L.A. Radio Keeps Metallica’s ‘Re-Load’ on Ice

Want to hear the new Metallica album on the radio?

If you live in the Los Angeles area, you’d better be a hockey fan.

Even with the release of the new “Re-Load” album, which is expected to score more than 250,000 first-week sales, the only place the hugely popular band is getting airplay here is on a hockey talk show on sports station KXTA-AM (1150).

There’s just no place for this sound on L.A. music stations anymore. Metal-oriented KNAC and hard-rocker Pirate Radio are now just memories. The recent shift of KLOS-FM (95.5) back to its classic-rock heritage has left hard-rock acts out in the cold. Metallica made a raid into alternative-rock territory by headlining Lollapalooza ‘96, but KROQ-FM (106.7) never really embraced it.

“What does it tell you when a sports station will give you the freedom to do what you want musically and music stations don’t?” says Tommy Nast, a hockey fanatic who hosts the show on Wednesdays from 11 a.m. to noon, moonlighting from his regular job as executive vice president and general manager of the music promotion publication the Album Network. “I can do whatever I want on the show as long as it ties to hockey.”

Nast played Metallica’s new single, “The Memory Remains,” three times during his show the week before the album’s release last Tuesday, following up with other songs from the album on the following Wednesday. Nast justifies playing the music on a hockey show by saying Metallica’s aggressive style fits the sport’s “attitude.”

Both Nast and Metallica’s co-manager Cliff Burnstein lament the hard-rock black hole of L.A. radio. “I wonder what happened to the old KNAC listeners,” says Burnstein. “You’d think some station would want to appeal to them.”

KLOS program director John Duncan agrees--but says that given the trend in radio toward more niche programming designed to hold a specific demographic, it can’t be his station.

“You just can’t be all things to all people anymore,” he says. “I keep asking our owners to get me another station so I can do hard rock too.”