Metallica: Reload LP

Released one year after 1996's Load, Metallica's bookending follow-up Reload - and last studio release with longtime bassist Jason Newsted - continued to build upon the legendary Bay Area band's musical expansion into areas apart from their trademark thrash signatures and charged metal. Produced by longtime cohort Bob Rock, the material is loose, powerful and eclectic, the sound thick and punchy and the image one which screamed out change and freedom from enslavement to The Black Album era. Coming at a time when hard rock was still searching for a new identity, the 1997 release helped establish new parameters and announced to the world once and for all that Metallica would never be content in just basking in the glow of their past hits.