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Speaking of scooped EQ, the cover feature and Hall of Fame album of Decibel #50 is …And Justice for All. Bass-less and proggy, it’s a polarizing record. Kill ‘Em All it ain’t. Yet Decibel rounded up a passel of metallers, including musicians from Intronaut, Lamb of God, The Gates of Slumber, and Rwake, to vouch for it. Justice, too, is my favorite Metallica full-length, which is funny because my favorite Metallica recording is the $5.98 EP. They’re completely opposite beasts – shaved vs. hairy, if you will.
Listening to Justice now, I’m amazed that reviewers – myself included – would dare compare Death Magnetic to it. Sure, Death Magnetic’s songs are long, and some of its riffs sound suspiciously like ones on Justice. But the difference is that between cover band and real thing. Death Magnetic feels frantic, overheated, at the edge of its limits. That has its appeal; energy is the one thing DM has going for it. But Justice feels so much bigger, even with a sterile, bass-less mix. It’s full of dread; no other Metallica record deploys sustained chords so expansively. (See the masterful push-pull between sustain and staccato in “Harvester of Sorrow.” The maniacally flailing Death Magnetic has no room for such details.)
On Justice, the band is in complete control of its faculties. For once, Lars Ulrich doesn’t sound wobbly, and every note of Kirk Hammett’s counts. They’re firing off the highest bpm’s of their lives, but they’re not breaking sweats. That’s scary. It’s the difference between a wild-eyed gunman emptying both barrels, and a professional assassin with clips to spare.
I like cold, massive records; none is more so than Justice. The EQ is scooped so radically that the guitars are anacondas leaping out of the speakers. If I’m driving and need to stay awake, Justice is my go-to record. I know every note; every note makes me shiver.
Yet Justice gives me a warm fuzzy, for the simple reason that it was the most popular merch item in my high school. Kids everywhere had …And Justice for All back patches and t-shirts. Innumerable Metallica logos were scrawled in innumerable notebooks. I could not escape that record. Not that I wanted to – the parental blame of “Dyers Eve” resonated with my teenage self. What do high schoolers have now? Avenged Sevenfold? Bullet for My Valentine? I grew up in a blessed time; …And Justice for All was much to credit.
Amen.
I’m still hunting down the Guitar Hero recordings with the bass turned up. Changing the past may be blasphemous to some, but I really like what I have heard (there’s a couple tunes on youtube).
Justice and the $5.98 EP are my favorite Metallica records, too. I remember buying Justice on vinyl the week of release. Shit, I bought the “Eye of the Beholder” cassingle before the album came out!
I gotta say, though, I still like Death Magnetic as much as I did the first time I heard it. It’s becoming musical comfort food for me; when I can’t think of anything else I really want to listen to on my iPod, I pull up DM.
Here’s my story about that album: AJFA was my gateway album to Metal in general. I was about 7 years old at that time, my older brother drunkenly introduced me to Metallica and AJFA after I walked into his room one afternoon and he was blasting that album in his stereo. He’s about 9 years older than me. He didn’t really listen to Metal that much, he was more of a new waver kind of guy who listened to X-Mal Deutschland and XTC, but he had cassette tapes of Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Skid Row and Quiet Riot in his room. So whenever he went out, I’d sneak in his room and play his Metal cassettes, but AJFA got the most rotation. After he moved to California a few years later, he left me his stereo and all his cassette tapes and it just went downhill from there. Sadly, more than a decade later, said older brother is now married, has a kid, and is listening to “mellower” shit like Dave Matthews Band and Sublime. Oh well, AJFA still sounds fresh to me whenever I hear it 20 years onward.
post-felix – I’ve heard the recording where someone added bass. It’s atrocious. AJFA needs no bass.
pdf – I wonder what that vinyl’s worth (and what it sounds like!), now that the deluxe vinyl reissues have come out.
bacon – your brother went from AJFA to Dave Matthews Band??? That’s like dying and going to hell.
