...And Justice For All: 20 Years Later

still sounds like shit.

It has One which used to slay me when I was a teenager. That was one of the last times they did the two-guitar lead stuff I liked so much. Also love Harvester Of Sorrow.

Never dug it. First bullshit Metallica record. Harvester of Sorrow still rules.

still underrated i guess.

This is the only Metallica album for me*. I think it's one of their most consistent efforts. I think "myself is after me" is a great lyric (I will give you that "into it what you read" sounded forced to me even when I was 10).

AJFA also had the best t-shirts, thank you Pushead.

*Although I'd take Orion as a single song.

Does have the best T-shirts, I'll give you that.

i like the album cover. but the brittle production really ruins it for me. i find it hard to listen to as i just really want a full, thick bass running through it, and instead it is inaudible.

Not sure, but I think this may have actually been metal's first-ever (non-live) double LP. Depending on what you call "metal", of course.

I certainly don't think it sucks, but it definitely has its flaws. "Blackened" really begins the album on an asskicking note, but why the hell is the title track almost 10 minutes when it's just a repeat of the same verse/chorus/verse (and, by their standards, was lacking)?

"Eye of the Beholder" and "One" rounded out a nice first half, but the second half has the ghastly "Frayed Ends of Sanity", which outside of its random riff section in the middle, has very little to cheer about.

But..."Dyer's Eve"? "To Live is to Die"? "Shortest Straw"?

Definitely pales in comparison to the two albums before it, but still a solid effort. Not a classic, but very good.

the thing this album has in common with st. anger is songs that could've easily been edited down to half their length without losing anything. i still like this album. especially in light of how shit the black album was, lyrically and musically.

I really think the title track should have either been 4.5 minutes or excised, and Frayed Ends/Harvester should have been chucked completely.

Shoulda been one to two more short little angry thrash anthems in there to break up the monotony

thread has lost its mind

ey, I still said it was a very good album!...but RTL or MOP it ain't.

though I probably listened to it more than I did Kill 'Em All.

Listened to this record in sub zero cold this winter through Grado labs headphones and it sounded like heaven ... tried the same thing the other day in 90 degree heat and it sounded hellish - make of that what you will. This is a winter record. I have super-fond memories of it being released my freshman year in college - excellent hacky-sack circles with the thrash metal dukes.

what you need to really enjoy this record is rails of super-caustic bathtub crank

I think the defenders of this album are listening through, err, rose tinted glasses. Listen now, as an adult, in 2008 and tell me what's good about it. I thought I loved it too until yesterday when I heard it for the first time in fifteen years.

Come on, at least "One" is a classic

Great record, though no RTL.

I've owned three copies of it, just listened to it today and still love it. The one Metallica album I always return to. Couldn't care less about clicky drums or a lack of bass. They can repeat the same riffs for as long as they want too.

I think the defenders of this album are listening through, err, rose tinted glasses.

Not that there isn't a little of this.

I really hate "Blackened" in Rock Band. Ridiculously hard to play, and so much of it is musically worthless bullshit.

also the slow section in the title song is one of those "yep, we ran of ideas here" moments

This album still holds up. Never was a big fan of "Eye of the Beholder", but that's a minor gripe. Great record, "Harvester of Sorrow" ranking as one of my all-time Metallica faves.

I love this album. The only weak tracks are "Eye Of The Beholder" (which I owned on cassingle before the album came out) and "To Live Is To Die." The 1-2-3 of "The Shortest Straw," "Harvester Of Sorrow," and "Frayed Ends Of Sanity" kicks so much ass. And I love the sound - a gleaming steel skeleton. They could have stuck with this exact sound for the whole 1990s and I would have been unbelievably happy.

the songs are a bit turgid and overlong in spots, but it's still pretty good.

the other thing about this album is that for me anyway it is forever tethered to the hesher pride everybody felt when Metallica showed up at the Grammys and completely shredded everything in sight.

for reference:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=owm2XdwuVo4

this is my favorite metallica album

i listened to it 1000000x on my walkman with shitty headphones, so the bass thing wasn't really an issue. who listens to thrash metal for bass, anyway?

what's an early metallica album where you can hear the fucking bass?

the only good songs are all of them.

I'm still mad about that Jethro Tull thing. -xp

metallica-related things i have been angry about:

1. st. anger
2. endless videos with creepy old men (that aren't metallica)
3. the black album
4. the jethro tull thing
5. haircuts

wait, 1 could be every album since the black album peaking with st. anger.

I used to think this is great, but it's hard to slog through now, whereas I can listen to RTL 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Compared to what came after, though, it's an absolute masterpiece.

I'm still mad about that Jethro Tull thing.

one of my most burned-in musical memories - when I was a kid, I dug Jethro Tull (I'm pretty sure a 25-cent copy of Benefit was the first record I ever bought with my own money), but I watched them take their Grammy and went "oh bullshit and you all know it"

The only good tune is "To Live Is To Die."

Wrong at the first hurdle. To Live is To Die exemplifies the flaws of this (generallygreat) album.

Also, the lyrics on here make St Anger sound like Highway 61

Their lyrics have always been shit. The vocal style in the earlier albums make their shitiness quite unobtrusive though.

