...And Justice for All

Favorite album of all time.

Kick drum makes me horny.

And there is a lot more bass guitar in the mix than I think people realize, it's just not like a "stand out" instrument, but I absolutely do hear it in there.

Either way - this album is the only reason my right hand is worth a damn when it comes to guitar playing. Watching videos of these guys and Hetfield's incessant downpicking of every goddamn note really helped me learn to just bite the bullet and build up the technique to do it. Knock this band around and bash them all you want, Hetfield is a machine. Not necessarily a shredder but he's GREAT at what he does.

(This was compounded later on by me deciding that I should be able to play along with Anthrax's "Among The Living" album in downpick fashion too)
 
People forget that back in '88/89 this was pretty forward thinking in many ways. Brutal guitar tone and scooped triggery sounding kick drum (not to mention the machine gun bit at the end of 'One'). It had a massive impact on Death Metal production values and genre, even though you don't associate it with that.

I love it. Sonically and musically it still crushes. But that's just me and I'm blinded by my childhood memories.

I don't get how a super scooped guitar sound could possibly be brutal sounding.
How is thin and weedy sounding and leaving a huge gaping hole in the mix 'brutal'? :confused:
I prefer my full bodied, actually thick sounding guitars with balls thanks

Have you guys not heard the stems from this album? The bass is a huge part of the sound. It just blends with the guitars.

That's cool and all that it might provide some mid range beef to help fill out the guitar sound ever so slightly, but ultimately what use is a BASS guitar if it's not even holding down the low end?
 
I refuse to listen to the original anymore, having found that ...And Justice For Jason remix someone did with the Guitar Hero tracks. More low end, and you can actually hear what he's playing.
 
I don't get how a super scooped guitar sound could possibly be brutal sounding.
How is thin and weedy sounding and leaving a huge gaping hole in the mix 'brutal'? :confused:

It was brutal in that time. :)
Sepultura "Arise" and Napalm Death "Harmony Corruption" also have that very scooped at 1 khz sound.
I guess it was a trend. It was just famous to have the Marshalls with
Bass 10
Mids 0
Treble 10
 
I don't get how a super scooped guitar sound could possibly be brutal sounding.
How is thin and weedy sounding and leaving a huge gaping hole in the mix 'brutal'? :confused:
I prefer my full bodied, actually thick sounding guitars with balls thanks

Sorry dude, when making my post I totally forgot that my opinion had to be exactly the same as yours. My apologies.

(to answer your sort-of-question; pretty much all the heavy bands - especially the death metal bands - from 85-95 era scooped the mids because they thought it DID sound brutal and heavy...) Every Scott Burns production, love it or hate, seemed to go down this route and I'm pretty sure they did it to sound as heavy as possible, given the resources available to them at the time)
 
Listened to this on the iPod this morning when I rolled into work.. really like the song writing and performance, but I still think it sounds like the master bus was ran through a high pass filter.. Alot of that could have been exaggerated by the headphones though.. (but I can hear JPJ in Led Zep. I just fine)..

Production wise, AJFA's production is def. a step out from RTL/MOP and with the Black Album following up behind it, AJFA just gets written off alot.

Plus, I believe James and Lars admitted to continually lowering the bass tracks on that album, so we all know (and have known for years) that the album is pretty much bass-less.. and being that the bass is a BIG part of the guitar sound, it's no wonder people with think the AJFA tone is thin...

-P
 
For those of you still stuck with the original, I'd seriously recommend getting the Universal Japan 2010 reissue/remaster they did of their entire catalog on SHM-CD quality.
http://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=440726
Or the DCC 24k Gold Remasters for RTL + MOP

Available on your nearest torrent.

Off-Topic:
SHM-CD quality? Sorry, what?? I haven't heard about this thing before. So they're supposed to be better sounding cd's because the plastic is more transparent and the laser reading is improved because of that, isn't it? The same 'ones' and 'zeros' but different plastic = better sound. WTF??? Aren't they even ashamed of promoting that piece of shit? Wow, audiphiles are crazier than I thought...

Does anyone here has one of these?
 
I don't get how a super scooped guitar sound could possibly be brutal sounding.
How is thin and weedy sounding and leaving a huge gaping hole in the mix 'brutal'? :confused:
I prefer my full bodied, actually thick sounding guitars with balls thanks



That's cool and all that it might provide some mid range beef to help fill out the guitar sound ever so slightly, but ultimately what use is a BASS guitar if it's not even holding down the low end?