AJFA is probably my favorite Metallica record, which I feel weird saying. It doesn’t have Cliff Burton on it, and it was their first “popular” album, and I’m usually the kind of jerk who hates things just because other people like them. But I love the imperfection of it. I think metal is most exciting to me when the band in question is just a little overambitious. I also like the production, weirdly. It sounds sorta’ crappy and dry, and I like that.
Honestly, I didn’t start seriously listening to Metallica until recently. I came of age in the late 90s, when it wasn’t cool for anybody to like Metallica. My friends who were metal fans thought Metallica were mainstream garbage and refused to touch them, and my friends who weren’t metal fans would think you were the biggest stooge for even mentioning them. I had liked them in grade-school, then I remember being in junior-high, staying up late and waiting to hear a preview track from Load play on the radio. I was so disgusted with the result that I couldn’t even listen to the whole thing. This was the anecdote I would tell other kids in an attempt to half-heartedly defend the band.
I avoided the early Metallica records for a long time, but recently decided I just didn’t care anymore. They’re pretty good! I like them a lot. Still, for the sake of argument, it took me a little while to let them grow on me: there was no immediate connection like there was with Slayer or Nuclear Assault or Voivod. Master of Puppets especially seems just a little too polished or tight, to me. I can appreciate the technical complexity of it, but it feels weirdly unimpassioned. Admittedly, that is a vague and cruel complaint to level against a record, and I only mention it on the off chance that somebody else might be able to say more specifically what I’m picking up on, if I’m picking up on anything real at all. It could just be ancient prejudice rearing its head-my last ditch attempt to sound cool.
But, like, the AJFA to Dave Matthews transition is tragic, but not that weird to me. I look at video of contemporary Metallica in particular, and feel like they might as well be Dave Matthews. And yeah, basically, they were already kind of the preppy fratty metal band when I was a kid.
On a side note, one of my friend’s sisters bought an ironic Metallica t-shirt for her infant, and that really pissed me off (well, a little… as much as that crap can piss off a grown up)! Who the hell does she think she is, thinking she’s better than Metallica fans? (That’s my last ditch attempt to not sound like a total wet blanket)
Alright. Rant’s done. Over and out.
Hey I just found this blog, and I want to say that I really appreciate music reviews that actually talk about song structures and riffs in a relevant way.
However, Justice is the Metallica record mose plagued by “hey let’s play that verse 48 times then do the chorus 64 times!” Worked out ok on Master of Puppets, but comes off worse here: partially because there’s so many odd time parts and partially because those odd time parts sound more forced than on, say, Battery.
Also my favorite Metallica record, though it’s terribly uneven (the beginnings of ‘grove metallica’ awfulness start to manifest here) when it’s good, it’s amazingly good. It is, on the wide historical sense, a bit of a derivative record (Ulrich dazzled by Watchtower wants Metallica to do their own technothrash record, Hetfield plays along though to regret it a tour later) but it’s also for real and that counts for a lot. Best lyrics by Hetfield, who is also struggling to provide talent to fill in for Cliff Burton – and is failing, but eh, even the less good more ambiguous parts of this record provide space for communication and redefinition by the listener. It’s a constricting record at times but not completely so, there’s actually lots of emotional range here and there’s weakness and failure that sort of juxtaposition is a life-giving one in Heavy Metal.
I agree with what you’ve written–I remember AJFA coming out when I was in grade 5, it was when everyone was getting into harder rock and metal. “Metallica rulz/ rules” scrawled into binders, and written on bathroom walls. Man that brings back memories.
Anyways, I didn’t pay attention so much to the production values then. I do now, but not then. It was a very challenging record, as it was the first double album that i’d ever owned. I think that had some effect on the album’s attack, because I think that people knew that they were in for something really special and something extensive, even if I remember thinking upon the first few listens that it was a brilliant–but relentlessly thrashy– and what sounded like it was often the same song.
I went to their concert here in 1989 on the AJFA tour, with the Cult opening. I was 10 years old. I bought a “Metal Up Your Ass” t-shirt that I had to tuck in so that my teachers wouldn’t disapprove, ha ha.
