I am feeling really really old saying this, but: Ryan! Dude! you cannot feel betrayed by Metallica cause you weren't around back then. You cannot feel the same way, cause all you have known is 'the opposite'.

Backtracking a particular band is not the same as growing up with that particular band. Discovering them in their infancy, breaking through 'together' with them, feeling part of the movement, believing in them before they actually had a history (not in hindsight), etc.

I might have liked St. Anger or Reload, IF I had started there. IF I didn't spend oodles of days, weeks in my room with a little record player playing Metallica's Master of Puppets over and over and over ON VINYL. Discovering Megadeath, Overkill, Kreator. Laughing at Warrent (though drooling over Jani Lane ). Witnessing the entire metal movement - being beaten up over the fact that *I* was too young to truly grasp the bigger picture which really started with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath - before my ****ing time....

sigh... that's all cheers and I won't suck it :P