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In the end a compromise was reached over the Serrano painting, in that only a detail from it was used on the finished cover while the title Semen and Blood III does not appear anywhere in the credits. Speaking from his New York home now, Serrano says: ‘Initially, when I met Kirk and Lars at the Paula Cooper Gallery [in New York], I don’t think they were looking for anything controversial. They just saw something that was strong, appealed to them, and it was abstract and yet also substantial or tangible in a real sense at the same time…I don’t think it was a novelty.’ Although he wasn’t familiar with their music, ‘I knew their name and reputation,’ he says, and was delighted by the approach. ‘I’ve always wanted for my work to appeal to those outside the art world.’ Kirk, he revealed, had also bought the original. Later, there would also be ‘a great T-shirt of Load, which I still have. I’d wear it down the street and people would give me the thumbs-up.’

Along with the reinvention came a palpable feeling of upgrading. There was a new Metallica logo, too: smoothing off the sharp edges of the original, simplifying and modernising its appearance, transforming it from obviously ‘metal’ to clearly ‘alternative’; Ross Halfin, king of the heavy metal photographers, was now supplanted by Anton Corbijn, U2 iconographer and Depeche Mode make-over artist, while the video for ‘Until it Sleeps’, the first single, says more perhaps about the ‘reinvented’ Metallica than the music even on Load. Directed by Samuel Bayer, who had previously worked with Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins, the video was shot in LA over forty-eight hours in early May and premiered on MTV less than three weeks later. Referencing Hieronymus Bosch, represented by such figures as the human-eating monster from The Garden of Earthly Delights, the fall of Adam and Eve from Haywain, and Christ in the Crucifige Eum (Crucify Him) scene from Ecce Homo, most rock fans would simply have got the obvious Marilyn Manson influence – Lars, with his shirt open, showing off his newly pierced nipples, Kirk’s face streaked with lurid make-up, all the band with nice new haircuts, whatever the song was actually about subsumed beneath the greater message: aren’t we weird and interesting, look we have make-up and neo-biblical imagery too, we aren’t just Iron Maiden or even Megadeth and Slayer, truly. The result was an even bigger hit than ‘Enter Sandman’ had been. Metallica’s first – and only – Top Ten single in the USA, and its second Top Five hit in the UK, ‘Until it Sleeps’ went to Number One in Australia, Sweden and Finland, and became a massive hit in Canada, Norway, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland and New Zealand. Interestingly, the one big record-buying market that proved resistant to Metallica’s new point-de-jour make-over was France. Despite two of their singles from the Black Album reaching the Top Ten there, ‘Until it Sleeps’ was a resounding flop, as were all the subsequent singles from Load.

The videos for the ‘Hero of the Day’ and ‘Mama Said’ singles were less garish and more impressive, directed by Anton Corbijn. The latter was wonderfully understated, depicting a cowboy-hatted James sitting alone in the back seat of a car while playing the song on an acoustic guitar, winding down some lost metaphorical highway, the other three band members only glimpsed in passing, peeking at him through the windows. At the end the view pulls back to reveal the set-up, James in a back seat prop inside a studio. He then walks over to a white horse, takes its bridle and walks off-screen, not so much into the sunset as back to the dressing room. ‘Hero’, meanwhile, centred on a drugged-up kid staring at TV, unfurling on every channel a Load-related theme, including a Western movie titled Load, starring James and Jason; a boxing match with James as cornerman and Kirk and Jason as the fighters; a drink called Load being advertised by Lars and James in matching suits; a game show called Hero of the Day, hosted by a smirking