625. Metallica - ...And Justice For All (1988)
















Track Listing

1. Blackened
2. ...And Justice For All
3. Eye Of The Beholder
4. One
5. The Shortest Straw
6. Harvester Of Sorrow
7. The Frayed Ends Of Sanity
8. To Live Is To Die
9. Dyers Eve

Review

There is one thing I want from my metal, I want it to be dirty, heavy, powerful and punchy... I suppose those are 4 things. And some bands do it, Motorhead, Black Sabbath even Iron Maiden and Slayer to some extent. Metallica do not do it, and I think it is a testament to the poor taste of teenagers that they have sold so much.

...And Justice For All marks a move to a more mainstream and less thrashy sound for Metallica, but it also mark a bit of a compromise. It is easier to listen to, and to ignore, but it is also adding the opposite of what makes Metal good, a certain prog-rock influence.

If nothing else, if you are able to take all of that you should at least take issue with what is a very bad production work indeed. The bass guitar is completely gone due to the mixing, the bass pedal on the drums sounds like a click more than a thump, and the guitars buzz their way through the album.

Track Highlights

1. One
2. To Live Is To Die (Gotta love the inane title and the 'beautiful' acoustic guitar)
3. ...And Justice For All
4. Harvester Of Sorrow

Final Grade

5/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

[...]in one of the more famous of Hetfield and Ulrich's controversies with bassist Jason Newsted, the album's production almost completely lacks identifiable bass in most songs. This has been attributed to various reasons, such as Newsted's doubling of Hetfield's guitar parts, his absence from the mixing sessions (where he might have asserted his opinion) and the lingering issue of his "newness" within the band following the tragic death of Cliff Burton in September 1986. As said by the band in their magazine SO WHAT!, they wish that they could re-mix the entire album because the drums and guitar overpower the bass completely. The album was released on two LPs at the usual single-LP price, since the band thought that putting the album on a single record would have diminished its fidelity.

One, Live: