Review Summary: The worst thing they have done solo
3 of 4 thought this review was well writtenFollowing the often underrated Load, notorious metal-turned-hard rock band Metallica decided that, instead of releasing a brand new album, they would push out the rejects from the sessions for that album. Now, Load was not a perfect album by any stretch of the imagination, and that had some rather horrible tracks, so to consider the rejects simply is not a good trail of thought for any listener.
What ReLoad's songs are are essentially the slightly heavier versions of their Load brethren, but without half of the musical integrity of the better tracks from that album, and instead become complete snooze fests, without a shred of decency. This album has precisely two decent songs, and nothing more. Instead, we have many pointlessly long songs, one absolutely redundant continuation of one of the band's finest songs, and many songs containing bland, one dimensional guitar work, appauling drumming, and poor vocals from James Hetfield.
The Memory Remains is hands down the best song on this record. This is the only song that can maintain my interest for much of its duration, although even this has its weak moments. The wierd vocal noises towards the end damn nearly killed this song, and are a fair indication to the quality of the rest of the album. Fixxxer is the only other track here worth a shot, as it at least has a small amount of musical intergrity to it.
Unfortunately, the rest of the album is as flat and boring as can be heard anywhere. Fuel is one of the most commercially oriented songs the band has ever released, and fails to go anywhere, instead being completely dull. Slither has the most ridiculous main riff ever written, and Devil's Dance and Bad Seed are just flat out awful.
However, if there is one song that takes the cake for the worst song, not only on this album, but that Metallica has ever put out, it would be The Unforgiven II. A sequal to my personal favourite song the band has ever put out, this really is a let down, taking a very emotional song and replacing it with a rubbish commercialised song that should never have seen the light of day. How this could have been passed in studio, i have not got a clue, especially as the lineup was the exact same as on the original.
The only flashes of brilliance on any of the other songs are the solo on Slither and possibly the vocal work on Better Than You. Both of these nearly save their respected songs, but still manage to fall flat on their face, and therefore come off as feeling pointless, and serve to only point out once more the flaws that their songs contain.
This is a clear attempt at making as much money as possible, and, for that reason alone should be ignored. However, the music itself is as bland as can be found anywhere, and the musicianship is completely lazy. Cliff Burton would never have stood to allow this standard of music to be released. Load had some tracks that bordered on listenable, but was made up for by the better tracks, such as Outlaw Torn. On ReLoad, what we have is possibly the worst collection of songs ever released by any band. It is far worse than St. Anger, and almost as bad as Lulu. 2/5
