During the last couple of years there has been an enormous debate about whether or not you can accuse Metallica for ”sell-out”, meaning that the band has become too mainstream in order to sell more albums. The "sellout- accusers" are mainly people who has followed the band since its early days.Why the accuse?

I can’t understand why, but I can think of a few reasons. For one thing fear. Fear that this precious band, which until TBA was pretty unknown to the main audience, will be shared loved, and in some ways worshipped by millions of people. Fear that because MTV plays their videos, they have become mainstream, and therefore can’t be considered as the heavy-metal band they once were.This fear is mostly among ”old” heavy-metal fans. They don’t know how to think about Metallica, how to cope with the band’s new influence on music. They seem to be afraid that if they listen to, or just say they like Metallica’s newest albums, they won’t be considered as tough heavy-metal dudes anymore. I think this is one of the reasons why you so often can hear this line, when talking to older heavy-metal fans: ”Metallica? I don’t know, I kinda like their old stuff…but this new CD..."

I have a hard time trying to understand this, because I don’t listen to Metallica, Black Sabbath etc, because it is heavy-metal, I listen to it because I like it and it just happens to be heavy-metal.Another thing that has occurred to be a reason for disliking Metallica is their new haircuts. Yes, it is true. People seem to be offended by the four groupmembers’s decision to cut their hair off. This is, if possible, even harder to understand than the fear. Does hairstyle have anything to do with music? Well, obviously, it does. When people are really into music of any kind, they often want to show it to the rest of the world. That is why various ”dress-codes” have developed through music. To describe a heavy-metal fan is easy; long hair, blackish clothes and a headbanginng attitude. So people who listen to heavy-metal have chosen the whole heavy concept that goes with it. It’s been like that for at least 20 years.Now Metallica has disturbed this ”code” by cutting their hair short. I can see that people who have followed the band since 1982, and saved their hair along with it, are a bit disappointed. It must feel like such a betrayal that their favourite band now has short hair.

Seriously speaking this has nothing to do with music, this is image. And I think that it is ok for a band to change its image.But Metallica has not just changed their hairstyle, the music is a bit different too. For almost a decade the songs and music were thrown to us in a rage against the world and its injustices, which most of us can relate to and therefore agree with. On ”Load” and "Re-Load", however, the music is turned inwards and is very personal. This change is welcomed by many people, but also rejected by some. This doesn’t seem to have anything to do with age, but it has to do with with your mind. ”Open mind for a different view…” is exactly what this is about. When looked upon from another view, Metallica becomes personal.

”We’re not out for shock, we’re not out for disgust either, we’re just out to do what we do. There’s no way you can set it up. You put out a record every five years, then there’s bound to be some drastic changes. Whose life doesn’t change in five years? And people have to take that with a block of salt. People have to understand what’s been happening in our lives- what we’ve been doing, where our fucking minds are. And you would likely hope that people would’ve change themselves, y’know? Change has to happen no matter how much people don’t want to see their stable things change. As humans we have to change. It’s almost come full circle. We’ve never been out to please anyone but ourselves, and the fans totally dig and respect that. But when we change it’s probably a little harder for them to accept that because they haven’t been through it with us."
James Hetfield