I watched the Classic Album show on the Black Album recently. Bob Rock was just amazed that Hetfield wrote the melody to the lyrics first and then the lyrics. All the Metallica demos just have Jamez going "WHAAAA-NEEEEE-NEEEEE-NAAAA".

"I'm not a poet like Phil Lynott," said Hetfield in the special.

Shit, forget Lynott, he's not even Mustaine. But lyrics aren't what I'm looking for when I throw on Metallica.

Yeah, closest I've gotten to caring about Metallica lyrics (for better or worse) is liking the part where he goes "...damageincorporated".

Creeping Death is kind of cool

don't fuck with razorback

fuck it all and fucking no regrets

the other thing about this album is that for me anyway it is forever tethered to the hesher pride everybody felt when Metallica showed up at the Grammys and completely shredded everything in sight.

So true.

are they doing a vinyl reissue of this? i wonder if the remaster and being on vinyl would give it a little more bottom?

i think some dude recorded the bass parts himself and released the bass-enhanced version of the album. i can't remember what he called it... i think it might have mentioned cliff. perhaps "and justice for cliff" or something.

yeah i think thats right

AND JASON FOR ALL! YOU PEOPLE, SHEESH!

everybody who says To Live is To Die isn't good probably drinks their own pee.

No comparison to Call of Ktulu, no, but it has that really nice quiet passage in the middle....

Also the way the heavy part comes in all off time and ominous after the wimpy acoutsic intro. It's badass. Plus I think Cliff wrote the 'lyrics'

The love for "Frayed Ends of Sanity" here is baffling - come on guys. That Wizard of Oz shit at the beginning?

The way that it's mixed, there are enough bass frequencies between the drums and rhythm guitars. This isn't to say that Jason wasn't shafted or that, if recorded differently with his parts higher in the mix, Justice could have been a different and possibly even better album. Regardless, it's a first-class record that achieved what it set out to do.

No one's listening to (this kind of) metal for the low-end rumble of the bass. Even Cliff, he often seemed to be playing fuzzed out co-lead that blended in with the guitars. I assume Jason isn't doing much different. I think the general thinness of the whole recording is pretty beneficial, because god knows how bad it would have sounded had they brick-walled everything like they did later.

Master of Puppets has great songs but when I listen to it now I just think about how much better it would sound recorded/mixed like AJFH

In my old age, I've mellowed my AJFA bass opinions. They're more in line with peace's and Josh's posts – yeah, there's no bass there, but it still fukkin jams.

I disagree with you, man alive. I do think that Masters sounds richer, fuller, thicker. Even that razor-sharp sheen at the end of The Thing That Should Be is, shall we say, more loaded than any similar riffs on AJFA.

Justice still sounds tinny in a lot of places, and my memories of it from a cassette tape that likely had too much tape inside it, it didn't sound great. CDs didn't help it much either.

BUT – despite all that – it's still a classic album.

the remastered albums feature Cliff loud and clearly, and he added a ton. granted, a lot of the songs, he was just doubling, but he's playing a unique, pulsing bassline on "Jump in the Fire", there's the intro to "For Whom the Bell Tolls", there's his work in Orion, there are the swells that open "Damage Inc", like.....people were listening to Cliff!

MoP still has that '80s reverb-y snare sound (and it's a great sounding classic album, don't get me wrong), but I think of the sound of AJFA as chrome-plated, or like a modernist sculpture.

Neanderthal otm, losing Cliff meant losing a creative force. Just so happened that Jamz and Larz were firing on all cylinders at that point, which made up for it

Oh, for sure, Cliff was an unusual talent, doubly unusual in that he was probably the biggest and brightest musical star of that era of Metallica. I mean, still not sure people were necessarily listening to Metallica *for* Cliff, other than "Orion," but he definitely added a lot (though again, kinda like a third guitarist). But clearly what he added wasn't 100% essential, because " ... And Justice" rules. The band didn't begin to decline until Lars and James shifted gears.

Until they stopped watching CNN together.

Cliff factored a lot more into the writing than Jason did.

he had 9 co-writing credits on RTL/MOP, even had one on "To Live is to Die" on AJFA.

He had 11 total across all albums (including "Anesthesia").

Jason had 3 total across his entire Metallica career.

I've never listened to the riff tracks discs that came with the boxed set. Are there Cliff riff tracks?

no, but there's a pinup calendar with him shirtless

Cliff's rack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kqTcLwUYj8

https://i.imgur.com/FfpCe3A.png

I can't accept this album with bass, it feels like less of a cold, steel sculpture.

I played bass on "One" in my band in high-school, I had to learn the basslines from a transcription book because I couldn't hear them even reading the sheet music. I wonder now if they just made the basslines up (or maybe studied Jason's hands in concert).

they had a cow interpret the frequencies

The only place on the album it's audible to me is the intro to "Eye of the Beholder".

To live is to jason

I hit the final stage of Acceptance with the bass on this album long ago.

