After the early-Nineties alt-rock explosion, bands that had made it big in the Eighties largely pulled their hair out trying to fit in. U2 went disco. Guns N’ Roses spent about 25 years chasing Chinese Democracy. And Metallica? Well, they just got weird — and, contrary to popular belief, that wasn’t a bad thing.
Neither of the quartet’s Load albums, released in 1996 and 1997, sound overtly “alt,” since James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett’s riffs owed a greater debt to the blues and Lynyrd Skynyrd than shoegaze or Pixies. But they achieved a simulacrum of “alt,” at least for headbangers, by playing with a looseness that still feels like a rejection of the white-knuckle thrashing that earned them their legend. Hetfield had learned…

You need to be logged in to view the rest of the content. Please .

« »