Ride the Lightning | Master of Puppets |...And Justice for All | Metallica | Load and ReLoad | St. Anger | Metallica: Through the Never
- Creator Backlash: While neither of them hate the Load albums, per say, both James and Lars have expressed somewhat negative feelings about this period in hindsight:
- James has gone on record saying that the Load records felt a bit forced to him, and that he didn't really agree with the vision Lars and Kirk had for them. He has also publicly stated that he disagreed with the band's haircuts and fashion choices at the time, admitting that he was basically going along with them out of respect for Lars and Kirk. By the same token, he did not like the cover arts for the albums.
Hetfield: 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 crap that they felt they needed to do.- Somewhat ironically, Lars also has some misgivings about this period in hindsight, saying that the band was very musically confused when making these records.
- Rarely Performed Song: Unsurprisingly given the quantity of songs and their lukewarm/mixed reception among fans, only one or two songs from the two albums tend to show up on set lists per show, with most songs only appearing sporadically ("Fuel" and "The Memory Remains" being notable exceptions) and a significant number being seemingly "shelved" or having yet to be played live at allnote .
- Referenced by...: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure would double down on referencing Load, and years apart from each other, at that.
- In Golden Wind, the Stand of the leader of La Squadra di Esecuzione, Risotto Nero, is named Metallica, but the kiai of Metallica is "Load".
- In JoJolion, the Stand of the Higashikata family patriarch, Norisuke Higashikata IV, is named King Nothing, after the song of the same name on Load.
- What Could Have Been:
- Load and ReLoad were originally intended to be a double album, but since Metallica wasn't able to finish all the songs in time, they were split into two separate releases. To this day, fans regularly debate which of the two albums was better.
- "Devil's Dance" was originally going to be on Load, but was moved over to ReLoad at the last minute, because it didn't fit with the rest of the songs on Load.
- "No Leaf Clover" and "Minus Human" were written during the Load sessions, but were shelved until their live performances that would be later featured on S&M.
