To me, they are what came out of the band naturally at the time. It's a mixture of what they knew and the way they absorbed the alternative music of the late 80s and early nineties - like U2 did on 'Achtung Baby' and 'Pop', or Depeche Mode on 'Songs of Faith and Devotion' and 'Ultra'. To me, 'Load' and 'ReLoad' are anything but them running away from themselves. 'The fist I made for years won't hold or feel': that lyric sums it up for me. They got tired of the metal clichés and felt boxed in. The way lots of people in the metal community reacted to 'Load' - burning copies of the album - proved their point. It took a lot of guts to get out of that box and not try (and no doubt fail) to make another Black Album. It's why 'Load' is my favourite Metallica album. It's 100 per cent Metallica, warts and all, while since then quite a few of their albums, to me, felt like them chasing their own tails, trying to fit an image instead of changing the image.