I think when you compare Load and Reload to the older albums, you're going to find that there's not as much great material there because there are more songs. When they were doing albums with 8 or 9 songs each, they really seemed to have one theme in mind, and all the songs well, clicked. With Load and reload, they have a whole bunch of different kinds of songs, and they seem to cross more genres of music other than metal. Therefore, people that liked "Old Metallica" and their brand of music are going to be disappointed in the newer stuff simply because it's not what they're used to.
But, there are some really good songs on the Loads, such as Bleeding Me, The Outlaw Torn, and Fixxxer. There's no denying that. The thing is, though, when 7 or 8 out of 8 songs on a CD are amazing, you still can't expect 13 or 14 songs on a later CD to be of the same caliber.
When you compare say, Master of Puppets to Load, you're going to notice a good deal of difference in everything in the songs, from length to quality to lyrics.
I'm sorry about the possibly stupid thoughts, but I am tired.