Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Four albums in and Metallica confirmed their place as the world’s biggest Metal band with the release of …And Justice For All. As years in music go, 1988 was a phenomenal year for Heavy Metal of any sub-genre, Iron Maiden had released the superb Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, Queensryche had raised the bar to a new height with the epic Operation Mindcrime and Megadeth showed what was to come in the form of the interesting So Far, So Good…So What. …And Justice For All was the best of all worlds, the fusion of Progressive, the barbed sterile lyric feel in which the music reigned supreme and despite the incredible loss of Cliff Burton, the band were able to top the brilliance of the previous album Master of Puppets and give their audience perhaps arguably the finest album of their career. Out of such adversity facing the band with the loss of the superb Cliff Burton came the outstanding entrance of bassist Jason Newsted.

For anyone who caught the album when it was fresh of the shelf in 1988, …And Justice For All was the culmination of many years hard work and the work ethic that had been placed in the band’s psyche. The lyrics, which dealt with legal discrimination, war, censorship and the horror of nuclear manoeuvring, were brutal, compelling, disturbing, the cover for the album was just as disquieting and the music that framed it all together was grinding, metal induced and likely to raise the palpations of any listener; in short a near perfect album.

The first thing that hits the listener is the image of Lady Justice, the paragon of virtue being so defiled by those who claim to have the people at their heart, the thoughts of the common man as their moral barometer. Lady Justice is ineffective, she is bound by ropes, the system cracked, broken and in decay, she is blindfolded, sightless and unable to hear the plea of those without money to defend their cause  has one of the cracks has appeared through her ear. Money has spoken and laid down a system that was designed for everyone to have a fair hearing, to see justice done pillaged and nearly defeated. The most damning aspect is the black scrawl that adorned the bottom of the vinyl cover, the legend that is now ingrained as…And Justice For All.

If the cover was illuminating then the album itself was graphic. August 1988 not only saw the introduction of the new line up of Metallica but also the news of the first well-known computer virus breaking was enough to send shivers up the spines of those versed in technological safety. Justice For All indeed, the Soviet Union may have been on the verge of breaking apart giving the West a supposed breathing space in Nuclear annihilation but this new threat to all was enough to put the idea of Justice out to the highest bidder. Do as I say not as I do…as Metallica would write, you comply to the demand of the professional hacker now and not to a foreign Government aiming its weapons at your home.

Nuclear warfare, the obliteration of the human race and Earth is the subject of the opening track Blackened. If the whole album is brutal, then Blackened focuses on the inhumanity of man, the fierceness of ultimate violence. Lyrics that feel tantalisingly short and punchy go hand in hand with the abruptness of the accompanying music. The track highlights the feel of desolation, the short sharp punch, the choke and horrific nature of war. What stands out is the lines in which one word is repeated twice. The opening of these lyrics reads, “Opposition…contradiction…premonition….compromise.”  In the back ground Opposition, contradiction and premonition are repeated quietly but with menace as if the lyric is suggesting that no matter what, these actions are inevitable. The lone voice on the word compromise suggests that as in many conflicts the voice of dissension, the person who puts their head above the parapet and says no, not in my name can sometimes feel alone, those offering peace being unheard. These four stand out lines all end in the same way, the doubling effect being used to full and frank exploitation, the singular words of compromise, Planet dies, Human Race and lay to waste apart from being rhyming couplets show how something’s are inescapable, that when one war is over there will always be another just waiting round the corner, the next one might actually see a scorched Earth policy taken to the full extreme that war allows.

In an album that is full of social awareness, of commentary that is worthy of the best writers to live and record music, perhaps the track One underlines them all. A firm favourite live, the song gives a new meaning to anti-war. Taking the imagery of the book Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo and with an explosive stark black and white video to match its intensity, One is also the track that makes the most of Kirk Hammett’s guitar work like no other. The clean almost classical feel of the start is soon replaced by the gut wrenching Lars Ulrich drums which pound like bullets shattering on a soldier’s body, the image of a well-oiled machine gun rattling off bullet after bullet in rapid succession only adds to the drama of the song. Although the video is excellent it is perhaps the one song on the album that didn’t need to have one, the stark richness of the words painting more than a ruthlessness picture by itself. The reality of a man destroyed by war without actually dying is soul destroying, if any song conveys the horror of war at a personal level, the feel of being left helpless, not being able to see, to hear, to speak, all senses apart from being left with thought, is devastating. The protagonists words, although remaining unheard tell that he cannot live and cannot die, he is stuck in some half way world that means he will be forever at the mercy of those caring for him. The video, in which certain bits of the film in which was adapted from Dalton Trumbo’s novel, see the final release of the man from a death like state sees the boy whose life has been torn apart asking for help via the one remaining ability he has left, being able to send Morse Code by blinking. The message reads in part over and over again, “Kill Me.” If the song can live on its own without the video then this one moment frames the Human spirit and despair in a way that cannot be captured by music alone.

…And Justice For All should be seen as one of the finest examples of the Heavy/Thrash/Progressive Metal genre. Its multi layered feel, the way words can convey a thousand images and the ability to tell a dark story via the medium of a much underrated genre. Impressive, damning of many and an aggression that marvelled to the extreme, …And Justice For All is arguably the stand out album in a career that delivered five top rated albums.  

Ian D. Hall