…And Justice for All is the fourth album by Thrash Metal band Metallica, released on September 7, 1988, by Elektra Records. It is their first full-length to feature bassist Jason Newsted, who passed an audition held after the death of Cliff Burton. Following the band's breakthrough with 1986's Master of Puppets, this album gravitated Metallica further into the mainstream by being their first top-ten album on the Billboard 200. Included in this album is "One", which spawned the band's first music video, which used clips from the film adaptation of the book Johnny Got His Gun. Cliff Burton receives a Posthumous Credit for the mostly instrumental "To Live Is to Die", which was based on unused bass lines by him and features a brief spoken word section reading a passage found in his personal notebook.
Musically, this album is known for having more Progressive Metal leanings than usual and, more infamously, having its bass nearly inaudible. The near-absence of bass was a deliberate choice by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, but the explanation for this has not been consistent. In 2009, Hetfield said it was because the bass followed too closely to his rhythm guitar. According to Hetfield and Ulrich, in 2019, it was because their hearing was shot from heavy touring, and they did not turn down the bass so much as they had everything else turned up.
This album has no connection to the 1979 film ...And Justice for All, aside from lifting its title from the United States Pledge of Allegiance.
Tracklist:
- "Blackened" (6:42)
- "...And Justice for All" (9:46)
- "Eye of the Beholder" (6:25)
- "One" (7:26)
- "The Shortest Straw" (6:35)
- "Harvester of Sorrow" (5:45)
- "The Frayed Ends of Sanity" (7:43)
- "To Live Is to Die" (9:49)
- "Dyers Eve" (5:14)
Principal Members:
- James Hetfield - Vocals, rhythm guitar
- Lars Ulrich - Drums
- Kirk Hammett - Lead guitar
- Jason Newsted - Bass
Do you trope what I trope?:
- And I Must Scream: True to its inspiration, "One" is about a soldier who's been reduced to an insensate hunk of still-conscious meat after stepping on a land mine, ironically unable to scream.
- Calling the Old Man Out: "Dyers Eve" is about lashing out at one's parents.
- Epic Instrumental Opener: Almost all the songs take more than a minute for the first vocals to appear. The title track takes more than two.
- Epic Rocking: Most of the songs qualify, with the title track (9:46) and "To Live Is to Die" (9:49) being among Metallica's longest ones.
- Gaia's Lament: "Blackened" foretells the end of civilization through environmental catastrophe.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Though the album was recorded with the Compact Disc format in mind, the band still gave a nod to the lingering visibility of the vinyl record. Fitting the album's name and its Greco-Roman cover art, each side of the double-LP release is labeled with Roman numerals (i.e. I, II, III, and IV) instead of traditional letters or numbers. The cassette release, likewise, labels its sides "I" and "II" on the inlay (though the tape shell uses the standard "1" and "2").
- Laughing Mad: James laughs at the end of the last chorus of "The Frayed Ends of Sanity".
- Longest Song Goes Last: Inverted. The album closes with "Dyers Eve", the shortest track at 5:14.
- Nobody Loves the Bassist: This album is infamous for having its bass mixed very low.
- Precision F-Strike: A very pointed one delivered in "Dyers Eve", the closing track, to show how angry James is:"Dear mother, dear father
You clipped my wings before I learned to fly
Unspoiled, unspoken
I've outgrown that fucking lullaby" - Protest Song: This is the most politically-charged Metallica album, with songs protesting government corruption (the title track), censorship ("Eye of the Beholder"), and war ("One").
- Sampling: The beginning of "The Frayed Ends of Sanity" samples the chant of the Palace Guards from The Wizard of Oz.
- Sanity Slippage Song: "The Frayed Ends of Sanity""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" - Shout-Out: "One" is loosely based on the anti-war novel Johnny Got His Gun, about a soldier in World War I trapped in a living Hell after being blown up by a land mine, and the music video features footage from the book's film adaptation. Metallica actually bought the rights to the movie in order to continue distributing the video without paying royalty fees, which had the unintended side effect of removing the film from print until 2008 because the band forgot that they still owned it.
- Spoken Word in Music: The only lyrics in "To Live Is to Die" are a spoken word section right after the climax.
- War Is Hell: "One" is adapted from the Dalton Trumbo novel Johnny Got His Gun. Accordingly, the song reflects the leftist writer's anti-war beliefs, depicting war as a parasitic practice that only causes agony to those who actually have to fire the guns, as depicted through the plight of a hospitalized World War I soldier whose limbs and face were blown off by a landmine.
