Music Videos Revisited: Metallica’s ‘Until It Sleeps’ Turns 20: the horror…oh the horror.
This week marks the 20th anniversary of ‘Load,’ Metallica’s polarizing 1996 album that continued their sprint away from thrash metal towards southern style butt rock.
Click Here for Albums Revisited: Metallica’s ‘Master of Puppets’ Turns 30
IMHO no album lives up to its name like ‘Load.’ It confirmed the worst suspicions that emerged with the group’s transitional 1991 ‘Black’ album: the band were settling for a more traditional rock sound. And barring a few exceptions, it was boring as hell.
And you knew the band had shit the bed when they released their video for first single ‘Until It Sleeps,’ which for many sounded the death knell for one of the best metal bands of all time.
A lot of people freaked out when they saw the band cutting their hair, which was kinda strange. By the mid-90’s everyone from Chris Cornell to Ian Astbury were chopping their manes.
No, what made the music video so horrible was the sinking feeling that the band were writing a check their ass couldn’t cash: giving over the top grimaces and scream-faces for a song that had all the momentum of phlegm on a frozen flagpole, feeling more like a sub-standard post-grunge effort than the finely tuned furor they excelled at.
And then there’s the makeup and fashion choices. Let’s face it: Metallica were never dreamboats, and that was commendable when they emerged during the hair metal era. No frills all fury.
So it was downright incongruous watching Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammett slathered in eyeliner, gyrating in ways that were unintentionally hilarious. In the words of the late Rowdy Roddy Piper in ‘They Live’: “that’s like putting perfume on a pig.”
Adding insult to injury in the case of the diminutive Danish drummer was the poor fashion choice of rocking a feather boa.
To give credit where it’s due, James Hetfield was not entirely on board with this painful stylistic shift, telling TeamRock in a 2009 interview:
“Lars and Kirk [Hammett] drove on those records” (I knew it!) “The whole we-need-to-reinvent-ourselves topic was up. Image is not an evil thing for me, but if the image is not you, then it doesn’t make much sense. I think they were really after a U2 kind of vibe, Bono doing his alter ego. I couldn’t get into it. The whole ‘Okay, now in this photo shoot we’re going to be ’70s glam rockers.’ Like, what? I would say half – at least half – the pictures that were to be in the booklet, I yanked out. The whole cover thing, it went against what I was feeling.”
Good call, but still, there he was scowling like he was suffering from a ghastly bout of constipation.
The one member who really, truly looks embarrassed is band punching bag Jason Newsted, who can be seen digging up dirt in the video, presumably so he can bury himself alive and escape the indignity.
But he ends up covered in what looks like poop, which is kind of a metaphor for how he was treated by his band mates. Poor guy.
As Hetfield said, Hammett and Ulrich steered the ship for this makeover, which makes them the most fun to watch, be it their exaggerated face smearing, or screen time showing off their new piercings (I’m half convinced Ulrich rocked the nipple rings to distract from his receding hairline) And lest we forget, Hammett’s hair-net, making him look like a cross-dressing line cook at Luby’s.
To be fair to the band, the look of the video, replete with religious iconography ( cue Hammett’s crucifixion)and pseudo-sinister sexual imagery) had a precedent in popular 90’s videos including Nirvana’s ‘Heart Shaped Box’ and REM ‘Losing My Religion.’
And besides their aggravating antics the set-pieces are directed with lurid charm by Samuel Bayer, famous for helming videos for Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage and more.
But this felt old hat by 1996, and it just didn’t jibe, feeling just as forced as the ‘Load’ album cover showing a smearing of semen and blood.
It all drew a line in the sand for fans, who either had to jump aboard this new direction, or hold on to the band’s 80’s output for dear life.
Look I know there are fans that like ‘Load’, and ‘Reload’, and forgave Lars’s Napster rant, the unflattering ‘Some Kind Of Monster’ documentary and more. And I keep holding out hope they’ll make an album I’ll actually dig again (‘Death Magnetic’ filled me with false hope, dammit).
But I defy you to defend the video (comment if you must) for Metallica’s ‘Until it Sleeps,’ or watch it with a straight face. It’s a stinker.
If you’re so inclined:
