This is another album that I could expound on without listening to it. But I will listen to it for completism, and because…. METALLICA! Accordingly, I'll warn you that this is lengthy...
Metallica had started out playing their punky thrash on “Kill em All” and had slowly been adding layers of melodic and harmonic sophistication to their speedy thrash, reaching their peak with the album "Master of Puppets". On the tour for that album, the band’s tour bus crashed, tragically killing bass-player Cliff Burton and leaving a fissure in the band that would take years to properly heal. Rather than take time off to process this tragedy, the band quickly recruited a new bassist Jason Newsted, recorded an EP and hit the road again, before eventually decamping to record "...and Justice".
The band ended up taking out a lot of their unresolved issues on Newsted, with the bassist being mercilessly hazed for a long time, being given nicknames such as ‘Jason Newkid’ and ‘Carole’ (due to his supposed likeness to Carole King). Another result of Cliff's death was a shift in the power-balance of the band. Metallica had been becoming increasingly democratic, with all members contributing songs and arrangement ideas. “…and Justice” saw the power swing back largely to singer/guitarist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich. Newsted only contributed to the writing of one song on the album, "Blackened" and his bass was famously almost non-existent in the final mix of the album. It was suggested that this was further hazing from the band, who felt that Newsted’s playing was not up to scratch compared to their fallen comrade.
The album is an odd duck, but it really is its own thing. With speedy thrash riffs mixing with occasionally dramatic vocals (and in the case of "Frayed Ends of Sanity" with a chant nicked from the Wizard of Oz). The lack of bass is partially compensated by some low-chugging guitars and the resulting sound is odd but distinctive. Hetfield was moving away from his throat scraping, trebly screams and into his now trademark, deep gravelly growl. Lead guitarist Kirk Hammett is a star here, funnelling melodic themes, spitfire runs of notes and various scrapes, squeals and other sounds through his own virtuoso style to elevate each of the songs.
The songs could be seen as overblown in places, but I view them as being akin to a weird 'metal' take on classical music, particularly on instrumental track "To live is to die" which lays out its themes and then builds on them beautifully and brutally over its nearly 10 minute duration.
I do love this album, as it is one of those formative (high school) musical discoveries for me. But, having heard one or two versions of this album where Jason Newsted’s basslines are added back into the mix (thanks to their inclusion on the Guitar Hero video game), the album certainly would not have suffered from having that extra bit of bottom-end.
Ultimately, the band tired of the complexity and length of the songs and started dropping them from live sets when they noticed some of their fans likewise losing interest. The band ended up moving to a more commercial and compositionally compact approach for their follow-up (1991’s “Metallica” AKA “the Black Album”).
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