Originally Posted by The Batlord

On the one hand, I don't particularly like Load, but in some ways it's underrated. Musically it's some pretty good, even quasi-great at times, power pop. There's not much of substance other than just catchy songs, but there's nothing wrong with that. Metallica's motivations for that album don't really concern me, so whether it's a sellout album don't matter to me. But, those vocals are terrible. Hetfield is trying far too hard to have 'tude and just comes off as massively fake, which ruins a lot of the charm that the album would otherwise have. He was a brilliant thrash vocalist, but as a hard rock singer he just sucks.