R.I.P crazy headbanger... Yes, this is the first album of originals after the death of Cliff Burton, and the first where Jason Newsted participates in it's creative process.

The first thing to jump into my ears is that the melodies are slower, no more "speed thrash-metal". The second thing is the difference in Hetfield's voice: it sounds more mature now, looks like he's now an adult! I like it better. Third thing is that this is the most depressive sound Metallica has ever dOne. This is the most dark and Black Album up to date, no doubt about it.

"Blackened" is a great opener, the sky will immediately turn dark over your head when you listen to this claustrophobic song. And these dark gray skies keep on with "...And Justice for All", the title song that goes on for almost 10 minutes of pure strength, of pure thrash metal on a very well elaborated and well produced track. By this time you should already be very impressed with Lars Ulrich drumwork which is brilliant and that you can confirm in "One", the fourth track which is a metal-ballad and One of the best songs Metallica ever brought to us. You can also hear the bass out and loud, adding that feeling of sadness all around. I haven't mentiOned "Eye of the Beholder" yet, well, I won't talk about all of the songs, but this is also a great song with so brilliant Riffs, only spoiled by some disconnection between some parts of the song. Well, leave that, it's a great song too! I will just mention "To Live is to die" because it has a great start, and because it's their top depressive song in this album (although mostly instrumental - it has only a speech in a little part of it). Hear those guitars crying, screaming in pain... Brutal.

This is again a great Metallica album, even after the accident who took Burton's life, the band kept their strength. They are different, yes in fact, but they are still Metallica and they are still the best thrash metal band in the world. A must-have to all metalheads around the world.

Queen said that "only the good die young". Such was the case with Randy Rhoads, and, sad to say, with Cliff Burton. That fateful night in Scandinavia saw the end of an era of Metallica: the "old" era.

Musically, the band has changed with this album as well. This album is One of the darkest Metallica albums ever. Perhaps it is the poor quality, One of the main reasons elitists hate this album. I have no idea why, since you also love black metal, which generally has even worse quality than ...And Justice for All. So what's the deal, huh? How come they can get away with poor quality, but Metallica couldn't, even though they weren't a house-hold name at this time?

The first thing you'll notice, aside from the poor quality and bass guitar thrown behind the back of the audio mix (the band hazing Cliff's replacement Jason Newsted), is that the songs on this album are long! If you don't like long songs, it will probably bore you. That is why the band doesn't play many songs from this album, because they obviously saw too many of you dozing off during their concerts. It's surely not because the songs are "too hard" to play, because they've recently played select songs from this album in full...and this is when they're older, when you lot think they suck.

But, back to the album. Track number One, "Blackened", is a break-neck thrash song, similar in feel to "Battery", about nuclear holocaust, or some kind of total annihilation. After two verses and two choruses, the song changes pace and has a heavy mid-section ending with the chilling statements "True death of life" and "See our mother die." The title track begins with an almost classical guitar-sounding intro, courtesy of James Hetfield. It's a little over two minutes of heavy Riffs before the vocals come in, and once they do, what we see is the secret of Megadeth's success. Jealous of the success of this album (which it was successful), Dave made his lyrical refrain politics for the majority of his albums...and I know this is true because Rust in Peace came out in 1990, long after ...And Justice for All had been released and fully toured. No offense, I like both bands well and good.

"Eye of the Beholder" is another political track with a sweet dueling solo, but the theme of the song is something that metal-heads should realize, for the words of James Hetfield are now becoming fulfilled in the behavior of our sub-genre.

"Independence limited
Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend
Freedom of speech is words that they will bend
Freedom with their exception"

The most famous track off this album is "One", the story of the soldier trapped in his own body, blind, deaf, numb and not even capable of knowing whether he is aLive or dead. In regards to "slow" songs, its mid-paced, though mostly played on clean guitars except for the choruses, but once the first solo (or was it the second?) finishes, the song explodes to full heaviness, only to fade out and erupt into something that, by now, has been dilapidated into cliche, but at the time was the spawn of Slayer: break-downs. The "Darkness" break-down is perhaps the best and most well-known song, One that we've all come to know, love and start moshing and head-banging to once we hear the E string pounded away. But wait, there's more guitar solos! Kirk Hammett and his tapping is a feature well-used on this album, and it kicks ass on this song, as do the dueling solo.