But most of all, I think that it was the album that most people knew, deep down, was on the cusp of change for the band. Even I sort of had that feeling, when I saw them in an arena show, because I knew that they were much heavier than the mainstream’s main acts, and that seeing as that trends come and go, that the band would either go heavier, or that they’d get more commercial. I think that I sort of sensed that because most bands are sort of catapulted into rock history or rock stardom for how they deviate from just the masculine, machismo aggressive songs…..Zep with “Stairway”, Aerosmith with “Dream On”, and….Metallica with “One”, which was their biggest hit.
Now we know which way they went, but it seemed almost inescapable at the time, because they’d already got as heavy and challenging as they could really possibly be.
Damn good post. Damn fine album. Justice is one of my top 3 all time favorites and Metallica’s finest hour. I love the hypnotic, vibrating hum that bubbles through every song on the record. I’ve never heard anything quite like it before or since.
Hetfield’s vocals- not just the lyrics themselves- helped make Justice for me. They were bad ass but tuneful. Chilling stuff. His vocals were kinda progressing towards this style on the three full lengths before AJFA, and, I think, were perfected on this album. Afterwards is a different story.
Well said on one of the greatest metal records ever. It still feels underrated. I wish I'd been around to see "One" make its way to Headbanger's Ball after "Girls, Girls, Girls."
Surprised no one's mentioned "Blackened" yet, which to me is about as great as metal gets. It's comparable to an aural Cormac McCarthy novel.
I also like it how Metallica generally avoids angsty lyrics about Mom and Dad, but when they didn't, on "Dyers Eve," they sounded stronger than any number of metal bands that devote most of their careers to that theme.
I still can't pick out a favorite Metallica studio record, but if we're counting the $5.98 EP, then I'd have to go with Live Shit: Binge & Purge.
I'm showing my youth here but I first heard of Metallica through the S&M; live album and worked backwards. Considering I see Metallica with 20/20 hindsight, I just don't understand the phenomenon and realistically never will. I did find all of their pre-90s albums and even (admittedly) the Black Album enjoyable when I was younger but never felt anything remotely magical or special about the band. There's nothing especially nostalgic about them as they weren't a gateway nor did they help lead me to more dangerous musical realms; they were just a sightseeing point along my own path.
It's been a few years since I sat down with any Metallica record (last time was maybe 2005). I don't feel any inclination to listen to them anytime soon as I'm more than musically fulfilled by other musicians. Metallica was not a major force in my formative years. But if it's consolation to anyone who reads this, though I belong age-wise to a generation who discovered metal through slime like nu-metal or Avenged Sevenfold, I found my way into metal through Iron Maiden and scribbled Immortal, Bathory, and Judas Priest on my high school notebooks.
Perfectly understandable. Tells us more about what a homogenizing experience a 'record' is where everything plays its part, ones age ones surroundings and peers, so on. It ain't just riffs and melodies. This is why modern Heavy Metal must find avenues of expression that befit today and not just nostalgically copy the past. If it doesn't convince as something vital then it's just a relic, an artifact of a strange subculture that even aliens will be hard-pressed to wrap their hydrocephalic domes around once they dig out oh, a 'Dragonforce' record out of the nuclear ruins.
Also from 'Avenged Sevenfold' to Bathory. I am glad you survived that. Metallica was my first HM band and I listened to the first 4 for a year straight without listening to anything else. Even then I could tell something had gone wrong when 'Load' came out and I didn't care for the Black Album much either. Then I got Helloween's 'Walls of Jericho' (such a great, amazing choice for someone wanting to spread out in HM) and listened to the Helloween catalogue straight for another year (up to Keeper 2, mind you, which I also found at the time 'too soft' hah).
Then my older brother's friend who was a HM enthusiast decided to help me/destroy me. He sat me down and played me choice tracks from Cloven Hoof – A Sultan's Ransom, Watchtower – Control & Resisteance, Cirith Ungol – King of the Dead vinyl. He peppered the experience with comments like 'surely you can't like this music' and 'you're not cut out for this… weirdness, are you?'. Oh, I was. I was.