Dude. You're over-thinking it. Feel the vibe first, then think about the production. Production is always an after-thought. If you think the scooped guitar tone detracts from the feel and energy of this album (or any other album) then that's lame for you - you've missed out on some classic records and you're going to miss out on many more. If you change one element of the production it wouldn't be Justice - simple as that. The mids had to be at 0 for this album to work the way it does. It was meant to be.

Go listen to Arise by Sepultura. If you approach that record thinking of the production then you'll hate it. Its so right though. Wet, cardboard sounding drums... heaps of offensive top end and just a general hollowness. I wouldn't change a thing though.
 
Dude. You're over-thinking it. Feel the vibe first, then think about the production. Production is always an after-thought. If you think the scooped guitar tone detracts from the feel and energy of this album (or any other album) then that's lame for you - you've missed out on some classic records and you're going to miss out on many more. If you change one element of the production it wouldn't be Justice - simple as that. The mids had to be at 0 for this album to work the way it does. It was meant to be.

Go listen to Arise by Sepultura. If you approach that record thinking of the production then you'll hate it. Its so right though. Wet, cardboard sounding drums... heaps of offensive top end and just a general hollowness. I wouldn't change a thing though.

I can agree with this, except for "it was meant to be", cause I don´t believe in "destiny", nothing was "meant to be", they wanted it that way and in the end that´s how it turned out and we all can say "man but if it wasn´t like that it wouldn´t be justice" because well... that´s how it turned out, but not because it was "meant to be" that way, if it sounded better it would still be justice, believe me. I understand the classic status it has, and I really enjoy the songwriting on the album, but I definitely wouldn´t mind a remix. Yeah I know BLASPHEMY cause I would prefer a classic album to sound better, whatever, it would sound better so = I would like it more
 
Blackened made my parents old cat run head first into a glass door in a frenzy to flee my stereo. Fear the power of metal feline.
 
Off-Topic:
SHM-CD quality? Sorry, what?? I haven't heard about this thing before. So they're supposed to be better sounding cd's because the plastic is more transparent and the laser reading is improved because of that, isn't it? The same 'ones' and 'zeros' but different plastic = better sound. WTF??? Aren't they even ashamed of promoting that piece of shit? Wow, audiphiles are crazier than I thought...

I'm no sound engineer, all I know is that in comparison to the originals, these Japanese and Gold 24k DCC reissues sound a hell lot clearer, fuller and overall more powerful. Playing it from quality equipment, and not your average shitty PC-speakers might do wonders as well ;)
 
I'm no sound engineer, all I know is that in comparison to the originals, these Japanese and Gold 24k DCC reissues sound a hell lot clearer, fuller and overall more powerful. Playing it from quality equipment, and not your average shitty PC-speakers might do wonders as well ;)

Off-topic:

I see no reason why a more transparent plastic would improve music quality in a cd. It's a nonsense. Normal CD's and SHM-CD contain the same data, the laser gets or doesn't get it. When a laser fails reading data, it doesn't translate into more or less music quality but noises, jumps in the time-line... Media in the digital data doesn't matter. I mean, mp3 doesn't sound better in an Ipod than in a shitty mp3 player when using the same headphones. The only answer I find is that they've recorded different mixes or different masters on those SHM-CD.

24bits recordings are another story. They contain more bits of information that actually translate into more sonic information. But these SHM-CD are just a lie.

Once I was told that Japanese releases sounded different than European ones. I was curious about it and I got the same cd's from both places. I aligned the tracks, changed the phase on one of them and I obtained a wonderful phase cancelation. I concluded that it's amazing how people find things when they try hard to. Psychology takes a big part on this, it's a fact and it has been proved to death that better quality is sometimes the will to hear something different when there's absolutely nothing.

On-topic:

I absolutely love AJFA. It has its own sound and I don't care if it has less 1k or whatever. It's amazing in so many ways (songwriting, feelings, MIXING) that I have nothing bad to say about it. It has its own personality and I love it just the way it is. One of my favourites cd's of all time.
 
If anyone on here can produce a record that sounds as awesome as any that Rasmussen or Burns have, I will personally come and suck your penis.
 
I could NOT imagine a remix of And Justice for all. And I don´t want it! It´s just perfect how it is. I´m 100% sure, it exactly sounds like it was supposed to be done by the creators. I don´t think anyone (except Newsted) is niggling about what it has become.