Metallica released Reload in the United States on November 18, 1997. Their seventh studio album opened with “Fuel” and quickly made room for a very different voice: Marianne Faithfull’s on “The Memory Remains.” Across 13 songs, the record continued material begun alongside Load, with a guest singer, unfamiliar instruments and a sequel to a song from their 1991 self-titled album.
Producer Bob Rock suggested Faithfull for a song James Hetfield had developed around a fading movie star, taking inspiration from Sunset Boulevard. Hetfield discussed that choice in a 1997 Guitar World interview. They recorded her contribution in Dublin, and Faithfull also appeared in the official music video.
The project had started much earlier. Metallica entered The Plant in Sausalito, California, in May 1995 intending to make a double album. By early 1996, only about half the songs were finished. They released Load that June, toured, then returned to the remaining material in July 1997. Kirk Hammett explained in the same interview that separating the releases gave the band a break from recording and listeners more time to absorb the songs. Returning to the material also meant revising it: guitar parts were recorded again, and arrangements were reconsidered as the musicians found sounds they preferred to their earlier takes.
The sessions also changed how Metallica worked together. In a Metal Hammer retrospective originally published in 2022, Rock recalled the four musicians playing together in one room and becoming less restricted by the habits that had defined their earlier recordings. “There was no conceptual decision that they would go somewhere different,” he said. In his account, the broader musical direction grew out of that working environment, as the musicians loosened their expectations about how metal drums, guitars and arrangements should sound.
“Low Man’s Lyric” made that freedom especially clear. Hetfield recalled that an earlier version had been recorded as a metal ballad, with the sort of big drums the band had already used plenty of times. He wanted a more ragged arrangement and persuaded Lars Ulrich to rethink the percussion. The finished recording featured hurdy-gurdy and violin, giving the song a different set of textures from the guitars driving “Fuel.”
Bassist Jason Newsted also contributed to the writing, sharing credit with Hetfield and Ulrich on “Where the Wild Things Are.” Reload became his final Metallica studio album of original material. He remained with the band for the covers collection Garage Inc. in 1998 and the orchestral live album S&M in 1999 before leaving in January 2001.
One of Reload’s experiments continued beyond that lineup. Hetfield recalled arriving at “The Unforgiven II” while playing a Telecaster equipped with a B-Bender: a familiar riff took on enough character to suggest a continuation of “The Unforgiven.” The band made that connection explicit in the title. In 2008, the series gained another chapter when Metallica released “The Unforgiven III” on Death Magnetic.
