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Metallica ...And Justice for All Release Date: 1988 09 06 Running Time: 65:10 Label: Elektra Rating:

The most immediately noticeable aspect of ...And Justice for All isn't Metallica's still-growing compositional sophistication or the apocalyptic lyrical portrait of a society in decay. It's the weird, bone-dry production. The guitars buzz thinly, the drums click more than pound, and Jason Newsted's bass is nearly inaudible. It's a shame that the cold, flat sound obscures some of the sonic details, because ...And Justice for All is Metallica's most complex, ambitious work; every song is an expanded suite, with only two of the nine tracks clocking in at under six minutes. It takes a while to sink in, but given time, ...And Justice for All reveals some of Metallica's best material. It also reveals the band's determination to pull out all the compositional stops, throwing in extra sections, odd-numbered time signatures, and dense webs of guitar arpeggios and harmonized leads. At times, it seems like they're doing it simply because they can; parts of the album lack direction and probably should have been trimmed for momentum's sake. Pacing-wise, the album again loosely follows the blueprint of Ride the Lightning, though not as closely as Master of Puppets. This time around, the fourth song -- once again a ballad with a thrashy chorus and outro -- gave the band one of the unlikeliest Top 40 singles in history; "One" was an instant metal classic, based on Dalton Trumbo's antiwar novel -Johnny Got His Gun and climaxing with a pulverizing machine-gun imitation. As a whole, opinions on ...And Justice for All remain somewhat divided: some think it's a slightly flawed masterpiece and the pinnacle of Metallica's progressive years; others see it as bloated and overambitious. Either interpretation can be readily supported, but the band had clearly taken this direction as far as it could. The difficulty of reproducing these songs in concert eventually convinced Metallica that it was time for an overhaul. Steve Huey, All Music Guide

Tracks:

	Title	Composer	Time
1	Blackened	Hetfield, Newsted, Ulrich	6:40
2	...And Justice for All	Hammett, Hetfield, Ulrich	9:44
3	Eye of the Beholder	Hammett, Hetfield, Ulrich	6:25
4	One	Hetfield, Ulrich	7:24
5	Shortest Straw	Hetfield, Ulrich	6:35
6	Harvester of Sorrow	Hetfield, Ulrich	5:42
7	Frayed Ends of Sanity	Hammett, Hetfield, Ulrich	7:40
8	To Live Is to Die	Hetfield, Ulrich, Burton	9:48
9	Dyers Eve	Hammett, Hetfield, Ulrich	5:12

Other Releases:

...And Justice for All [Deluxe Edition] Release Date: 2008 Label: Warner Bros.

...And Justice for All [Bonus Track] Release Date: 2006 Label: Metallica

...And Justice for All [Japan Bonus Track] Release Date: 1998 Label: Sony

...And Justice for All [Import Bonus CD] Release Date: 1994 Label: Alex

...And Justice for All [UK Bonus Track] Release Date: 1988 Label: Smji

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