Metallica
ReLoad

THE REVIEW

Dear Readers, I present myself to all of you as Apocalyptica92, heir of Kissarmy, and today I will review an album by my beloved Metallica.

1995, 1996, 1997, 1998: Metallica, with their new producer Bob Rock, enter their studios to record new songs after the galactic success of the last two post-Burton albums (...And justice for all and Metallica, better known as the black album). The 'Tallica aim to do better than the Black album and thus record an album that will go down in history. The four have always been critics of the music business, but now...

...The 'Tallica "come out" with this post 'Load' compact disc. With 'Load', the 'Tallica made both a mistake and a good thing. A mistake, because many fans felt betrayed by the Thrash metal of the four from San Francisco: the thrash quartet had completely changed their sound from thrash to hard rock. However, "Load" had a beneficial effect on all those who didn't know Metallica even after the Black Album; in fact, 'Load' helped sell millions and millions of past albums. With this brief introduction, we can officially start the review.

'ReLoad' is one of the three mysteries of post-Black album 'Tallica, in search of new genres and trying to improve themselves, they commercialized and became just another band. For some, "Load" could be defined as "soft," with many long, repetitive, and also slow songs; 'ReLoad', despite its commercial nature, keeps a good amount of aggressiveness, which is evident from the first song: Fuel. "Gimme fuel, gimme fire, gimme that which I desire" — here's the first sign of a possible return to Metallica's violence. "Gimme fuel, gimme fire, give me what I desire." The riffs in 'ReLoad' are always on that damned scale between the seventh and fifth fret of the guitar, and this perhaps penalizes 'ReLoad' a bit: monotony. "Fuel" is nonetheless an aggressive track full of energy, and so is the following track, "The memory remains", famous for the video, it's an infusion of energy and vitality.

At this point, it's appropriate to pause the review. I love the 'Tallica, I "revere" them, I also like the Metallica post-Black album, and therefore I consider 'Reload' a good album, and those who don't think so can stop reading the review.

The third track is a heavy song in the true sense of the word, with distorted guitars contributing especially to making it heavier than it seems. Jaymz's voice is magnificent; this is to say that the track in question is "Devil's Dance", one of the most beautiful songs by post-Thrash 'Tallica. The fourth track is a return to the sounds of that much-cited "Black Album"; the song is "The unforgiven II", the second part of "The Unforgiven". The song is really well done, and Metallica manages to make me like the first four tracks of this CD tremendously, almost beyond belief. The fifth song is another one that is hard to forget, "Better than you", the title itself is a statement "Better than you", as if to say that Metallica are still better than many groups out there, and if they've converted, oh well, because they are still called Metallica, even if they have short hair and no longer play thrash. The sixth song follows: "Slither", copied here and there from old riffs discarded for other albums, is a monotonous track. The seventh track is "Carpe diem baby", another copied song and definitely filler because what is good about this song is only the chorus.

"Bad seed" is one of those tracks you wouldn't have expected on this album because the guitars are more violent than usual, aided by the guitar's one-and-a-half-tone detuning, and this contributes to making it darker than it is. The ninth track reveals a surprise; it's the second written by Jason Newstead; he previously contributed to writing the epic "Blackened", "Where the wild things are" is the ninth song, this is a track that really makes you want to skip to the next song: "Low man's lyric", literally translated as "The low man's poetry". The song is as slow as poetry could be, but in the meantime, Jaymz expresses his romantic and sweet side, his voice is no longer the "mangy dog" type like in "Fuel", but lighter and measured. "Attitude" is a classic filler track that doesn't serve much purpose, but it's pleasant to listen to, perfectly in 'Reload' style and with no faults, except that the riffs of this song resemble too much those of "Load" and "Reload" combined. The last song is the longest track on the album, a good 9.48 minutes of pure sadness; it is a monotonous track, "Fixxxer", which has nothing to do with Metallica, too flat and never changes, and this is the major fault of the entire album: Monotony, as I already stated before.

Great album indeed, but it lacks something, and maybe if it wasn't branded Metallica, it could have earned 5 stars, but it doesn't exceed more than 3.

Greetings from Apocalyptica92