Historical perspective is a funny thing.

Load is the ultimate Metallica fan betrayal: it is the “haircut album”, on which the band Samsoned themselves and appeared on the back cover in leisure suits and animal-pattern shirts. Load and Reload also mark the furthest point of Metallica’s decade-long lean away from stern metal tropes and towards a friendlier rock ‘n’ roll sound — a lean that hasn’t worked out well for them artistically, though they’ve obviously done fine commercially.

Still, compared to Reload, Load actually sounds all right. Its first half is mostly inoffensive, actually — “The House Jack Built,” “King Nothing,” “Until It Sleeps”, and the unfortunately-named “Ain’t My Bitch” are decent, mildly aggressive rockers, and “Bleeding Me” is handily their most successful epic-length tune of the ’90s.

But ultimately, Load deserves most of the flak it has caught. Its experiments in bluesy down-homeyness translate as either Radio Disney Pantera (“2 X 4″) or flaccid, insincere country rock (“Hero Of The Day”; “Mama Said”), and the band overdoses on both. Actually, they overdose on pretty much everything. At 78 minutes and 59 seconds, Load is literally as long as it’s possible for a single-CD album to be. Every post-Black Album Metallica album is well over 70 minutes long, but outside of Lulu, this one takes the cake for turgid self-indulgence.