Not that long ago I did a review of Back in Black, AC/DC's tribute to former frontman Bon Scott. Eight years later, Metallica also had to suffer the loss of Bassist Cliff Burton, and this album became the result of it. The albums are both quite different though, as you'll see (or hear) as you listen to it. The first thing to note is that the bass guitar is almost inaudible in most songs. Whether this is done as a tribute to Cliff Burton, or because Jason Newstead doesn't know what he's doing isn't quite clear to me, but it does have an novel effect.
The first thing in Blackened, the first song, is a short faint guitar piece. This lasts for barely a minute until everything comes in heavily (except the bass), pushing out whatever artistry the song might have had. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the song generally isn't that interesting after the intro.
Then we move to the title track, which starts with the acoustic intro which characterised some of the early Metallica albums. And as we've all come to expect it seamlessly flows into thrash metal. In fact more seamlessly this time than usual. The riffs are strong, and the lyrics (about justice would you believe) fit well. Throw in some nice soloing and you have a great song, although it drags on a bit too far.
Eye of the Beholder starts with a sort of Jungle rhythm, and quickly goes into the standard thrash guitars, albeit with slightly more thought behind them. Maybe it gets a little repetitive, but it's still good.
One begins with gun sound effects, a la Pink Floyd. This is followed by an acoustic guitar riff, and a trick acoustic guitar solo. After four minutes, the acoustics are replaced by electrics. This leaves it without much of the apparent skill of the earlier part, and the lack of much bass prevents it from feeling particularly heavy. The intro ecclipses the rest of the song, for better or for worse.
Proceeding this, The Shortest Straw starts with loud, erratic drums. The sound is filled out (barring bass of course) by a rather ordinary guitar riff. Well it isn't that bad at first, however, even though the song lasts six minutes, it repeats itself after two.
Continuing this trend we have Harvester of Sorrow. Similarly to The Shortest Straw, the music begins to repeat itself after two minutes. It features some nice guitarwork, but not enough to repair it overall.
The Frayed Ends of Sanity though starts (after the obligatory drum/guitar) with the marching cadence from The Wizard of Oz. Unfortunately the rest of the song is really stretched out. It loses its feeling by the time it reaches the solos, which sort of drag on, without any sort of message at all.
To Live is to Die is the only song written by Cliff Burton on this album, and was written as a tribute to him. It has another acoustic introduction (and conclusion), and as you've grown to expect gets heavy pretty soon. The bass is a lot heavier in this song than the others, and to good effect. It also manages not to drag on for too long, moving smoothly from solo to solo. The spoken poem near the end of the song works well too.
The Final song, Dyer's Eve goes almost too fast to write an efficient review about. It sounds almost like an outtake from Kill'em'All, although without the bass again. It's a nice change from the other songs which go a bit too slowly in my mind.
...And Justice For All is perhaps Metallica's most experimental album in terms of production. Whether this is a good thing or not is a difficult question though. Justice is often considered the artistic high point of the band. It features more partially acoustic tracks than any other up until this point, and the lack of bass make it perhaps the lightest of all Metallica albums. On the other hand, some of the trickiest guitarwork Kirk Hammett has ever done also lives on this record. Purists might believe that this is when Metallica became bad, but it's still nothing compared to the horrors they would later unleash... More reviews