... AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

And Justice For All continues Metallica's progressive ambitions and though there's evidence aplenty of strong writing, few songs manage to equal the abundant riff assault and endless sequence of memorable hooks that the previous albums had plenty off.

A first aspect that will put off many non-fanclub listeners is the horrible production. The cardboard sound makes it hard to actually enjoy this album. To my ears this is one grubby mess of lacklustre drums that must have been recorded with the mike standing in the next room. Also the powerless blurry guitars, the undistinguishable bass and the upfront vocals don't help. Lots of demos sound better.

Another weakness is obviously the drumming itself on this album. A few blasts beats on his kick drums and a rare fast-paced moment not withstanding, Ulrich makes this album into an almost continuous mid-paced non-event that lacks dynamics, energy and power. A good example is the tedious pace of Eye of The Beholder. Just imagine Dave Lombardo of Slayer on this one. Now that would have been meteul!

Of course there are gems like One and Harvester of Sorrow, and there's plenty of enjoyable technical guitar riffing and soloing, but I sure miss some heartfelt power here as well. Metallica must have chosen for brutality over emotion and melody on this album. An unlucky choice if you ask me, the album is still far behind the really brutal death metal of those years and in giving up their emotive and melodious qualities, they lost something essential in the process.

It's solid thrash metal album but no match for the masterpieces in that genre by Slayer, Megadeth and Nevermore. So I will have to settle for 3.5 stars. If they ever decide to remix and probably produce this album I might have to round it up. Which reminds me that I urgently need to downgrade Death Magnetic with another star, as that one is obviously not even half as good as this.