Now we come to my favorite song. The intro riffage to "The Frayed Ends of Sanity" is played atop the ominous "March of the Winkies" chant from the classic film The Wizard of Oz, before it explodes to life with heavy, fast Riffs and lyrics about going insane! More Riffs, more tapping, more shredding, more insanity and at seven minutes and forty-eight seconds, it's by no means too long! The really cool thing, though, is that, by reason of the ominous chanting at the beginning of the track, I (and maybe some of you too) associate this song with the Wizard of Oz. What's even cooler is that this song came out in 1988, seven years before author Gregory Maguire reinvented the classic villain of said story in his novel (re-made into a famous Broadway musical) Wicked as insane...the theme of this epic Metallica song.

I would love to go on about how good "Harvester of Sorrows" is, and the sorrow we see in "To Live is to Die", or even what Metallica happened to sum up in the shortest track "Dyer's Eve". But I'll leave that for others. They're good tracks, the lot of them, a testament to the skill of this band. I have trouble making songs up to six minutes long, and they made a whole album with no song shorter than five minutes. Damn, I wanna do that!

In regards to the band's skill, James is still growling and Kirk is still shredding, in addition to his tapping and, as we see in "Dyer's Eve", the beginning of his usage of the dreaded wah pedal! (lol). Lars' drumming is much of the same from the last three albums, so I guess that is good. As for Jason Newsted, you can't hear him on this album because the other band members, in the hazing process, turned his bass all the way down in the mix. So yeah, no bass solos from him. Aside from his backing vocals, also absent from this album, and the energy he put into this band (he said that he always gave 500% to Metallica), his skill means that, as far as the bass goes, Metallica is finally on par with Dave Ellefson of Megadeth. (sorry, just had to throw that in there. Jason is good, but he's only equal to Ellefson in skill as a pick-player).

I would not say this is the best album ever, but its definitely the darkest, due to what was going on in the life of the band. Fortunately, they forged ahead, showing that not even death could stop the Metallica monster. Whether you like that, or whether you think they should have given up, like Led Zeppelin did when their drummer OD'd, you've got to admit that there is merit in this album and it deserves justice.

After years listening to thrash metal, I can say, that this album is One of the most overrated albums in this genre. I hate when Metallica fanatics say that this is a great album, better that Reign In Blood by Slayer and Rust In Peace by Megadeth. This album is a sign of dying Metallica. I can say that their previous release, Master of Puppets was better, and their next release, Black Album also was better.

Listening to this album, I feel like that they needed only to write something, and they didn't care what. This music is difficult, which makes it uninteresting, and soulless. Songs in the Master of Puppets were 'aLive'. Listening to them, I could feel, that they are telling me something, solos expressed whole emotions of the songs. And here what? I almost fell asleep in the middle of the song 'The Shortest Straw'. Solos, they are always main thing in thrash metal, and solos here are only random melody on last string.

There are only four really great songs, which deserves to be listed here. These are Blackened, One, The Frayed Ends of Sanity and To Live Is to Die. Others aren't remarkable. Despite being part of the 'dead unity of thrash metal (I mean this album)', there are really decent. I must mention original beginning and great solos of the song 'Blackened', great Riffs in the end of the song 'One', great intro and outro in the song 'The Fayed Ends Of Sanity' and whole song 'To Live Is To Die'.

This song is instrumental. It starts and ends on acoustic sounds. Here are two different kinds of Riffs. At the beginning, they are rough and brutal, in the middle, suddenly, they become very emotional, and in the end, brutal ending and acoustic guitar then. If this album would be an EP, containing these songs, that would be really great.

Others are just parody of songs of previous albums, or songs written at once and nobody worked on them. Guitar Riffs there are very simple. To cover this fail, they used many, many Riffs in the songs, which made everything overlong. I also must confess, that drumming is great, as usual. Lars hasn't lost his talent, while James started to search for something another and Kirk made his solos something different, which seems that this solo doesn't belong to this song.

Greatest thing that I hate in this album, is the bass. Jason isn't a thrash metal bassist, his bass sounded better on black album, here it doesn't sound well, and if it sounds, this breaks everything, all the little extreme feelings, which the song can give. It plays on different scale, than guitars do, so it makes the album not heavy.

Great disease to this album is that intros, Riffs, bridges, solos and outros are uninspired. There is nothing unusual and original, which could show great talent, everything is mediocre, almost every 'real musician' could write music like this. This album is for people, who start listening to thrash metal, maybe. So I would recommend it to them, but thrashers won't like this!