Album Details

• Artist: Metallica
• Album: ...and Justice For All
• Label: Elektra
• Year of Release: 1988
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: solitaryman on 2011-09-27

Established, up-and-coming, about to break out in a big way...whatever you want to say, after Master of Puppets, Metallica were planted firmly on a platform that was seemingly preordained to rise like the finest cream to the top of the metal world. Of course, their worldwide fame would still be an album's worth of material away, but let's not forget that, sandwiched between the underground classic Master of Puppets and the universal breakthrough of Metallica was a diamond in the (bass-less) rough, a progressive thrash juggernaut that both gets it's fair share of credit and still not enough of it. ...And Justice For All is, for my money, Metallica at their absolute finest.

Much has been made of the production value, whether or not it was intentional to hide newcomer Jason Newsted behind the mix, to underplay how much Cliff Burton meant to the band, or simply due to lack of attention paid to what was being recorded. Regardless, this cannot diminish how overwhelmingly awesome these tracks are. "Blackened" has one of the most powerful choruses I've yet to hear in a metal song, and technically speaking is evidence of how far Metallica had come from their Kill 'Em All roots. The title track is monstrously epic, never running on too long and consistently delivering the good in riffage and solid kitwork by everyone's favorite angry gnome, Lars Ulrich. "Eye Of The Beholder" has been a unheralded favorite of Metfans for years now, sadly underappreciated and interestingly departed rhythmically from the rest of the album. "One" was the band's first music video and, in an abstract sense, was the beginning of their universal fame and fortunes. As overplayed as it's become for me, I still cannot help but feel every painful, depressing line, every flourishing guitar line and, how can anyone forget, one of the best full-tilt breakdowns in metal history. "The Shortest Straw" just doesn't let up, perhaps the most punishing track of 'em all. "Harvester of Sorrow" nods at the next step in Metallica's evolution, a mid-paced groover with heavy-handed percussion as much of a focal point as the repetitive riffs. "The Frayed Ends of Sanity" is forever to be known as the "Wizard of Oz song" because of it's intro, but that masks an otherwise solid track. Take the spoken word section out and "To Live Is To Die" is one of the best metal instrumentals you're going to find. And to top it all off, "Dyer's Eve" kicks you square in the junk with a steel-toed boot of more aggression than the rest of the album...combined!

Yes, this album means a lot to me beyond the quality of the music within. It was my first actual taste of metal, randomly picked out of a father's album collection by a (perhaps too) curious young boy. I was floored by how...fast it was. Just totally taken back by it. How awesome it must have been, I thought, to be able to play so fast, and yet still be so catchy. I remember humming the breakdown to "One", singing the chorus of the title track, and nodding my head shamelessly to the internal sounds of "Eye of the Beholder" playing in my own head. All this at an age when metal so complex probably should have been all but confounding to me. My score does not, however, reflect that, but instead reflects what I actually consider to be, after careful consideration, Metallica's golden moment, a pinnacle they were destined to never overcome from that point on.  

User Reviews and Comments

Review:

on 2012-01-09 CharlesMartel Said:

Metallica seem to have been around for ages. So long in fact that they have all but forgotten their roots. They started out as the brash longhairs who ripped up conventions about metal and remoulded them in their own style. They have ended up wealthy and bloated arseholes who think only of protecting their own interests and guarding their fortunes. Lars Ulrich, in particular, has become almost a byword for self-important twat.

And the music, well that has metamorphosed too. As anyone who has listened to the truly dreadful "St Anger" will tell you, this is a band which has the capacity to produce some truly ground breaking music and follow it with some undescribably bad horse-poo. I own only one Metallica album, and this is it. When I bought it was fascinated with it, the sound and the energy and the fact that the rock music of the seventies I had loved and then grown tired of as it changed into its own bloated self-parody, had grown into Metallica. Ironic then that Metallica should suffer the same fate.

These days, I have little time for the album. I have outgrown it in the same way the Metallica have outgrown the band which released it. If I had to identify a point when Metallica ceased to be what they were and became, or started to become what they are, then "And Justice for All" would be it. It is not the clear production which identifies each instrument playing; it is not the increasing use of more complex melodies. No, the real giveaway is that the songs have started to grow in length. It is as if Metallica have reached a point where people listen to them, and now they feel they have to say something. Trouble was, people didn't listen to Metallica for that reason.

The death of Cliff Burton may have had something to do with it, but it is otherwise ironic that just at the time their record label decided to throw the whole weight of its marketing machine behind Metallica, they come up with an album which disappoints the fan base they had created. And yet with "Blackened" as an opener it started off so promising. But oh how quickly it faded. I shouldn't be surprised really, thrash metal always had inherent limitations in what it could do. Metallica had outrun those limitations by now and as they became wealthy rock stars, they really forgot what it was all about in the first place.
Rating: 3/10