It’s interesting that the first few weeks of recording hit a snag. The band’s producer from previous albums, Flemming Rasmussen, was initially unavailable at the time Metallica wanted to start, so the band hired Mike Clink, the man who was behind Guns ‘N Roses “Appetite for Destruction” album, to do the job. However it quickly became obvious that the partnership wasn’t going to work, and when Rasmussen became available a few weeks after initially being asked, he was rushed into the studio, and Clink was relieved of his duties. What did come from that idle time was the band recording two more cover songs as a way of trying to find the sound they wanted for the new album, and thus came the versions of Budgie’s “Breadfan” and Diamond Head’s “The Prince” that found their way onto the singles B-sides. At least those first couple of weeks had been put to good use.
Has there been a more brutal, stark and anger-filled opening track to an album than “Blackened”? Everything you wanted to know about what Hetfield and Ulrich were feeling at the time is laid out here for all to bear witness. And it is the first indication of the differences that lie in wait for the listener from their previous albums. “Blackened” is just a fabulous song, spitting in venom and leaving the listener in no doubt as to where the world is headed, played out by double time kick drums and furious pace of the guitars which drives the song through the roof, turning up the volume and having the house shake from the output. Hetfield’s lyrics have always been spectacular, but when you hear lines such as “Smouldering decay, take her breath away, Millions of our years, in minutes, disappears, Darkening in vain, decadence remains, All is said and done, never is the sun” - and “Fire is the outcome of hypocrisy, Darkest potency, In the exit of humanity, Colour our world blackened”, then the anger within comes to the surface. A truly amazing track. This is then followed by the equally remarkable title track “...And Justice for All”, as frank and dirty about the justice and political system as the opening song was about the environment and nuclear winter. Within all the lyrical fire though comes the music itself, where we begin to hear the possibility of a progressive thrash sound, a metal sound that does not fit the traditional theme of thrash but intertwines it with the basis of a progressive metal sound that also does not fit that category. Winding out for almost ten minutes, ‘Justice’ is a brilliantly produced song that the fans loved. These opening two songs on the album should have been played much more often than they ever were following the end of the Damaged Justice world tour, but the band found a way to suggest that the fans found them too long and so removed them from their set list. Surely nothing could have been further from the truth. Both are ground-breaking songs for the genre, and live they were even better. To me, this was more of the band’s change in direction after this album than the work of the fans.
More was to follow with “Eye of the Beholder”, one of those songs that latched onto me from the first time I heard it and wouldn’t let go. Lars’s double kick drum beat throughout the majority of the song keeps the drive going, with Hetfield’s lyrics touching on freedom of speech and civil liberties again dominating the dark agenda of the album. Topping off this is the single “One”, famous at the time as it was the first song that Metallica had produced a music video for. They even produced a “Two of One” video with the original version and the single cut version, along with Lars being interviewed. Everyone at the time had it, and watched it over and over. The video was amazing, combining scenes from the movie “Johnny Got His Gun” with the band jamming the song. It was unique, such that even when the band had been cool before for NOT doing music videos, they were now cool because they HAD done one, and it was amazing.
The second half of the album does not let up, doubling down on the opening four songs and pushing onwards. “The Shortest Straw” is an absolute gem of a song. Once again James is spitting his diatribe through the speakers at you, this time on the subject of blacklisting and civil liberties, and driven by that great riffing throughout and Lars’ double time drumming again. “The Shortest Straw” is the greatest song to drum to, none of it easy but it is so much fun. The tempo is superb and yet the whole song flows along brilliantly. Just awesome. This is followed by “Harvester of Sorrow” which dials it back in tempo and doubles down on the heavy riff. James continues to write lyrics along the lines of the darkness that has preceded it on this album. It makes for a strange choice as the first single released from the album, though as it is the second shortest song (apart from the closing “Dyers Eve”) perhaps that is the only reason it made the grade.
“The Frayed Ends of Sanity”, like “Eye of the Beholder”, is another of those songs that just leeched onto me from the first time I heard it, and I have never lost my love of it since. It has a great singalong chorus - “Old habits reappear, Fighting the fear of fear, Growing conspiracy, everyone's after me, Frayed ends of sanity, Hear them calling, Hear them calling me”. This leads into what is, for the most part, the album’s instrumental, “To Live is to Die”. This song is pieced together a medley of riffs written by Cliff Burton before his demise, and you can hear by the structure of the song that this is the case. There is a spoken word paragraph in the middle of the song, half of which were words by Cliff, the other half from other sources. It’s a nice touch to have something marking Cliff’s final act with the band, and to have Jason playing the bass as well.
