...And Justice for All

...And Justice for All
Studio album by Metallica
Released	August 25, 1988 (1988-08-25)[1]
Recorded	January 28–May 1, 1988 (1988-05-01) at One on One Recording Studios in Los Angeles[2][3]
Genre	Thrash metal
Length	65:26
Label	Elektra, Vertigo
Producer	Metallica and Flemming Rasmussen
Metallica chronology
Master of Puppets (1986) ...And Justice for All (1988) Metallica (1991)
Singles from ...And Justice for All
"Harvester of Sorrow" Released: August 28, 1988[4] "Eye of the Beholder" Released: October 30, 1988[5] "One" Released: January 10, 1989[6]

...And Justice for All is the fourth studio album by the American heavy metal band Metallica. The album was released on August 25, 1988 through Elektra Records. It was the group's first studio album to feature bassist Jason Newsted, following the death of Cliff Burton in 1986. Newsted had previously participated on the cover album The $5.98 E.P.: Garage Days Re-Revisited EP, which was his first recorded work with Metallica. ...And Justice for All was certified 8x platinum by the RIAA on June 9, 2003.^[7]

The front cover depicts the statue of Lady Justice cracked, bound by ropes, her breasts exposed, and both of her scales filled with dollars. The words "…And Justice for All" are written in graffiti to the right. The cover was made by Stephen Gorman after a concept by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich.^[3] ...And Justice for All was the last Metallica album that Rasmussen worked on as a co-producer. The album was initially released on one vinyl disc, but soon after re-released (without additional tracks) as a double-album.

Background and production

...And Justice for All was co-produced by Flemming Rasmussen. Rasmussen, who had also co-produced the previous Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets albums, was initially unavailable. Metallica chose not to wait and started working with Mike Clink (who had caught attention as the producer of the Guns N' Roses album Appetite for Destruction). But things did not work out as they forecasted: Clink was eventually replaced by Rasmussen. He was credited for engineering the drums and for helping recording two cover songs ("Breadfan" and "The Prince") that were released as b-sides of the "Harvester of Sorrow" CD single. The songs were later included on the compilation album Garage Inc. in 1998.

Music and lyrics

The album's dark lyrical material features a conceptual uniformity around notions of political and legal injustice, as seen through the prism of war, censored speech, and nuclear brinkmanship. This is musically accompanied by what may be the most complex song structures in Metallica's discography. The arrangements are particularly complicated for a thrash metal album, being likened to progressive metal in their complexity.^[8] The album is also noted for its nearly-inaudible bass guitar (Newsted was quoted as saying "The Justice album wasn't something that really felt good for me, because you really can't hear the bass")^[9] and dry, sterile production, and therefore has been called a "slightly flawed masterpiece and the pinnacle of Metallica's progressive years" by Allmusic.com.^[10]

Cliff Burton receives co-writers credit on "To Live Is to Die" as the bass line was a medley of unused bass recordings Burton had performed prior to his death. While the original recordings are not used on the track, the compositions are credited as written by Burton and are played by Metallica's bassist at the time, Jason Newsted. The words spoken towards the end of the song ("when a man lies, he murders some part of the world. These are the pale deaths which men miscall their lives...") by Hetfield were written by German poet Paul Gerhardt, but are misattributed to Burton in the liner notes. Still, the second half of the speech ("All this I cannot bear to witness any longer. Cannot the kingdom of salvation take me home?") were written by Burton.

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[11]
BBC Music	mixed[12]
The Daily Vault	A−[13]
Robert Christgau	C+[14]
Rolling Stone	[15]

...And Justice for All was Metallica's best-selling album upon its release. Metallica released four singles, "Eye of the Beholder", "Harvester of Sorrow", "...And Justice for All" and "One".

...And Justice for All was Metallica's breakthrough album and reached number six on the Billboard 200.^[16] Though it would soon be over-shadowed commercially by the band's following album Metallica (1991), ...And Justice for All nevertheless confirmed Metallica's large-scale arena status.

