Be honest...Did you buy 'Load'?

I hated The black album,load and re-load when they came out.I'm 45 now and I actually like those albums..I think as I got older my tastes changed a bit and look at these albums differently now.Black lp I look at as Metallica's version of a heavy metal lp instead of thrash..and the load l.p.'s as their version of Hard Rock albums.
 
No.

The black album came out when I was 10, it was the second album I ever bought (the first was Iron Maiden's Fear of the Dark) so I love the sound of that album because it was the first time I realised that I liked a specific type of music, namely metal.

I then back tracked pretty quickly through their earlier albums, I couldn't get enough.

I didn't know what 'Thrash' was back then but I knew I loved the energy in songs like Creeping Death and Seek and Destroy. I was totally hooked.

I became obsessed with Metallica, I must have played my black album cassette almost until it snapped.

When Load came out, my first exposure to it was the video for Until it Sleeps on RAGE (a video show here in Australia) I was underwhelmed to say the least. The edge to their sound was gone. When I heard the rest of the album on a friends brother's stereo I was gutted, its been said 1000 times, but Metallica became a hard rock band.

Now I'm not bagging anyone who's into the album, it just wasn't metal to me.

This is one of my first posts on this forum, so I hope I didn't step over a line...
 
To all the guys that like Metallica (album,) Load and Reload..... there is no shame in that. It beats lots of stuff out there that is labeled as "metal." For older guys like me, though. Metallica and forward, was simply much "different" from AJFA and back. In fact, some older metal-heads don't really like justice.
From Metallica forward, the band sorta went into hard rock/metal hybrid thing. Before that, they were pretty much the "kings" of "real metal." They went after money. I don't hate them for it. It was a business decision as opposed to an artistic one. I seldom listen to the radio (less occasionally a classic rock station that plays stuff from 60's-80's) but on the rare occasion I hear Enter Sandman or Unforgiven, I jam it. It isn't awful, but it isn't "Creeping Death" either. It is simply a different band.
 
I only discovered Metallica when Reload was about to come out. Load was one of the last ones I collected, but there was no great reason behind that. I reckon it's far better than The Black Album, so not too bad in other words. It wouldn't be half as good without The Outlaw Torn though. The epics are something that The Black Album was really missing.
 
Got it day 1. Disappointed? Yes, a little. Bad music? No. Just the not the Metallica I started out loving. Never will forget the first time I heard the intro to Battery back in 1986. That album ruled my life all through High School.
 
The black album came out when I was 10, it was the second album I ever bought (the first was Iron Maiden's Fear of the Dark) so I love the sound of that album because it was the first time I realised that I liked a specific type of music, namely metal.

I then back tracked pretty quickly through their earlier albums, I couldn't get enough.

I didn't know what 'Thrash' was back then but I knew I loved the energy in songs like Creeping Death and Seek and Destroy. I was totally hooked.

I became obsessed with Metallica, I must have played my black album cassette almost until it snapped.

When Load came out, my first exposure to it was the video for Until it Sleeps on RAGE (a video show here in Australia) I was underwhelmed to say the least. The edge to their sound was gone. When I heard the rest of the album on a friends brother's stereo I was gutted, its been said 1000 times, but Metallica became a hard rock band.

Your story is very close to mine. I was 10 or 11 when the Black album came out and I remember petitioning my mother to pick it up when she was out at the shops. I, too, was exposed to Metallica generally on Rage. Then over the next two or three years I and my friends went backwards in time and discovered 'Puppets' as well as Megadeth and all was good with the world.

I still really clearly remember 'Load' coming out. We all tried to like it, but only one of my friends went in for it big time. The rest of us kind of realised it was pretty different - the image too I should add, with their Hawaiian shirts, short hair and cigars. That was the Load era, right? Anyway, by 1996 Metallica was a relic of the distant past for my friends and I more or less, as we had since discovered Cradle of Filth (you have to remember in 1996 Cradle's 'Dusk' album had just come out and change me forever - the ignominy of the band was yet to come...), My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost etc not to mention Fear Factory and Machine Head. Who the hell had time for 'Load'??