btw. It's not *COOL* to say you've always liked the Loads.
I HAVE always liked them. I played Reload to death when it came out.. I can barely bring myself to put on And Justice For All.
However - it is *COOL* to habitually bash the Loads along with everyone else who wanted The Black Album part 2.
Wait.
Hang the fuck on.
Did you just suggest that it's wrong for someone to say it's COOL to like the Loads, and then come right back and say that the dissenting opinion is the very evil you just decried? Even if that opinion was held like mine (and just about every other Metallica fan I personally know IRL) since 1995?
That's kind of funny.
If it's wrong of me to think that someone liking the Loads is just being cool, it's just as wrong to accuse someone who sat in his car in 1995 when Until It Sleeps debuted on the radio and feeling my excitement disappear as I realized I thought the song flat out sucked is hating it because they think it's cool to hate on it. I will say that I have known more people who thought the Loads sucked based on their merits as music than those who loved them until the past few years, where suddenly the albums appear to be being judged in a vacuum where everything surrounding them is thrown aside (I think a lot of it had something to do with St. Anger, where a lot of people went "yeah, these albums weren't that bad after all!" but that's just a guess.) The Loads have evolved into some sort of noble, albeit failed experiment, but most of the people I know never liked the Loads because they thought they sucked. I will admit that a lot of the places I go to, the love the Loads get feels like bandwagon jumping, so I apologize if I let that color how I address it here. But yeah, if I can't get on someone for thinking they're just being "cool", the opposite holds true.