The album was noted for its "dry, sterile" production.[21] Rasmussen said that was not his intention, as he tried for an ambient sound similar to the previous two albums. He was not present during the album's mixing, for which Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero had been hired beforehand. Rasmussen felt that, in his absence from the mixing process, Thompson and Barbiero ended up using only the close microphones on the mix and none of the room microphones, thus causing the "clicking", thin drum sound.[8] Popoff noted that because of the strange production, the bass guitar was nearly inaudible, while the guitars sounded "strangled mechanistic".[22] He saw the "synthetic" percussion as another reason for the album's compressed sound.[23] The sound has nearly-inaudible bass guitar, which Rasmussen claims was ordered by Hetfield and Ulrich after hearing the initial mixes, resulting in his belief that "Jason Newsted, [engineer] Toby Wright and I are probably the only people who know what the bass parts actually sounded like on that album".[8] Thompson similarly blamed Ulrich for the inaudible bass, stating that Ulrich ordered him to remove the bass from the mix.[11] In their defense, Hetfield and Ulrich said that most of Newsted's bass lines closely followed the rhythm guitar lines to the point of being indiscernible from each other.[24] A lack of direction is also partly to blame; since the album was largely produced by the band, there was no one present in the studio to guide the band's new bassist and tell him what was expected of him, something a producer would typically do.[25] Newsted was not satisfied with the final mixes: "The Justice album wasn't something that really felt good for me, because you really can't hear the bass.
