"Outlaw Torn" is easily my favorite Metallica song of all time. I've got a big connection to the lyrics, so that's definitely a factor.
I was born in 82' and even though I was raised on Queensryche from that age, Metallica never got much play in my house. Took me a while to get into them on my own. I had only been playing a couple years when I saw the video for "Until It Sleeps" and I just dug all the sounds I was hearing. The clean guitar part, the tone of the solo, the vocal layering. Of course, I knew of them by that point, but that's what made me listen to them and buy the records.
So it's easy for me to enjoy those two records, I had no predisposed notion of what they 'should' have sounded like. I just heard songs that got stuck in my head, they were heavy and there was some interesting sounds. By the time high school hit, I was a full on fan of the older stuff and didn't listen to Load/Reload for a long time, but that's cuz I was catching up on the old stuff.
And shit, it's not like they turned into Queensryche and put crap that embarrassing out or go on a fuckin' cabaret tour, they just keep finding more shit to blow up live.
Saw them on the DM tour in Boston and they were fucking GREAT. Don't see many audiences worked up in that kind of a frenzy these days. That in itself says something about their live performance.