Experiment: Is it Possible to Edit Metallica’s Mediocre Load and Reload Into One Decent Album?

I was recently stoned and bored and decided to set a ridiculous and wholly unnecessary challenge for myself, as I do from time to time: to edit Metallica’s two completely mediocre and forgettable barely-metal albums, Load and Reload, into one listenable full-length.

I quickly discovered that this was just not possible. There simply isn’t enough good material on these two albums to be turned into one album.

I was, however, able to make an EP… sort of. See, I wouldn’t call this “good” so much as I would call it “an improvement.” It’s like those fan edits you see of The Phantom Menace: okay, so removing Jar Jar certainly helps, but at the end of the day, the base materials we have to work with are shit, and there’s really nothing that can be done about that. I can’t make James Hetfield change his dumb vocals or not write lyrics about gasoline and I can’t make the group write less-generic bar band riffs.

Still, I think if you were at some asshole’s party and he put this on you would feel, at the very least, some relief when “Unforgiven II” never played, wouldn’t you? You might even find yourself tapping your foot!

So here it is: what I’m calling The Load EP. Yes, I realize how arrogant it was of me to do this. Fuck you, it’s my website.

P.S. I don’t think “The Memory Remains” is actually a very good song. But I have kind of a soft spot for it because it features Marianne Faithful, is about Axl Rose. So I left it on. Sorry.