recording, abandoning the speed and complex double bass patterns of previous albums. Most of this blues-based metal comes from of Ulrich's Deep Purple influences; one can hear Ian Paice's style in the regular cymbal attacks and drum hits, as well as Ritchie Blackmore's blues licks from the Mark III era of Deep Purple.

Hetfield displayed a lyrical evolution as well, writing what many feel to be his most personal and introspective lyrics. "Until it Sleeps," the album's lead single, addressed his mother's losing battle with cancer, and "Mama Said" also explores his relationship with her. All of this marked a departure from the political and social overtones of albums like ...And Justice for All and Master of Puppets. These changes of lyrics can likewise be compared to the creative differences between the lyrical content that Blackmore demanded of David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes, which Ronnie James Dio followed in Rainbow, but which the former two were unaccustomed to, being more inclined to expressions of personality and emotion. At a 1992 San Diego concert Hammett and Ulrich performed a cover improvisation of "Mistreated" from 1974's Burn which blended imperceptibly with their future material on Load. This era of Purple provided a strong influence on Metallica's because it was, in Ulrich's words, a "baptism of fire" which led his to abandoning of tennis for drumming after his very first rock concert.

At 78:59 minutes, Load is Metallica's longest studio album. Initial pressings of the album were affixed with stickers that boasted its long playtime, simply reading "78:59." Consequently, "The Outlaw Torn" had to be shortened by about one minute to fit on the album. The full version was released on a single for "The Memory Remains" as "The Outlaw Torn (Unencumbered by Manufacturing Restrictions Version)" with a running time of 10:48. An explanation was given on the single's back cover:

When we were doing the final sequencing of the 'LOAD' album, the record company told us that we couldn't go a second past 78:59, or your CD's wouldn't play without potentially skipping. With our 14 songs, we were running about 30 seconds over, and something had to give, so the cool-ass jam at the end of 'Outlaw' got chopped.

This was the only Metallica studio album on which the band's bassist (Jason Newsted for this album) did not have a writing credit. It was also their first album for all tracks to be down tuned to E♭ tuning. Metallica had, however, a few songs in tunings lower than E, "The God That Failed" on The Black Album which was in E♭ and D tuning for "The Thing That Should Not Be" from Master of Puppets and "Sad but True" (also from The Black Album). The Australian CD release of Load includes a bonus interview CD which is unavailable elsewhere.^[3]

Visual style

The cover of the album is original artwork entitled "Semen and Blood III." It is one of three photographic studies by Andres Serrano created in 1990 by mingling the artist's own semen and bovine blood between two sheets of Plexiglas.^[4] The liner notes simply state "Cover art by Andres Serrano" rather than listing the actual title of the work. In a 2009 interview with Classic Rock magazine, James Hetfield expressed his dislike of the album cover and its inspiration:

"Lars and Kirk were very into abstract art, pretending they were gay. I think they knew it bugged me. It was a statement around all that. I love art, but not for the sake of shocking others. I think the cover of Load was just a piss-take around all that. I just went along with the make-up and all of this crazy, stupid shit that they felt they needed to do."^[5]

Load also marked the first appearance of a new Metallica logo, rounding off the stabbing edges of the first and last letters of the band's earlier 1980s logo. The M from the original logo was used to make a shuriken-like symbol known as the "ninja star" which was used as an alternate logo on this and future albums as well as other related artwork.

The album featured an expansive booklet which contained extensive photography by Anton Corbijn, best known for his work with U2 and Depeche Mode. These photos depicted the band in various dress including white A-shirts with suspenders, Cuban suits, and gothic. In the aforementioned 2009 interview, James Hetfield discussed his discomfort with the band's deliberate reinvention through fashion as seen in the Load booklet.

"Lars and Kirk drove on those records. The whole 'We need to reinvent ourselves' topic was up. Image is not an evil thing for me, but if the image is not you, then it doesn't make much sense. I think they were really after a U2 kind of vibe, Bono doing his alter ego. I couldn't get into it. The whole, 'Okay, now in this photoshoot we're going to be '70s glam rockers.' Like, what? I would say half — at least half — the pictures that were to be in the booklet, I yanked out. The whole cover thing, it went against what I was feeling."^[6]

The booklet only contained select lyrics from each song in contrast to Metallica's previous studio albums which included complete song lyrics. Additionally, the interior artwork revolved around images of inkblots, a theme which would carry over to ReLoad and the covers for the singles released from the two albums.

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Q	(7/96, p.119)
Allmusic	[7]
Rolling Stone	[8]

• Rolling Stone (7/11-25/1996, p. 85) - 4 Stars - Excellent - "...with Load, the foursome dams the bombast and chugs half-speed ahead, settling into a wholly magnetizing groove that bridges old-school biker rock and the doomier side of post-grunge '90s rock."

• Entertainment Weekly (6/7/96, pp. 56-57) - "...captures the band's earnest pursuit of its Sisyphean mission: to create hard rock that reaches grown-ups and basement-dwelling teens." - Rating: B

• Q magazine (7/96, p. 119) - 4 Stars - Excellent - "These boys set up their tents in the darkest place of all, in the naked horror of their own heads....Metallica make existential metal and they've never needed the props....Metallica are still awesome....What is new is streamlined attack, the focus and, yes, the tunes."

• Melody Maker (6/8/96, p. 49) - "A Metallica album is traditionally an exhausting event. It should rock you to exhaustion, leave you brutalised and drained. This one is no exception. It is, however, the first Metallica album to make me wonder at any point, 'What the fuck was that?' It's as if the jackboot grinding the human face were to take occasional breaks for a pedicure."

• Musician (8/96, p. 85) - "The smoother, broader sound that distinguished...1991's Metallica is even more apparent here, as is the tendency to write accessible tunes....the exploration of new sounds does nothing but good for the guitar duo of [James] Hetfield and Kirk Hammett."

• New York Times (6/2/96, Sec.2, p. 28) - "On Load, Metallica has altered its music, learning new skills. Hetfield has committed himself to melodies, carrying tunes where he used to bark, and he no longer sounds sheepish when he sings quietly."

• NME (6/1/96, p. 44) - 7 (out of 10) - "...like triumphant warriors returning into a world changed beyond all recognition...Metallica emphatically prove they are still unsurpassed in their self-created genre of stadium nihilism."

Track listing

Personnel

• James Hetfield – lead vocals, rhythm guitar
• Kirk Hammett – lead guitar
• Jason Newsted – bass, backing vocals
• Lars Ulrich – drums, percussion

Production

• Bob Rock, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich – producers
• Brian Dobbs, Randy Staub – engineers
• Brian Dobbs, Jason Goldstein, Kent Matcke – assistant engineers
• Mike Rew, Randy Staub – mixing
• Matt Curry – mixing assistant
• George Marino – mastering
• Paul DeCarli – digital editing
• Mike Gillies, Chris Vrenna – digital editing assistants
• Chris Vrenna – programming
• Andie Airfix – design
• Andres Serrano – cover design
• Anton Corbijn – photography

Chart performance

Album

Singles

Certification

References