For Load, Metallica strayed away from their thrash metal roots in favor of a hard rock sound. The band members became influenced by non-metal artists during the writing process, resulting in an array of musical styles such as Southern rock, blues rock, country rock, alternative rock, and grunge. The band also changed up their playing styles, with lead guitarist Kirk Hammett playing rhythm guitar parts for the first time. Compared to previous albums, the lyrics on Load are more personal and reflective, resulting from lead singer James Hetfield's internal struggles and personal life. The cover artwork is an abstract painting by artist Andres Serrano, created by mixing blood and semen.
Metallica adopted a new image during the period, which included short hair, leather jackets, and make-up. The new look and change in sound were criticized by many fans before Load's release. Nevertheless, Load was a commercial success, topping the charts in over 15 countries and spending four consecutive weeks at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart. Four singles were released: "Until It Sleeps", "Hero of the Day", "Mama Said", and "King Nothing"; the first became Metallica's first and only US Top 10 hit. The band supported the album on the Poor Touring Me tour (1996–1997).
From 1991 to 1993, the band toured to promote Metallica, performing 266 concerts across three concert tours. Another tour followed in mid-1994 to promote the live album Live Shit: Binge & Purge (1993). Throughout early 1994, the band members spent time away from each other: lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist James Hetfield devoted time to hunting; lead guitarist Kirk Hammett studied film, jazz, and Asian arts at San Francisco State University; bassist Jason Newsted created his own recording studio, The Chophouse; and drummer Lars Ulrich took the band's label, Elektra Records, to court in hopes of breaking their contract following a disagreement with the label's new management.
The recording sessions for the new album began on May 1, 1995, at The Plant Studios in Sausalito, California. The sessions reunited Metallica with producer Bob Rock and engineer Randy Staub from Metallica. Despite having clashed during the production of Metallica, the band and Rock had settled their differences in the following years while on tour and decided to work together again. Hetfield explained that Rock "tends to help us dig deeper. We tell him what we're after and he tries to help us achieve that". He credited Rock with helping him deliver stronger vocal performances. The recording atmosphere was productive, and the band's songwriting process became looser and more relaxed compared to previous albums. Hetfield attributed this to the band members taking a break from each other, allowing each member to mature and return with more respect for one another.
Encouraged by Ulrich, Hammett played rhythm guitar for the first time on a Metallica album, having previously only played lead parts while Hetfield played all rhythm parts. Hammett said this was done to achieve "a looser sound". He ultimately became more influential in the songwriting process, sharing co-writing credits with Hetfield and Ulrich on seven of the final album's fourteen tracks. Newsted, on the other hand, felt isolated as his song ideas were dismissed by the other band members, particularly Hetfield. He also believed that the band's fanbase was not "ready to hear [them] sounding like more typical hard rock and roll music". Newsted felt trapped within Metallica and began working on side projects such as IR8. An IR8 demo tape ended up being played on a San Francisco radio station, which angered Hetfield and Ulrich. Newsted nevertheless did not want bad blood between them, acknowledging Metallica as Hetfield and Ulrich's band and a carefree attitude towards songwriting credits, because "I still put my signature on it".
Load is Metallica's longest studio album at 78 minutes and 59 seconds in length, the maximum duration a single CD could be. The long length was marketed by Elektra through advertisements on MTV and stickers affixed to initial pressings of the album itself. The album represented a stylistic departure for Metallica away from their thrash metal roots in favor of a hard rock sound. While the band had already taken a step away from thrash metal on Metallica, they went further on Load, resulting in a "cleaner" sound.
Primarily a hard rock and heavy metal album, Load features a variety of musical influences from genres such as Southern rock, blues rock, country rock, alternative rock, and grunge. Numerous critics have compared the music to 1970s-era hard rock bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Aerosmith, and ZZ Top. Metallica had listed several artists and bands they were inspired by while writing Load and Reload that took them away from their thrash roots, including Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Primus, Pantera, Ted Nugent, Oasis, and Alanis Morissette, among others; the songs "Mama Said" and "Wasting My Hate" were inspired by Hetfield's friendship with Waylon Jennings.
Load was Metallica's first album on which all tracks were down-tuned to E♭ tuning. Hammett said it was his attempt to play like Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Thin Lizzy. Hetfield liked the change, believing the semitone drop in pitch gave his voice a "break". According to McIver, allowing Hammett to play rhythm guitar led to a looser, less "metal" and more "rock" sound, a result of Hetfield's growing maturity and the band's "desire to move forward". The band members also utilized more experimentation in their playing styles. Hammett used slide guitar on "Ain't My Bitch" and various amplifiers to create different textures and soundscapes on "Hero of the Day"; Hetfield used a talk box to perform the guitar solo on "The House Jack Built", and a pedal steel guitar on "Mama Said"; and Newsted played a fretless bass on "Until It Sleeps" and used different amplifier effects to achieve his bass sound on "Thorn Within". Hammett described his guitar solo on "Bleeding Me" as a summation of all his influences, "with a good dose of my own style
Compared to previous albums, which touched on themes of confronting a frightening outside world, the lyrics on Load are more personal and reflective, influenced by topics such as neurosis ("Thorn Within", "Poor Twisted Me") and psychotherapy ("Until It Sleeps"). Hetfield maintained that he wanted the lyrics to be vague to allow for listener interpretation. Nevertheless, the lyrics are amongst the band's most personal yet, "Bleeding Me" was an "intensely personal" song about some of Hetfield's biggest internal struggles. "Mama Said" and "Until It Sleeps" are about the death and relationship, respectively, of Hetfield's mother, while "Hero of the Day" offers "estranged youth" and "mother-and-child" themes. Death and pain are also the main subjects of "The Outlaw Torn". Religion also impacted some of the lyrics, such as on "Thorn Within". "Ronnie" concerns a shooting that occurred in Washington state in 1995. The author Benoît Clerc believes it may have been inspired by the story of Ronnie Long, an African-American man imprisoned in 1976 for a crime he did not commit, who was eventually released in 2020.
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