This is how people should be turned into metalheads. Let them play about in the shallow side of the poor for a couple of years and then throw them to the ocean. Either they survive it or they don't deserve it!
Wow, someone who sticks up for the Metallica live box set – now *that’s* a rare species. The live bootlegs I’ve heard of Metallica have been terrible performancewise, so I’m curious what the appeal is.
Also interesting: onerode’s indifference to Metallica. This overrides the notion of Metallica’s universality. Is their appeal only specifically generational?
Helm, dodging pretty much all of nu-metal/metalcore was largely inadvertent. I was always extremely independent about what I listened to and in those earlier years, radio/tv/zines/online reviews/people around me had a minimal influence on my taste. I didn’t have an older brother or a parent to guide me. Really, I didn’t start sharing music with friends until 2-3 years ago. I guess I’m a purist and an individual, first and foremost, and that spills over into my music taste.
IO, I think it may be generational, in part, but I think it’s also because Metallica came a little later for me in the metal game. I have some younger friends who loooove Metallica but it was the first band for all of them. Because of my own unorthodox path, Metallica wasn’t a first and I always end up feeling neutral when people talk about them. I dunno, that really could just be me.
My ex-girlfriend who also discovered HM mostly on her own and listened to Goregasm before she listened to Metallica almost (exaggerating but that’s the general theme) also couldn’t tell me why people were so into this band that she found mostly mediocre. Not great, not bad.
I think a big aspect of the Metallica enthrallment is that once you listen to say, Battery or Fight Fire With Fire or Damage Inc. whatever, you haven’t heard anything fiercer, more urgent, more ‘brutal’. That way these songs stay with you and they create some sort of measuring stick. For example I could juxtapose from Metallica and see that early Helloween were faster and more melodic. Hence I said in my brain ‘they are thrash, this is speed/power’. And it’s not just the fierce stuff that creates a measure, Metallica at times really hit most of the key elements of most metal genres. Long songs, instrumental songs, political songs, party songs, awful groove metal songs, progressive metal suites, metal-is-great songs, slow songs, dreaded ballads… they really were at the time “Heavy Metal in a nutshell”. If you listen to them as a young metalhead for like, 5 years, then Metallica are in the foundation of your understanding of Heavy Metal! That probably plays a huge part in their longevity (and will keep happening as long as Metallica get people into HM). There were always better bands at each aspect of HM that Metallica were attempting, but they were narrower in appeal. Exodus mopped the floor with them as a thrash band, any great doom band laughs at ‘The Thing that Could Not Be’, so on. How many bands hit all of the aspects, though?
When myself and my best friend talk about HM in general we can segue into Metallica-discussion almost instantly and we are self-aware of how hopelessly silly it is to still be talking about these people and their impact after all this time.
(I can remember listening to In The Woods… – Heart of the Ages and Deicide – Once Upon the Cross and thinking that these bands really do not compare to what I’ve heard of so far! heh)
It’s still fascinating to meet people that weren’t really shaped by the subculture part of HM. Onerode, favourite bands/albums, really quick? Improvised top 5?
Off the top of my head, bands that have stuck with me and made it through my own personal test of time:
-Iron Maiden
-Judas Priest
-Bathory
-Windir
-Running Wild
As for albums, Number of the Beast is what got me into this fuckin’ mess to begin with, Sad Wings of Destiny became my favorite because it struck me as uncompromisingly emotional (in a good way), Hammerheart led me to understand the concept of atmosphere and has affected my taste outside of metal, Likferd for whatever reason always stayed with me the most (maybe because it was his final output?), and Black Hand Inn because I like many of their albums and that’s what I listened to last night.
That said, there are multiple other bands that could be in the top 5 but aren’t because I discovered them later on and they aren’t amongst the earliest seeds that were sown that remain in full blossom today.