The album comes to its scintillating conclusion with “Dyers Eve”, another James Hetfield lyric-fest shredding parents a new one with an amazing vitriolic spray that leaves no one in any doubt as to his feelings on the matter, with lines such as ‘children seen but are not heard, tear out everything inspired’ and ‘clipped my wings before I learned to fly’ and ‘same thing I always heard from you, do as I say not as I do’ are sung with such venom it is hard to fathom hat events lay behind the words. Not to be outdone, the music underneath the words is just as furious, with the drumming especially being particularly amazing. What is true from this is that there is no way Lars could play this song today the way he plays it on the album.
The major sticking point to this album, both at the time of its release and in the 35 years since, is the lack of the bass guitar in the mix. Even deaf Freddie could tell you from the outset that for some reason, you can’t hear Jason Newsted’s bass guitar on the album. Even on the song that pertains to use bass riffs written by Cliff Burton, it barely registers. The stark wall of guitars is missing the bottom end. Does it make any difference to the joyous enjoyment of this album? No. Absolutely not. But surely there had to be a reason behind it? As it turns out, the excuses for why Jason played all of his parts, and then had them almost eradicated are many, and seem to have changed over the years as well. Claims that James and Lars’ ears were shot from touring, and they couldn’t hear the guitars properly so they just kept turning them up in the mix, is the most bandied excuse. Jason held his tongue until the recording of the follow up album before telling the press that he had never been happy with the final mix of the album. In the long run, there has never been a satisfactory answer given to why the band hired a new bass guitarist to replace their fallen colleague, but then pretty much wiped him off the recording of their next album. Maybe the final insult came just a few years ago, when “... And Justice for All” was remastered and re-released for its 30th anniversary, and the band had the chance to do a remixed version, bringing the bass back into the mix and letting the world hear just what it COULD have sounded like. But no, it was announced that the sound of the album would remain, preserving how it was. What a missed opportunity. If for no other reason, most probably every person who owns the original version of the album would have bought the remixed version simply because it had the bass guitar audible. I would have.
We all have those moments in our lives when we remember the first time we heard a song or an artist, and we also have memories of certain albums the first time we heard them. That is definitely the case for me with “...And Justice for All”. In fact, there are many memories. Getting the album, bringing it home, and placing it on the stereo for the very first time, and hearing that beginning of “Blackened” coming out of the speakers. That’s a life moment right there. I remember the first gathering of our friends' group when we listened to the whole album together for the first time. And then of the album being in my car forever, on constant rotation. I remember that New Years Eve a few months later, and “... And Justice for All” was centre stage at full volume.
For me, the album was a game changer. Metallica’s music had spent the better part of the previous three years being front and centre of my music listening, but this was different. This was angry – pure anger. This was aggression - rampant aggression. This was fire, this was rage. Hetfield’s vocals had transformed from the high-pitched screaming of his youth to the harder nastier spitting tunes of the world wise young man he had become. His guitar blazed with the triple time downstrokes of his picking hand, while Kirk Hammet’s lead flew off the hardwood through the speakers at the same velocity. And Lars’s drumming was at its peak, worthy of the unofficial title of greatest drummer in the world. The time changes, the building of each track into its own masterpiece through music and vocals, and the connection of band and fan as a result is the ultimate conclusion.
Nine months later I saw Metallica at Sydney’s Hordern Pavillion on the Damaged Justice World Tour, a concert that still ranks as the best I have ever seen. It left me physically exhausted and yet mentally fully engaged. The most amazing adrenaline rush of my life. It is something that could never be reproduced or repeated, a truth that has been confirmed over the years. Anyone who missed that concert missed one of the most amazing experiences of their lives. But surely no one did... heh heh heh...
“...And Justice for All” remains the place where Metallica had climbed Everest and stood astride its peak and stared down below at all those attempting to follow. It is probably also the place that broke the band. James blew out his vocal chords and decided to rebuild it, and the result was still a great voice but in a different place than he had been before. Lars’s time changes and furious double kick never eventuated again, with the man himself pulling back in tempo and difficulty to eventually become a shadow of those glory days. Having conquered the metal world, the 1990’s saw a different band emerge, and a new fan base to follow them, one that had trouble working out why this album was such a ground-breaking and amazing achievement. 35 years later, this remains, in my opinion, Metallica’s last great album, the last of four albums that changed the face of heavy metal.
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