Not-So-Heavy Metal Metallica Changes Focus, Tempo And Even Appearance In The Face Of Shifting Musical Tastes

“Load” Metallica (Elektra)

You can take heavy metal out of today’s rock lexicon and the pop charts and we’re talking about a near clean sweep, here, unless you count alt/metal bridge bands like Soundgarden and Alice in Chains but how’re you gonna take the metal out of Metallica?

You’re not. But if you’re as smart as Metallica is, you’re going to rejigger and retool to a degree. You’re not going to give up on the long-held twin central premises: Life’s cards are stacked against the powerless, and nothing feels quite so satisfying, so cathartic, as a gnarly, crunching guitar line, pummeling drums, a low-riding bass and a snarling vocal.

Today’s Metallica is, perhaps, not as metal as it used to be. Certainly, it’s not the speed metal unit it was when San Francisco-based singer-guitarist James Hetfield, drummer Lars Ulrich, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and now-deceased bassist Cliff Burton put them and the subgenre on the underground rock map during the mid-‘80s. (Jason Newsted came in on bass in 1986; cofounding guitarist Dave Mustaine was gone by then, off to form Megadeth.) The turn toward the more conventional was clear in 1991 with their commercial breakthrough album, “Metallica.”

With “Load” (Elektra), their first studio album in five years, Metallica continues on that journey: keeping the darkness and danger, but turning it more inward, and moving at a mid-tempo clip.

Their long tresses shorn, Metallica re-enters a world where the music they play generally comes clothed in alt-rock dress - and Metallica looks more that part now. Desperate? No. Metallica was the band ‘80s alt-rockers looked to when they needed a verboten metal kick - a slash of sonic lightning - and since Metallica’s lyrics dealt with destruction, warfare, punishment, retribution and anti-authoritarian posturing, well, really, it’s not a great leap from punk now, is it?

Put it this way: Metallica never wanted to be party-hearty dudes. (Onstage at least; offstage, they called themselves Alcoholica and did indulge.) They wore, and still wear, the cloak of seriousness, the mantle of barely tempered rage.

You can make the old case of pop star hypocrisy - so rich! so unhappy! - if you wish, but I’ll believe Hetfield in “The House That Jack Built” when he spits out, “The higher you walk/the farther you fall/The longer the walk/the farther you crawl” and “Where’s your crown, king?” in “King Nothing,” as Hammett circles him with eerie guitar shards.

The first single, “Until It Sleeps,” already played heavily on modern rock radio, appears to be about severe drug addiction: “It hates you and it holds you … Don’t want your grip/Don’t want your greed.” There’s only one epic-styled track here, the long closer/workout “The Outlaw Torn.”

Mostly, Metallica is planting songs in the five-minute range, and mostly they’re singing less about outside oppressors and more about inner demons. “I’m digging my way to something,” sings Hetfield, in the self-lacerating “Bleeding Me.” “Can’t stop to save my soul/I take the leash that’s leading me/ I’m bleeding me.”

Next up: “Cure,” where everyone seems to have the unspecified sickness and needs the cure. Then, “Poor Twisted Me.” Need a synopsis? We’re talking about an internal combustion engine.

What you’ll find most familiar here is the ferocious, rhythmic grind Ulrich, Newsted and Hetfield get into on almost every song - a menacing, lurching, gutteral growl.

Ulrich - who co-wrote most of the songs with Hetfield and Hammett and coproduced with Hetfield and Bob Rock - remains metal’s most inventive drummer. Busy, but not overplaying his hand.

What you’ll miss if you’re a fan of the old band are the frenzied accelerations, the hot rails to hell, to borrow a phrase from Metallica prototypes Blue Oyster Cult. “Wasting My Hate” gets close. But speed metal really is yesterday’s news.