Lou Reed and Metallica - Lulu (2011)

 

1. Brandenburg Gate
2. The View
3. Pumping Blood
4. Mistress Dread
5. Iced Honey
6. Hate Train
7. Just a Bullet Away
8. Frustration
9. Little Dog
10. Hell and Back
11. Rebel of Babylon

When Metallica released their collaboration record with Lou Reed in 2011, it was called even worse than St. Anger, and indeed one of the worst albums of all time. But it would also turn out to be Lou's last album before his death in 2013. It spans across two discs and is longer than the length of a single disc. So I thought how could we improve it? Three of the album's ten tracks are longer than 10 minutes, and later that year they released an EP of outtakes from Death Magnetic. So I thought I could take out the three tracks longer than 10 minutes and replace them with the four tracks from the EP and now it's short enough to fit on a CD!

Metallica - Load (1997)

1. Fuel
2. Ain't My Bitch
3. The Memory Remains
4. 2 X 4
5. Devil's Dance
6. King Nothing
7. Better Than You
8. Fixxxer
9. Bad Seed
10. Wasting My Hate
11. Prince Charming
12. Thorn Within
13. Attitude
14. The Outlaw Torn

This is my theoretical construction of a single album version of Metallica's Load and Reload albums. For this I enlisted the help of my friend Andrew to work on a track listing. The final result is a little over 79 minutes but the fade out in The Outlaw Torn happens earlier.

When Metallica released Load in 1996, the album did well on the charts but the critical response was mixed. Some criticized the album for not being as heavy as their Black Album and accused the band of selling out. 3 of the 4 singles were mellow with one of them being described as a country song. They originally planned on releasing both albums as a double album but had to release them separately cause their rigid touring schedule prevented them from being able to finish all the songs on time.  

I thought it would be atypical for them to release an album that didn't include a mellow song but maybe it would get a better response if it was all heavy. Each album had 4 singles so I got rid of the mellow singles and kept the heavy ones. But then Andrew also wanted me to get rid of Cure and Slither despite them ranking among the shortest songs on both albums. It was a little tough.