Enter Night_ A Biography of Metallica - Mick Wall [198]
This was genuinely good, entertaining stuff, elevating the band’s status critically and reinforcing its position in the business as serious players. Nevertheless, album sales overall were down, not just in France but across the world, despite Load going to Number One in both the USA, UK and nine other countries. It’s fairly normal practice, of course, for a huge-selling album to be followed by a less spectacular but still impressive sales pattern. But Load sold less than half the numbers of Black. Depending on which way you looked at it – or whether, perhaps, you were Lars or James – either the shift in gear had achieved the desired effect and kept the band at Number One, or had significantly reduced its audience.
The reviews, which seemed to congratulate Metallica on merely surviving more than making good music, were uniformly excellent. Rolling Stone claimed the album boasted ‘a wholly magnetizing groove that bridges old-school biker rock and the doomier side of post-grunge Nineties rock’. In the UK, Q gave Load four stars and said, ‘These boys set up their tents in the darkest place of all, in the naked horror of their own heads’, but added, apparently straight-faced, ‘they’ve never needed the props’. Except those supplied by Anton Corbijn and their various make-up artists and costumiers, presumably. The New York Times gave a more balanced, accurate summation when it wrote: ‘On Load, Metallica has altered its music, learning new skills. Hetfield has committed himself to melodies, carrying tunes where he used to bark, and he no longer sounds sheepish when he sings quietly.’
Just as it had been with Black, in the real world the most asked question from long-term fans was what Cliff Burton – on the tenth anniversary of his death – would have thought about it. ‘I know one thing,’ says Gary Holt. ‘They would have never got Cliff to cut his hair off.’ He laughs. ‘I’ll go to my grave believing that. And I don’t think Cliff would have been too fond of band photos smoking cigars and drinking martinis with short hair and suits on. That just wasn’t him, you know?’ John Bush, who left Armored Saint in 1993 to join Anthrax, as part of their own post-grunge reinvention with the White Noise album, sees it from the opposite perspective: ‘If as an artist you’re not taking any chances, you’re a pussy – that’s what I think. So I don’t have a problem with Load. What was worse, in my eyes, was that it seemed a little bit forced, in the sense of their image. It was trying to stay away from the whole “metal” term, and I think it was a little bit exaggerated. But there were still some great songs…I don’t think they have any reason to have any embarrassment for it, by any means.’ As David Ellefson points out, it was the bands that didn’t try and meet the new reality at least halfway that experienced the real problems. He recalls how when Megadeth released their Youthanasia album in 1994, ‘We were trying to submit videos to MTV and they just said no. We were like, what? Why not? “No, we’re not playing that now. We’re playing Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains…” And Metallica eked through. They were the only band of the so-called Big Four that squeaked through.’
Looking back in 2009, I asked James what he thinks Cliff’s reaction would have been to the wholesale changes ushered in by Load. ‘Well, I certainly would have thought there would have been some resistance, for sure. I probably would have had an ally in all of the stuff that you’re mentioning. I think the Black Album was a great album and I appreciate the fact that we did have the balls to do that and have Bob to work with us. It had to be, it really did. You know, when I go back and I listen to Justice, it couldn’t have stayed on that path.’ But with Load, ‘I would certainly think that I would have had an ally that was very