I think Helm’s right about the wide span of Metallica. The 1st 4 records are a great metal primer and touch upon past, present, and future of the form. I still use them as measuring sticks. To this day most bands cannot write songs like Metallica in their prime. Songwriting was their greatest strength.
It’s cool to see, in onerode’s case, a very pure discovery and exploration of metal. Like many other people’s, mine was influenced by peers and pop culture. It took me a while before I found “the underground.” And, yes, Sad Wings of Destiny is amazing and head-spinning.
Sad Wings of Destiny easily the only real album Judas Priest made, check out the dreamer/deceiver live video on youtube. Never else could a halford lyric move a grown idiot like me to tears.
Onerode: thanks for sharing. It’s amazing for me that people are Iron Maiden For Life because although I can appreciate them (mostly first three records and the bits of Seventh Son that are good) they pretty much have no emotional resonance for me and most of their songs are like Harris reading a book/seeing a movie and going ‘oh, this’ll do for another track’. Of course there’s stuff like Hallowed Be Thy Name but they’re very few and far between a huge discography. Also they’re the opposite of Metallica in that Maiden seem to play the same song forever… okay there’s some progression and if you play Dianno Maiden and Bruce Maiden back to back it’s a different band, but from Number of the Beast to whatever they’re putting out today… Iron Maiden are in their own Iron Maiden galaxy, outside metal doesn’t exist.
Therefore I posit my theory: people that get into metal through Metallica evolve to be more open to different subgenres of HM and mix-matching. People that come in through Maiden remain more traditional and search for variations of a winning formula.
Windir… ex-girlfriend also liked them and played them for me, I liked some melodies, I guess… didn’t look into them more, I remember there being composition-fluff (you know, in-between sections that go nowhere while you wait for the good melody to play again) so I was all no let’s listen to Mercyful Fate instead. We did. I was an awful boyfriend.
Running Wild early satanic speed metal stuff is ripping, the power metal period after is hit and miss for me. I could live with just ‘Branded’ and ‘Port Royal’, but if I could I’d go with an awesome best-of!
But hey, congratulations on having great taste in HM without anyone to help you along. More than I can say for myself.
“I did find all of their pre-90s albums and even (admittedly) the Black Album enjoyable when I was younger but never felt anything remotely magical or special about the band. There’s nothing especially nostalgic about them as they weren’t a gateway nor did they help lead me to more dangerous musical realms; they were just a sightseeing point along my own path.”
This is understandable, as you didn’t grow up with metal getting more and more extreme at the time that it was happening, right then. Now, it’s easy to have a historical perspective, but at the time when it was new in the late 80’s, it was like, “whoa”. You don’t have a chance to view it in a third party way, it’s unfolding right then. The same thing happens for every genre that becomes more well known–it gets more acceptable as it becomes more ingrained in the public’s consciousness as a trend.
Metallica’s stuff up until and including AJFA was *extremely* extremely heavy. And technical. There were heavy bands before, but none that were as technical and heavy, but still with traces of classic rock (as evidenced in their choices in covers). Slayer were great, too, but for some reason, they always stayed on the fringes….maybe too brutal, too scary. Metallica, even though they were really heavy and had a revolutionary sound at the time, had some melody. And they also had alot of dynamics, there was plenty of quiet parts and mellow parts on even their heaviest early albums (sans maybe Kill ‘Em All).
I can’t agree more with you on your closing paragaph.
We truly grew up in a blessed metal time.
@helm: I think Sad Wings of Destiny is still one of the most emotional albums I’ve ever listened to which sounds kinda funny since it is a Priest album. Most mature work, definitely.
I agree that Maiden isn’t quite the band I personally chant about ‘for life’ but they have the iconic quality few metal bands achieve. Most metal fans could sing along to many of their songs–they have a very communal quality about them and they’re instantly recognizable.
And thank you for the compliment. I’m just lucky that my instinct always tended towards musical exploration instead of stagnation.
