Track Listing

1. Ain't My Bitch
2. 2 X 4
3. The House Jack Built
4. Until It Sleeps
5. King Nothing
6. Hero Of The Day
7. Bleeding Me
8. Cure
9. Poor Twisted Me
10. Wasting My Hate
11. Mama Said
12. Thorn Within
13. Ronnie
14. The Outlaw Torn

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1245 in Music
• Released on: 1996-06-04
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Explicit Lyrics

Album Description
The band's 1996 album coupled with the four track CD single'Live In London', featuring 'Bleeding Me', 'Damage Inc' andcovers of Queen's 'Stone Cold Crazy' & Killing Joke's 'TheWait'. 18 tracks total. The single is a slimline jewel case;'Load' is in a stand

Amazon.com
With Load, Metallica takes a dramatic left turn with their music, continuing in the direction suggested by Metallica, their previous album. The songs on Load have groove; they're slower, with far fewer of the lightning-fast riffs that have been Metallica's trademark since their inception. While songs like "Ain't My Bitch" and "Wasting My Hate" are up-tempo and full of the vitriol one would expect from the quintessential heavy metal band, "2 X 4" is hard rock with a blues beat, "Hero of the Day" sounds positively mainstream, and "Mama Said" is an actual, honest-to-god ballad. While some diehard fans may find this mix unappealing, there's plenty to like about this album, including its laid-back, rhythmic orientation, and James Hetfield's characteristic growl tempered by his growing maturity as a vocalist. -- Genevieve Williams

Customer Reviews

This is a great ROCK album....
.....not a METAL album, but a ROCK album.

Problem with a lot of hardcore metalheads is that they can't venture out of their narrow views, and I say that as someone who has been a Metal fan for many years, but not ONLY a metal fan.

The album is a bit too long, some more quality control could have been exercised and it would have been a 5-star 60-minute album.

No, it's no Master of Puppets, but it's not meant to be !

Pretty good.
There isn't a single veteran Metallica fan in the world who thinks the band peaked after the Black Album. If you dig music, and if you dig Metallica, you know they shot their load (no pun intended) in the 80s. That's just the way it is. It happens to most bands worth their salt in the first place - start good, get great, lose the fire, coast for the remainder of your career.

That said, I never thought Load was a bad album. At the time of it's release, it was more controversial than the Black Album. And that's saying something! They cut their hair (oh no!) and slowed it down. What you get here isn't metal. This album is a mish-mash of hard rock, blues, ballads and even some country flavor. Did they sell out? It all depends on your perspective. I think Metallica knew that no matter what they did, this then-new album would sell truckloads which is why they decided to step out of their element and experiment a little. I really don't care what the monetary intentions of this album were. All I care about is the music. Novel idea when listening to an album, no? Durr.

Anyway, they didn't strike gold here, but the experimentation pays off in spots. The House That Jack Built, Until It Sleeps, Hero Of The Day, Bleeding Me, Mama Said and The Outlaw Torn are great songs. The rest range from good to listenable. Unlike ReLoad, there really aren't any bad songs on here. Just average ones. This album is filled to it's maximum capacity (80 minutes), so it's quite rare for me to want to listen to it all the way through. I mostly just listen to my favorites and skip the rest.

Hey, at least it's better than St. Anger.

Now playing: Bleeding Me. One of the good ones.

Recommended.

Load
This album is incredible. Metallica's previous five albums are 'heavier' in a metal sense, but the sound in this album is anything but empty. Metallica avoided becoming a cliche with this CD, they kept their solos, they kept their full, signiature sound, but they expanded their range, musically, verbally and vocally.

A listener seeking the same music found in "...And Justice for All" or "Kill 'em All" will have to turn to those respective albums to get it; the songs here are different, and for that, "Load" received a little criticism. That doesn't make much sense when this album is wildly professional and displays the same careful craftsmanship of previous Metallica. The style of music is different, but the quality meets any and all standards set by Load's predecessors.

Load is maximum in length for a conventional studio CD, but at no point does it feel exausted, or that filler was used. The use of the name "Countrytallica" by one fan to describe the single track "Mama Said" is very appropriate, but I use it in a positive kind of way; if country had been done this nicely by its indigenous artists, it might have saved the genre!

Coming after this album, there's ReLoad, which isn't another album, but a Disc of B-sides from Load with only four or five great songs, and then the album St. Anger, which needs to be swept under the rug and forgotten. Claims that Metallica lost their edge wait to be proven in September, but the debate should begin AFTER this album, not before it.

Loaded,

-BM