...And Justice For All: 20 Years Later

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?

i was thinking of making a poll of songs that use that wizard of oz shit (prince, mos def, etc.).

listen to the riff underneath the solo in "frayed ends of sanity", that shit is awesome.

I'd love to see that poll! (Can't forget "Jungle Love".)

Me, I really could've done without "Harvester of Sorrow". But then we'd have had an 8-song album with a configuration/track sequence a little too similar to a watered-down Master of Puppets, which itself was a kinda rehash of Ride the Lightning. Diminishing returns, etc.

AND JASON FOR ALL! YOU PEOPLE, SHEESH!

i didn't name it!

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

the former prime minister of india Morarji Desai drank his own urine for decades until his death at the age of 99. I'm not sure how he felt about that song however.

All this I cannot bear to witness.

AND JASON FOR ALL! YOU PEOPLE, SHEESH!

i just found it. it's called and justice for jason. it doesn't sound all that great. the dude who made it really overdid the bass, imho

didn't Cliff steal the 'lyrics' from To Live is to Die from some sci fi movie or something

It was a speech by Merlin from Excalibur!

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

My god this is wrong.

Just listening to the intro to the title track and thinking it's one of the prettiest and saddest acoustic guitar passages I know.

this album is grate! Legend of Zelda metal!!!

I remember hearing this version on a bootleg in a used CD store listening station when I was a kid, and realizing that the best riffs are the actually the ones under the solos (maybe because James doesn't have to sing, or even lock in with another rhythm guitarist): https://youtu.be/WAfcp54co4M?t=257

I don't hear any double bass on that demo in the verse? Sounds like a simplified drum beat compared to the studio recording? Unless that was the joke...

Or it could be the shittiness of the recording and my waning hearing. I hear something approximating double bass but it's faint

I hear something approximating double bass but it's faint

That's our Lars ....

;)

I'm on headphones and can definitely hear it throughout (not a lot of attack on that demo recording), and his time is super tight compared to most live shows.

Lars rules

Lars is like Ringo: love him or not, I can't imagine anyone else in his place.

Or I guess I can imagine it, but wouldn't want it.

Protect Lars

Imagine being in your 50s and having legions of lunkheads caring about your double kick skills

Seriously, not least because all the young guns trigger anyway.

My god the instrumental section beginning four minutes into Eye of the Beholder is tight.

yeah that's my fav part of the song

i listened to that tune a lot during Trump's inauguration week lol

Great track.

the drums on “harvester of sorrow” are so fucking good

Best Metallica album. Fuck bass.

otm

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.