It is what it is, and at this point, it's like complaining about the lack of bass on "When Doves Cry".

what's weird about this album for me specifically is that when I was a kid I had a copied cassette version of this album, which was copied from another copied cassette, so I always thought it sounded kind of weird and not very dynamic, but always assumed that's what happened when you listened to a cassette that was a copy of a copy. Then 10 years later as an adult, I randomly buy this album on CD when stumbling upon it in a used CD store and I put it on thinking I would finally hear this album the way it's supposed to sound and it sounds basically the same as my cassette copy.

Still my most listened to Metallica album by far, that shitty cassette copy got a lot of plays.

Today my mind was blown by this fact from a nerdy audio engineering video - the drums on Justice and on the black album were recorded in the same room.

(different place in the room, different engineers of course)

Listening to this album again now. It rules.

So so great. The Black Album otoh is one of those albums I keep trying to enjoy but can’t get into (or even get all the way through).

Yeah, the Black Album...I can get through the first 3 tracks, track 5, and track 7. But why would I?

The Black album is one of those albums where whenever I hear one of the songs in isolation I think it's pretty good, but all the songs together on an album doesn't work

It was my gateway drug. Songs I can still stand to hear:

Sad but True
Holier than Thou
Through the Never
The God That Failed
The Struggle Within

Through the Never is a sweet deep cut

Struggle Within could have fit on Justice (if it were four minutes longer with a long bridge in a different tempo, obviously).

xpost Through the Never is the only one I really like to listen to anymore other than maybe Unforgiven, the others barely scan as songs anymore as they're so omnipresent.

oh I guess I love "Holier Than Thou", even if it occasionally feels like Metallica by way of GNR.

tell ya though, the album really overrelies on its polish, like...a lot of the songs sound terrible live. I went to see Metallica at Rockville where they did two sets on two nights and one night, it was just The Black Album back to front and it was so boring I left early.

and of course missed "Damage Inc" in the encore. dammit.

Not to keep sullying the AJFA thread talking about the black album, but the way they play the chorus of Sad But True live is so funny to me. Instead of playing "you know it's" as a triplet they do it as 8th notes, so it turns it into this weird bar of 9/8 (plus another 2 beats). It's so dumb-smart (or smart-dumb), when you're used to the album version it sounds like time slowing down. Very indicative of their modular, "whatever works" approach to meter that makes them them.

things I love about AJFA
- the guitar sound
- the density of riffs
- the beautiful melodies
- the weird Bruegel-esque band portrait in the liner notes
- two songs over 9 minutes long

I guess it’s more of an ukiyo-e thing, the one with the gavel

Jordan I've noticed that weird alteration to Sad But True, it just absolutely fucks with my brain because it sounds wrong.

I feel like James also made a minor alteration in the fingering for "Call of Ktulu" live in all performances of the song since like 1999, it sounds similar enough that most don't notice but involves much less frequent finger movements.

I tried to seek out other thrash like AJFA during the pandemic, and largely arrived at Evile, mid-period Heathen, and 90s Artillery, and even then it's not quite what they were doing.

Quoting myself from five years ago: "The lack of bass never bothered me on this album, but there are these annoying oomph sounds in the negative space between two guitar notes that I find very irritating."

Is no one else bothered by this? I returned my first CD copy because of these noises, only to discover they were part of the record. Just listen to Blackened from 2:36 to 3:05, but it's everywhere. I want to hear riffs but I only hear oomph.

I just found out that I can get rid of those noises by filtering out everything around 150 Hz. Such an improvement!

I do know when I played it through my computer speakers in high school, the speakers frequently made a noise that sounded like objects were falling over in the cabinet under them, a very 'rumbly' sound, which might be the same thing?

listening to it now and I can definitely hear the oomph sounds, I'd never noticed before, possibly just naturally filtered out by the copying process on my cassette copy of a copy which I had as a kid and which is still what I mentally hear when I think of this album.

Now I think I'm going to end up with a headache if I listen to this full album, so weird, thanks a lot ArchCarrier

Maybe it's because it's always been a headphone album for me, but I'm not hearing what you guys are hearing (on Tidal through my laptop, good Sony headphones). I hear bass in the mix, but that's it. It's not even, like, Jlin levels of bass. Just some low end, exactly what people always used to bitch wasn't there!

I've noticed that thing with the palm-muted guitars on occasion, only on certain systems though (like cranked through the car on an old ipod). I think it's because they really pushed the lows on the guitars, but they're really these low mid frequencies that can sound weird on certain speakers, if your system is also emphasizing those frequencies.

yeah, I tried again on headphones and it wasn't there so I guess it's just these speakers plugged into my computer

The God That Failed is the Black Album song I find popping into my head the most these days.

the weirdest one to me is "My Friend of Misery".

the verse feels like heavy metal gone emo, whereas the chorus feels like hair metal with the big slick chorus and its harmonies. then it has the closest thing to an old school Metallica harmonized lead break on it towards the end.

Production on black album is so boring/ middle of the road, I think that’s the problem

“Sad but true” at 1.25x with ajfa production ftw

I was at the Monsters of Rock festival in 1988 when Metallica previewed this album, only playing a couple of songs from it, tentatively, and asking the crowd what they thought