Summer cuts

Still, you have to wonder where Metallica fit in these days. And no doubt they're asking themselves that same question. Load -- produced by Bob Rock (Subhumans, Mötley Crüe), the same guy who did 1991's Metallica -- is a step away from their thunderous thrash heritage. But after five years it would have to be, wouldn't it? And so much has happened since we last heard from them: Nirvana, Pearl Jam/Stone Temple Pilots, Green Day/Rancid/Offspring, Bikini Kill; in fact, almost all that we consider contemporary history-making music. So their tale bears retelling once more, just to put things in perspective. In the summer of 1991, Metallica were poised to ascend to the throne of rock's Mount Olympus. With a half-dozen thrash-metal classics under their belt -- each of which defined and dictated the scope and direction of heavy metal in the '80s -- they'd sniffed the winds of change, gathered in the essence of their music, and delivered a stripped-down, radio-ready juggernaut (and did the eponymous thing to acknowledge the biggest 90-degree turn of their career).

Although they already had a following, it took stadiums to (barely) contain "Enter Sandman" and the other half-dozen singles from Metallica that made them megastars. (With more than 9 million copies sold in the US alone, after 248 weeks Metallica still hasn't left the Billboard charts, where it is second in longevity only to the soundtrack to Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera and Enigma's MCMXC A.D.) But mere months later, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" broke, bringing with it an even more concise musical vision and a new lyrical emphasis on the uncertainty of the dawning decade. Commercial success suddenly seemed like the booby prize. The new musical world no longer needed the monolithic, linear certainty -- the solid, unblinking affirmations -- of Metallica's big-wreck rock. And it was almost instantly apparent that as a force for musical change -- their legitimate role in the '80s, as they weaned metal off the Iron Maiden/Judas Priest stereotypes -- Metallica, through no fault of their own, were finished. They aren't oblivious to this; only a recognition of their precarious position could have yielded Load's "King Nothing," a cautionary tale about a monarch whose castle crumbles beneath him shortly after his coronation.

In the meantime, metal has gone on without them. "And when I start to come undone," James Hetfield sings on Load's "The Outlaw Torn," "stitch me together." It's a sentiment that post-metal bands like Helmet and White Zombie have already taken him up on, chopping Metallica to riffs and pieces, then reassembling heavier, darker-hued tunics from the shrapnel.

So maybe Metallica looked further down the path they were on and saw a dead end. Or maybe, standing at a crossroads on rock's reconfigured road map in their 13th year, they somehow found the blues. On the whole they've shed the rigidity that has always been their biggest aesthetic hallmark. The huge, rigid crunch strokes and martial lock-step grooves that dominated even Metallica's spartan constructions have given way to an elastic, fluid hard-rock band. Easily the most varied album of Metallica's career, Load is a bitch to pin down. It's almost two separate albums, with the first half devoted to re-imagining a less tyrannical version of the type of material they honed on Metallica; and the second half suggesting new-old directions they might explore in the future (country, for example, but more on that later).

The lead-off track, "Ain't My Bitch" (as in "complaint," not "ho"), and "Wasting My Hate" both seem like logical progressions from the "Enter Sandman" school, riff-strong but with the sharp edges and angles rounded smooth. And they're two of the best songs on the album, the ones that bring thick zinging riffs on an expressway to yr skull. "2 X 4" sounds like "Sad But True" performed on a trampoline. The arrangement is loose and snaking, muscular yet restrained. It's the sound of a band that's finally achieved an intuitive, seat-of-the-pants combustion.

Yet Load's first single, "Until It Sleeps," shows none of that. It's one of the few scattered moments on the CD that reek of anachronism, like the Def Leppard-ish vocal effect in the chorus of "The Outlaw Torn" (a stark clash with the underlying guitar riffs that reference Soundgarden's staggering churn and Kyuss's sub-woofer kick). They make a single concession to modern rock, a ballad-ish "Hero of the Day" done like a bunch of older guys trying to play something they heard on the radio; in truth, they don't miss the mark by much.

But if they occasionally come off sounding a little cheesy, they also sound human, as opposed to the gargantuan, mangling Monsters of Rock they've been. You can hear it in "Bleeding Me," which marks the return of the eight-minute-plus Metallica song (such lengths were banished entirely from the last album). Where once they would have crammed at least a half-dozen riffs into eight minutes, they gently develop just one into a majestic slow burn, revealing pieces of the melody as it ebbs into a mid-tempo dynamo.

Lead guitarist Kirk Hammet contributes a wide array of tonal variations, like the stingray sirens chipping away at "2 X 4," the reverby twang skulking behind "Until It Sleeps," and the saline baths of slide-guitar that figure in both the heaviest and the softest numbers. For his part, Hetfield has loosened up his gruff, one-dimensional yowl and tightly blocked barks. Yeah, he proved he could carry a tune on Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" and "The Unforgiven," but the delivery was starch-stiff and clunky to boot. On Load he carries entire songs with his vocal melodies, balancing a nasal tenor with his natural armpit-of-hell sneer. At times he lays on the ad-libs and accentuations a little too thickly, but in his brighter moments he's reminiscent of his broody mentor, Glenn Danzig. It's only natural that Hetfield would glance Danzig's way for guidance; Hetfield's basically going through the same transformation Danzig underwent between Samhain's churning November Coming Fire and the taught, sparse kick of Danzig. As if acknowledging just that, Hetfield even pilfers the riff from Danzig's "Twist of Cain" for "Cure," the caustic blister that leads off Load's latter half.

But although Hetfield used to be the punk getting arrested outside Samhain shows, as he creeps toward middle age he's become quite the redneck, as is evidenced by Load's second half, which contains three Western-themed lyrics and an even more traditional soul. If you heard only the last seven songs, you'd be convinced that Hetfield's hell-bent on becoming our generation's Ted Nugent.

"Ronnie" revolves around a juiced-up country-tinged bluesy-hard rock lick -- musically, it's completely without precedent in the Metallica catalogue -- and stops just short of becoming a new "Cat Scratch Fever." It even has one of those drawling, spoken interludes that've always worked so well for Johnny Cash, where the narrator eulogizes the outlaw portrayed in the song. But the song that's gonna cement Hetfield's redneck rep is "Mama Said." It starts off like one of the minor-key acoustic numbers from the last album, but quickly erupts into a Sunburst of country flavor complete with authentic weeping lap steel, down-home strings, and Hetfield's sepia-toned harmonies.

After you get over the initial shock of Metallica playing a straight country tune (even on "Mama Said" there isn't the slightest hint of tongue-in-cheek), it starts to make a little sense. Country music, after all, is the soundtrack to resignation and acceptance. Despite "Hero of the Day," the band's one attempt at speaking the '90s pop vernacular, Load positions Metallica squarely as creatures of the past. "Mama Said" and "Poor Twisted Me" and "Ronnie" seethe with a kind of reactionary nostalgia next to the vigorous charge of "Ain't My Bitch." If they weren't always so damn straightforward, you might think they were trying to send a message about metal being the new country or something. But it's more likely that having taken thrash as far as it could go, and with the torch of invention passed to a younger generation, Metallica are simply content to play respectable. Haircuts, maybe even suits. Just in time for summer.