Until It Sleeps

James Hetfield wrote this song about his mother, who died from cancer when he was 16 years old. He was struggling with his mother's death and was looking for a way to cope with his loss and deal with the pain. It has come to mean much more to many people, who relate to the message of general internal pain and loss and the inability to make sense or cope with it.

The music video is based on the artwork of Hieronymus Bosch, specifically the painting The Garden of Earthly Delights, which dates to about 1500. That painting is a triptych, with the three panels representing the Garden of Eden, revelers enjoying their time on Earth, and finally, hell. The video follows this theme, with recurrent scenes of the biblical character Adam committing his first (original) sin. It also flashes to numerous pictures of Jesus dying. Because of the video, many people feel the song is a representation of redemption and the remorse one feels for having sinned.

This was the first single from Load, Metallica's first album since The Black Album in 1991. The single was released on May 21, two weeks before the album. The video premiered on May 23. In the five years between albums, the musical landscape had changed, with grunge coming into fashion. Metallica's sound was a little grungier, but the big change was their look: as seen in the video, they had short hair. This was seen as a betrayal by some fans, but the band didn't want to be trapped in the same image they forged when they were teenagers.