Metallica’s pair of mid-Nineties albums, 1996’s Load and 1997’s Reload, have always been controversial, both among fans and the band members themselves. Musically, they were a stark pivot from metal to hard-rock, and visually, the records had a much different flair compared to the stylized look of their 1980s output and the novel darkness of the “Black Album.”
Both of the covers were designed by visual artist Andres Serrano, who made Load’s by placing cow blood and his own semen between two plexiglass plates, and Reload’s with a similar mixture of urine and blood.