Load (1996)
Load is a 1996 alternative rock album by Metallica.
By 1996 Metallica had grown tired of thrash. Load stretches the band into hard rock, blues, and country textures, trading speed for groove across almost eighty minutes. Bob Rock returned to produce, and the sessions ran loose enough to yield nearly thirty songs, half held back for the following year's Reload. Singles like Until It Sleeps, King Nothing, and the aching Mama Said show a band chasing feel over fury. The record split longtime fans, some hearing betrayal, others a group willing to risk its own identity. Andres Serrano's provocative cover set the tone before a note played.
Quick answers
What is Load about?
By 1996 Metallica had grown tired of thrash. Load stretches the band into hard rock, blues, and country textures, trading speed for groove across almost eighty minutes. Bob Rock returned to produce, and the sessions ran loose enough to yield nearly thirty songs, half held back for the following year's Reload. Singles like Until It Sleeps, King Nothing, and the aching Mama Said show a band chasing feel over fury. The record split longtime fans, some hearing betrayal, others a group willing to risk its own identity. Andres Serrano's provocative cover set the tone before a note played.
When was Load released?
Load was released in 1996.
Who made Load?
Load is by Metallica.
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A few thoughts on Load
Load is Metallica at a crossroads, and the documentary Some Kind of Monster catches the same band years later with cameras rolling as they nearly break apart. Fans chasing that mid-tempo, blues-soaked heaviness can put these songs in their own hands with Guitar Hero: Metallica, which turns the era's singles into a rite of passage for a new generation.
Metallica's own reinvention, one album at a time
Load is the sound of Metallica deliberately walking away from thrash, trading speed for groove and almost eighty minutes of blues-inflected hard rock. The self-titled Black Album started that slower, heavier turn, Reload gathered the songs Load left on the table, St. Anger swung the band into a harsher, more chaotic phase, and Death Magnetic finally brought the old thrash instincts back.
The riff-driven hard rock canon Load's guitars grew up on
Load never fully drops the riff for the groove, and its guitars still trace back to hard rock's biggest ones. Back in Black and Led Zeppelin IV show where that blues-rock swagger came from, Paranoid and The Number of the Beast mark the heavier, faster ground Load stepped back from, and Guitar Hero: Metallica lets you play the whole lineage note for note.