And Justice For All

This is going to be more brief than previous entries...i just don't have that kind of stamina.  I've been listening to Metallica without break for at least a week and a half, the last couple of days focused on Justice through St. Anger. 

Even though Jason's bass is lost in the mix the guitar tone is so thick and fat it's not needed.  The kick drum on this album is HUGE!!!!  Listen to this album on a good system with a subwoofer and you will literally feel the metal.

Blackened contains some great song writing, drumming, and guitar playing.  The sound on this album is orchestral.  The song structures are sweeping.  They alternate bewteen overpowering and softly subtle.  The last minute of Blackened is totally balls out.  It's thrash.  My old pal Brian used to say Justice is where they sold out....I don't see it here.  This track is killer.

All the screech that was in early Hetfield vocals is gone.  His voice is more rugged and harsh. 

And Justice For All....starts out with some mellow guitar plucking.  Cool interplay beween both guitars and then when the drums kick in and the power chords strike, it's monstrous and epic.  It's the sound of triumph.  This song comes in at almost 10 minutes.  Great simple tom fills by Lars.  Bouncy lead riff interplay with the tom fills before the Judas Priest twin harmony leads.  This song just goes on and on in that 2 minute intro just boucing about. 

Hetfield takes a turn from getting into some personal demons on Puppets to a sociological critique here.  Justice is epic and huge and ferocious while not full of any filler.  A very tough thing for a 10 minute song. 

Eye of the Beholder...a mid tempo start.  Great lyrical content regarding perspective.  Some sort of flanger-sounding effect on the vocal.  Great rhythm guitar on this track as well.  A lot of great stop/start parts.  The solos sound layered about 4 minutes in and give it an orchestral string section feel. 

One...Metallica's first hit.  What a way to make a mark on the mainstream.  It starts out so simple and subdued.  Kirk's solos are so heartfelt and moving.  There is intangible emotion flowing through each note.  When Lars's 20 gigaton kick drum kicks in it gives this simple intro weight.  Again here's a song that seems to be a simple criticism of war, but James could also metaphorically attacking his attacks of frozen panic.  The protagonist is living but not feeling.  He hates life.  He goes through it but doesn't want to.  He's separate from it and wants to just die, it'd be so much easier than being this entity who is unable to realate.  When this song escalates to the "darkness imprisoning me..." part it just lurches, stops, lurches, stops and is so brutally heavy and fast at the same time.  Lars's double bass in conjunction with the rest of the band is just awesome. 

The Shorest Straw chugs right along with a heavy groove and some cool drumming by Lars again.  Good guitars here. Once the song kicks into full speed it's uptempo and blistering.  Another really good song. 

Harvester of Sorrow....cool picked string melody.  Then the distorted guitars pick up the tune and then it kicks into the main riff.  The drums remind me of an idling funny car.  Slow paced and heavy as fuck. 

The Frayed Ends of Sanity...the Wizard of Oz flying monkey chant makes this song so incredibly awesome.  Saw them play the beginning of this live back in 89.  They only did it for about a minute but it was great.  Lots of stop/starts in the beginning of this one.  Once the vocals begin the song just slays.  Every song on this album just has so many parts.  Each one works with and compliments the next.  The Black Album was the only logical place to go after this. There was no way to top the songwriting on this, in regards to epicness.  Slayer followed Reign in Blood with South of Heaven.  Pantera just kept trying to get more kick ass with each release and the songwriting started to suffer. 

To Live is to Die...A Monumental Instrumental.  Slow, heavy, and sludgy.  Cool leads in the middle.  The dirge just keeps plodding on.  It could send you into a trance.  A great mellow interlude in the middle.  The harmonic guitar sounds, especially when the volume is turned up and down on one of the guitars remind me again of an orchestra...I actuallly thought there were strings on this song until I really listened.  I believe they get these sounds out of their guitars.   Cool soft acoustical ending that leads right into....

Dyer's Eve.  Another Hetfield therapy session.  This song starts so blazingly, blistering fast there was nowhere else for Metallica to go after this but slower.  This is as fast as it gets kiddies.  This is the pure unadulterated sound of pure rage and hatred.  It's directed toward parents but it's a total critique of the harsh world that awaits children as they grow, mature and lose innocence  The world is an uncaring and brutal place.  This song poses a fairly heavy question....as a parent do you shelter your child from the harsh, brutal reality of the world as much as you can in order to protect innocence or do you purposely expose them to it and become the destroyer of the innocence in order to protect against such disillusionment and confusion?  The song blazes from start to finish.  This is in contention for my all time favorite Metallica song.  So fast, so heavy, so blazing, so angry. 

Again, the production and mix is questionable on this album.  The sound on everything after Kill Em All is not very good.  For a great fucking band, they sure as shit couldn't get the sound right after Kill Em until the Black Album...their critical and commercial breakthrough.  But is it their best? 


Grade: A+