A year ahead of the album’s 30th anniversary, Metallica will release a super deluxe “ReIssue” of their seventh album, ReLoad. As with previous box sets, the ReLoad collection, out June 26, will come fully loaded (pun intended) with 15 CDs and four DVDs filled with live recordings, rough mixes of songs, and songwriting demos. (The original album will be in there, as well.)
The “Bad Seed” to its 1996 predecessor, Load, the album found Metallica continuing their quest to simplify their sound as they moved away from thrash metal to explore hard rock, punk, and blues influences. Highlights from ReLoad include the punk-ish “Fuel,” which is still a set list staple; an eerie duet with Marianne Faithfull, “The Memory Remains”; a sequel to the Black Album hit “The Unforgiven”; and the snaky “Carpe Diem Baby.”
All of it was delivered by musicians with fresh haircuts, as seen in newly released footage of the band performing “The Memory Remains” in Philadelphia a week before ReLoad‘s original release.
In addition to the maxed out box set, the reissue will be available on double-LP vinyl, CD, a three-CD expanded edition, cassette, and digital. People who preorder the box set, though, get four different versions of “The Memory Remains”: the remastered original recording, an instrumental mix, a “Take 18 Floor Take,” and a concert recording from Brisbane, Australia.
The release’s full track list is detailed on the band’s website. Highlights include a 7-inch of “The Memory Remains,” a live recording from London’s Ministry of Sound, recordings of riffs that the band worked into songs and the demos that followed (the “Carpe Diem Baby” riff weirdly was called “Skimpy”), and a Marianne Faithfull outtake simply called “Memory.”
There are also concert recordings from Reading, England, acoustic jams, concerts recorded in Brisbane and East Rutherford, New Jersey, as well as a collage of live recordings from all over the world. The DVDs boast TV appearances — including MTV’s Reload, Rehearse, Request — more clips from the aforementioned Philadelphia concert, and shows filmed in Asia and California. Additionally, the box set includes a hardcover book, posters, guitar picks, and other memorabilia.
“Hetfield’s voice has gotten more assured with each Metallica release since 1991’s ‘black album,'” Rolling Stone commented in a review of ReLoad at the time of the album’s release. “In between guttural growls on ReLoad, he actually croons and harmonizes outside his normal safety blanket of roaring anger.”
The band, which will be playing the Sphere in Las Vegas in the fall, is also launching a competition, #GetTheReLoadOut, asking bands and fans to record cover versions and interpretations of the songs on the album. They did this previously with Load, posting winning videos to their YouTube channel.
“In addition to the more ‘Traditional’ musical covers, we’re inviting performance and visual artists to submit their content to be judged in the ‘Non-Traditional’ category,” Metallica said on its website. “We’re talking TikTok dances, paintings, miming, children’s toy instrument performances, or whatever else you can dream up!” The schedule for songs they’re looking for, so they can highlight them, and the parameters are on their website. The winners in both the traditional and non-traditional categories get a signed box set.
Matt Collyer of The Planet Smashers