@ryan: That’s pretty much the impression I’ve gotten after listening to older metal fans both in person and online. One of my professors from last year still proudly sports Maiden and Metallica shirts to class–some things just never leave you. All things considered, I’m content with the era I live in but I still half-wish I was a teenager in the 70s or 80s. Seeing metal burst into being and then develop into an enormous musical genre wouldn’t be too bad.
This is a littel obnoxious, but I wrote it for another blog and thought I’d put in my two cents on Metallica.
The Chocolate Metallishake
Notes on preparation: Allow for 26 years of prep time. Use a machine that blurs and chops ingredients into an indistinguishable puree for easy consumption (see http://www.riaa.com, a great source of info on this antiquated and inefficient yet nostalgic machine).
1) Add five scoops of delicious, high quality chocolate ice cream to the blender. Don’t skimp – use the good stuff. Also, be sure to mix in a generous helping of Cliff Bars with the first four scoops. These add the essential flavor and texture that make this dessert a classic. If you starting to run low on good ice cream but still wan to keep churning out shakes, you can always add ice cubes (I prefer Garage Inc. brand) to create the illusion of substance. Add cheap, store-bought chocolate sauce to make it more palatable to the average diner. Too much filler may turn a small, delicious batch into an icy, sugary mess, but who cares? Quantity and ease of consumption are the keys here. Sad but true?
2) Now, ideally this dessert is prepared in private, but after seeing that ice cream plop into the blender, the kids will undoubtedly be chomping at the bit. With no regard for whether they are watching or not, overcome your five-year constipation and take an enormous dump into the blender. If you can’t get it all out in the first Load, take a minute to catch your breath (after all, you are getting pretty old), Reload, and try again. To the untrained eye, chocolate ice cream and shit look the same, so the less sophisticated diners probably even know the difference, and would probably prefer Buck Cherry flavor anyhow, or Cherry Garcia if we’re lucky.
3) By this time there will be quite a stink in the house (especially if you live in an impermeable metal house), but with alternatives like Limp Biscuits and stale Korn, the kids who did notice you taking a dump in the blender will do their best to ignore the crap in the hopes of getting some of that good old ice cream. Still, you will probably free up tons of room in the kitchen, as the die-hard chocolate fans and the bassist will leave. This is your time to experiment a bit ? try hollow snares, remove any complex, guitar-solo-like ingredients ? and come to terms with yourself as a cook. The estranged and ravenous consumers will probably still be hungry, so you can video-tape this embarrassing process in the kitchen and sell it for a killing.
4) Now taste it. How does it taste? If it’s a little bitter, that’s probably the huge Loads of feces that you added before. At this point your only option is to pull the ice cream container out of the trash, scrape out the little bits of ice cream, and hope that the leftovers will be enough to balance out the taste. The Metallishake is now as ready as it’s ever going to be. Be sure to package and label the dish so it can be distinguished from other amorphous piles of brown material, and compress the shit out of it until it has no flavor left at all.
Serve cold. If need be, use the long arm of the mass media to ram it down America’s throat. Feces or no, the fat cats know it’s going to be a hit for the holiday season.
IN THE NEXT INSTALLMENT: Chinese Democracy: Cream of Sumyounguy, or Poopoo Platter?
“All things considered, I’m content with the era I live in but I still half-wish I was a teenager in the 70s or 80s. Seeing metal burst into being and then develop into an enormous musical genre wouldn’t be too bad.”
I often thought the same but then I realized we are living in the exciting time where we either get to see HM grow up with us into something with a more substantial end run or divert into irrelevancy and die.
As to the above post by A Dark in the Light I’ll just say that writers should write about what they know, especially when dealing with sensory perception. Does poop taste bitter? Have you tasted it? I’m not trying to insult you this is honestly something you should be aware of as a writer. Otherwise I just think you took a long time to dress an analogy that would work best being brief.
