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SCMP Reporter

It is a cool and balmy August day in the picturesque seaside town of Sausalito, about 30 minutes from San Francisco, where heavy metal band Metallica are rushing to put the final touches to Reload at the Plant Studios.

 Reload, which will finally hit the streets next Monday, is the follow-up to last year's Load album which has left some hardcore fans shell-shocked and screaming 'sell-out!' for its departure from the usual snarling aggressive Metallica sound.

 Now in their 30s, Metallica - comprising James Hetfield, Jason Newsted, Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hamnett - are looking mellow and far from the ugly, snarling headbangers who achieved cult status with The Snake ('the black album') which sold 17 million copies when it was released in 1991.

 There is no hint of eyeliner and the only thing that gives them away is perhaps the black nail polish they still sport.

 'Whether people like Load or not is irrelevant to me,' says a barefoot, shorts-and-singlet-clad Ulrich. 'The only thing I will argue is people are wrong when they say we've sold out.

 'That's a complete misunderstanding of what the phrase means to me because selling out is doing something you don't want to do and that's when you fake it.

 'If we had done the black album again or another 'metal' album, that would be selling out because that's not where our heart and soul was.'  The band started working on Load and Reload two years ago, straight off their back-breaking 22-month 'black album' tour. They were initially planned as a double-album set for which Metallica had written and recorded almost 30 songs.

 However, an offer to go on the Lollapalooza tour came up and the band - who were itching to get out of the studios anyway - decided to split Load into two parts.

 'The simple way of saying things is that it is still a double-album, but just spread out over a year and a half. Think of it as Load part one and part two,' adds Ulrich, the band's drummer.

 'When you have both the albums you will find that they make good companions. The songs on the two albums are interchangeable. It's a period of our lives that was started in 1994 and completed now.'  One reason for the long wait has also been that the band felt the need to put some distance between any new album and 'black', and shed the latter as much as they could.

 'We wanted to get as much of the black album out of our system as possible. It's the equivalent of flushing the toilet, only it took longer to shed than I thought,' says Ulrich.

 The good thing about Load and Reload - and whatever protests they might have evoked - is that, Ulrich feels, Metallica has successfully broken through the limits of metal and will never again have to follow the black album.

 'There's always a problem with following an album of that magnitude; there were expectations that could never be met no matter what we did. Even if you do the same record, you're damned for doing the same thing. If you do something completely different, you're damned for doing something different.

 'The only conscious decision was to follow our own instincts . . . four years later we sat down and opened our hearts and souls and that's what came out,' he says.

 The break with the black album and their past has not been total though. Reload will include Unforgiven 2, which Ulrich describes as a 'continuation' of the story from Unforgiven in the black album - 'a different look at the same old story'.

 'There was a story that was interesting to continue,' shrugs Ulrich, in explaining Unforgiven 2. 'The only conscious thing was that it was one of the songs ready the earliest but we wanted to keep it off Load because we wanted to have one album between.'  The five years between have seen a lot of changes within the band members anyway. 'We were more mature personally as well as musically,' says guitarist Hamnett.

 'We started listening to a lot of very different types of music and we were bringing in these influences after not writing and recording songs for five years. It kind of changed the mix-up and our way of thinking. That's why these albums sound so different. We're just different people now; can't you tell by our hairstyles?'  A lot of the flak that Metallica have been getting have ranged from their new short haircuts to their music.

 As far as Ulrich and Hamnett are concerned, people can say what they like about the way they look but the Metallica music is sacrosanct.

 'The most important thing at the end of the day is the music. The way you look, the videos . . . that's completely irrelevant.

 'The music - like it or don't like it, but don't let other things influence you,' says Ulrich.

 Ulrich is confident that Metallica fans are going to come round to their music sooner or later. Already there have been encouraging signs that they are.

 'People are coming to me six or nine months later and saying that the record is coming to them. With Reload, maybe people are a little more open and maybe some will come to them more quickly,' he says.

 The key to that, Hamnett feels, is for their audience to be able to break away from the confines of what 'metal' music is supposed to be about.

 'I hope the fans can actually open up their minds and ears and not just listen to it as a song that's 'not metal' or something. I hope they can digest it the way we've digested it as a band. These songs mean a certain thing to us,' Hamnett says.

 As far as Ulrich is concerned, Metallica's horizons keep broadening from day to day, and the band is in a stronger position than they have ever been, musically and lyrically.

 'As time goes by, we feel more and more comfortable and less and less boxed in by what people expect of us,' Ulrich says.

 'Because people have questions or problems about what we do, it brings us much closer together. As an inward-looking unit, we're the strongest we've ever been.

 'It dares us even more to do different things and follow the path, wherever that path takes us. I feel really free; freer than I've ever felt creatively, and it's really cool.' 



Load off their minds Load off their minds