The album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance in 1989, but with much controversy, it lost to Jethro Tull's Crest of a Knave. In 2007, the win was named one of the 10 biggest upsets in Grammy history by Entertainment Weekly.^[17]

The guitar solo of "One" was ranked number seven in Guitar World's compilation of the 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of all time.^[18] In this same magazine's 2006 reader poll, …And Justice for All placed 12th on a list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Albums.^[19]

The album was ranked at number nine in IGN's Top 25 Metal Albums.^[20] The album is featured in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Kerrang! magazine listed the album at No. 42 among the "100 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums of All Time".^[21]

Metallica released its first music video for "One", after years of resisting pressure to release music videos for its tracks.^[22] The video incited controversy among their fans, who had valued the band's apparent opposition to MTV and other forms of mainstream commercial metal.

Live performances

Hammett noted the length of the songs being problematic for fans and the band. "Touring behind it, we realized that the general consensus was that songs were too fucking long," he said. "One day after we played 'Justice' and got off the stage one of us said, 'we're never fucking playing that song again.'"^[23] He is also quoted in an interview for SoWhat! magazine as saying "'Justice' was a bit much for me. I couldn't stand watching the front row start to yawn by the eight or ninth minute."^{[citation needed]}

In spite of this, the song "One" quickly gained a permanent fixture in the band's live setlist since the release of the album.^[24] The only other song from …And Justice for All that has come close to this is "Harvester of Sorrow", a song that was played live heavily after the album's release but has only begun to be played again recently. "Blackened" has also recently seen some exposure in the World Magnetic Tour and for the Sonisphere festival.

When the song "One" is played live, the war sounds heard at the beginning of the song are often lengthened to sometimes around two minutes instead of the original seventeen seconds. When the war sounds have reached a conclusion, after having a pitch-black stage, fire will erupt from various points of the stage.

Sixteen years after "Dyers Eve" was recorded, on March 5, 2004, the band performed the song in its entirety for the first time ever on the Madly in Anger with the World Tour at The Forum in Inglewood, California.^[25]

On June 28, 2007, Metallica played the title track for the first time since October 1989, in Lisbon on the first show of their Sick of the Studio '07 tour^[26] and made it a set-fixture for the remainder of that routing. In 2008–2010, "...And Justice for All" was played again on rare occasions during their World Magnetic Tour.

Also on September 19, 2009, "The Shortest Straw" made its way back into the set lists during its World Magnetic Tour after a 12 year absence at the Montreal Bell Center, not being played live since February 9, 1997. It was also played at the Sonisphere Festival in England in 2011.

On December 8, 2011, Metallica performed "To Live Is to Die" in its entirety during the exclusive 30 Years of Metallica concerts at The Fillmore in San Francisco, California.

To date, "The Frayed Ends of Sanity" remains the only song from the album that has never been performed live in its entirety. Instead, the band has played segments of it during solos, impromptu jams, or in a "Justice" medley featured on the live album Live Shit: Binge and Purge.

"Eye of the Beholder" has not been played live in its entirety since 1989. One such performance appears on Metallica's live extended play, Six Feet Down Under.

Track listing

All lyrics written by James Hetfield, except "To Live Is to Die" by Paul Gerhardt^[3]. 

"The Prince" was also released on the "Harvester of Sorrow" and "One" CD singles, and later on the Garage Inc. covers album.

Personnel

• James Hetfield – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, harmony and acoustic guitars, second guitar solo on track 8
• Lars Ulrich – drums
• Kirk Hammett – lead guitar
• Jason Newsted – bass

Production ^[3]

• Metallica; Flemming Rasmussen – producers
• Flemming Rasmussen – engineer
• Mike Clink – drum engineer on track 5 and 6
• Toby Wright – additional engineer
• Steve Thompson; Michael Barbiero – mixing
• George Cowan – assistant mixing engineer
• Bob Ludwig – audio mastering

• James Hetfield; Lars Ulrich – cover concept
• Stephen Gorman; Pushead – illustrations
• Ross Halfin – photography
• Reiner Design Consultants, Inc. – design, layout

Chart positions

Album

Singles

Certification

Since the beginning of the SoundScan era in 1991, ...And Justice for All has sold 5,330,000 copies.^[30]

In popular culture

• The album's most famous song "One" was featured as a playable track in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock as one of the most difficult songs to play and in Guitar Hero: Metallica, along with "Dyers Eve" and "The Shortest Straw".
• The songs "...And Justice for All" and "Blackened" are available as downloadable songs for Rock Band 2.
• On the TV show Californication, the title of the Season 4 finale is named out of the album's title track.
• A brief snippet of the opening riff to "The Shortest Straw" is played in the 2010 indie film Hesher during the scene where Hesher meets TJ for the first time.

References