Nowadays Metallica is known as one of the greatest heavy metal/thrash metal bands. Since its formation in 1981 to date, the quartet today made up of James Hetfield, lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo He recorded and released eleven studio albums, some of which became timeless works.
However, just as any artist or band with decades of experience has high points in their discography, they also have other lows. In fact, Hetfield himself once admitted that one of his studio projects seemed “stupid” to him..
The album in question is Load (1996), produced by James with Ulrich and Bob Rock. In it, Metallica demonstrated influences from genres such as southern rock, blues rock, country rock and alternative rock, but the result was far from that of other works.
In an interview with Playboy, Hetfield reflected on Load and said:
“I don’t really like to watch it now… It was U2, or Stone Temple Pilots, or some band relying on an image. Why the hell did we need that? That was just stupid. […] Jason [Newsted] and I were not interested. Kirk and Lars were excited. Either you laugh about it or you get angry. “I’m doing both.”
Furthermore, in one of the interviews in the documentary Some Kind of Monsterthe leader of Metallica confessed that both Load as its continuation, Reloadwere excellent examples of how they managed to give decent shape to mediocre songs.