I’ve often felt that music only really has it’s current era to make it’s real, true context–even if it was ignored or not fully appreciated. Look at the Stooges, MC5, Kyuss, Velvet Underground, Joy Division, Robert Johnson, etc….all influential, but moreso in historical perspective. Which is a shame, because artists often have to cease to exist to become relevant; whereas Metallica sort of did it backwards….they had all that relevance at the time, worked their way out of it, and are now trying to get it back again with “Death Magnetic”.
“…And justice for all” is my favorite record of all time, and probably the one I’ve played the most through the years. I first got it on cassette in ‘89 or so when I was around eight, and being disinterested in most anything else I was totally immersed in Metallica for years to come. I remember I was slightly disillusioned when the black album showed up (I didn’t buy the record until the nineties were way over,) then completely over the hill when Load hit the shelves (I first picked up this one and Reload a couple months ago, but haven’t yet listened to them.) Around this time a few other kids at school had picked up on the band, though they were a lost cause for me.
I sold every single Metallica item I had to a kid down the street for $200. This included all the records up to the black one, scores of CD singles, maxi singles, bootlegs, interview picture discs, the Live shit box, the original Garage days re-revisited CD obviously, fuck knows what wasn’t in that batch of records. It pains me to this day to know that some other dude ended up with all the shit I spent years collecting, only ’cause I got so blinded by the arseishness of post-black album Metallica I couldn’t take it. Seriously one of the stupidest fucking idiot mistakes I’ve ever made.
I “rediscovered” Justice in ‘98 when I was growing bored with black metal and life in general (‘97 took a fuckin’ toll on me as a human being, it wasn’t a good year,) and steadfastly marched off to the store to pick up a new copy of this old friend. Its appeal hadn’t faded, I still knew every note and China exercise. When it turned out Garage inc. was around the corner, I dug through my tape stack to find what was probably the single only Metallica item left from my idiot rummage sale; a tape dub of Garage days revisited, Garage days re-revisited, assorted demos and other oddities. It was so old it sounded like a goddamn apple pie on a turntable and had my practically indecipherable single digit age scribbly handwriting across it, horribly misspelling the song titles and botching the logo pretty badly. I think it’s this tape that made me realize that after Justice, the Garage days re-revisited EP is Metallica’s finest moment. It sports the greatest production I’ve ever heard on a metal record and a furious fucking performance on every level.
As for the appeal of live Metallica, I’ll buy it like a motherfucker. I haven’t much listened to Live shit as I found the format rather quirky at the time, but various bootlegs have gotten much play. While I still think the demo version of One is the definitive version (you’ll find it on the Japanese maxi single and it blows most everything outta the water–a a two-man affair on a four-track in a garage rehearsal space) I fall like a dead man in war for how Hetfield has been changing the melody on the fifth verse for as long as I’ve heard live recordings of it. Livemetallica.com has free MP3’s of a 1989 show in Austin, TX where this happens and it is the greatest thing I could ever hear.
Something else that I think that I danced around here but never officially stated, was that Metallica, at the time of AJFA, were still right in the middle of their artistically creative and still most vital…..and actually *selling records*! When I think of how heavy they were at the time, and how many records that they sold and were selling out arenas…..it’s still astounding.
Some dismiss AJFA as being inferior to Ride The Lightning and Master of Puppets, and while those were great albums too, there was, as I mentioned before, a melodic precision with technical progressive brilliance that they still had. Some write off AJFA for not having Cliff, and it being the last real true early period Metallica era album that’s “credible” (sort of dismissed because of the calm before the storm of commercialism), but they were selling tons of albums and filling arenas *without* any radio support.
I know that they got no support on the radio stations here. MTV put “One” into rotation and that helped alot, but that was the only single or song that got any attention…..and I think that probably offended long time Metallica fans at that point, because they were having to share “their” band with tons of new fans that probably were only basing their judgement of the band on one ballad type song.
AJFA is my favourite album of all time as well. It’s powerful and melodic without being cheesy. It’s as if the band took their emotions about Cliff’s death and channelled them directly into the music. AJFA is great because it’s real.
Death Magnetic has similar shortcomings in production, but it has a lot less melody and emotion, which to me makes it a bit boring.