Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Five years on from the internationally bestselling album Metallica, the thrash metal band returned with a different style than the fans were used to, and arguably the difference in sound, in attitude, and appearance had some scratching their heads, and some arguably utterly confused about the near 180-degree turnaround in terms of songwriting and heavy riff displacement, and yet as the band release their 2025 reissue of Load, what comes across is a resilience of Time, that the reminder of what we as fans perceive as ownership of sound and expectation is an unavoidable truth that we are wrong; that the artist is, and always will be the ones to have to have the last word on how they present themselves to the wider world.