METALLICA frontman James Hetfield spoke frankly in a new interview with Classic Rock magazine about the band's so-called "wilderness" years, in the mid-to-latter 90s, during which drug use and disagreements over the group's image and sound nearly drove them apart. Hetfield said he was particularly uncomfortable with the change in the group's image around the release of its 1996 album "Load". Hetfield explained, "The whole 'We need to reinvent ourselves' topic was up. Image isn't an evil thing to me, but if the image isn't you, it doesn't make much sense."
Hetfield said that he thought drummer Lars Ulrich and guitarist Kirk Hammett were "after a U2 kind of vibe, Bono doing his alter-ego. I couldn't get into it. I would say at least half the pictures that were to be in the booklet, I yanked out. The cover went against what I was feeling. Lars and Kirk were very into abstract art, pretending they were gay. I think they knew it bugged me. I think the cover of 'Load' was just a piss-take around all that. I just went along with all this crazy stupid shit."
Hetfield claimed that Ulrich and Hammett bonded over their drug use during that time and that the band's music suffered too, saying, "A lot of fans got turned off quite a bit by the music — but mostly, I think, by the image."