TL, I agree kind of. But they are bad Metallica albums, at least in terms of what Metallica was at the time. When they came out, I can't think of one Metallica fan that would not have them at the bottom.
That said, anyone that wasn't around at the time has the luxury of ignorance of what Metallica spent years of building. I can definitely see how someone younger can look at Load and compare it to Master, and decide that Master just isn't their cup of tea, but Load is.
But Metallica really left their core support behind and God love them, they hit it huge, which I guess was the point. They certainly reached the masses.
Heck, even TBA was a huge shift in style.
No I can get though about half of Load, but to me, Metallica is a band that fell off the face of the earth in 1992.