Audio Engineers React to "...And Justice For All" by Metallica! 

One of the few that hasn't diminished with age, and demands listening from start to finish.

Agreed. Remaster is enough. All the cries for remixing it to "hear the bass" nah. Not that Metallica ever would adhere to them. It's perfection captured to tape and needs to stay as is

It's like the beautiful painting in the museum that you admire but don't visit as much as the comic book store.

​@@mstrasserthe only album that needs a remaster is death magnetic.

My favorite Metallica album. After this one they only went downhill.

A vegetable that doesn't want to live anymore but can't communicate it. Man, that's just pure hell

Yea that was stupid lol

This album is wildly overrated and a lot of the lyrics are juvenile

@@fclefjefff4041 Get out of here. Song writing from James is some of the best in (heavy)music, period. Let me see you write lyrics about the end of the world in "Blackend". Reference to mother nature her death and your own mother. It's very juvenile to write about injury in war, addiction, failed justice system. What are your lyrics about, your first heartbreak?

​@@fclefjefff4041"widely overrated" 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

@@fclefjefff4041 I'm pretty sure you love Pantera and Slayer so much.

Yeah, its just "An Audio Engineer" who doesn't understand that conveying emotion is the main component in creating music and has no idea how to do it...

I also think from an emotional theming standpoint a singular experience of One but without going back to see the live-action music video with the "Johnny Got His Gun" portions deafens someone to the concept the song's about - going from clean to James' vocals overlaid to overdriven guitar without that, it seems like a contrast without context. One of the times where I'd say the track without the music video trappings doesn't necessarily suffer depending on the listener, their research, and so on, but isn't a complete look at the track.

He didnt call the intro garbage he called the tone garbage, its really spanky

I'm an audio Engineer and "One" is my favorite song of all time. Literally wouldn't be in the music world if it weren't for that song. Most audio guys treat their subjective opinions as fact and are very conceited. This record isn't as balanced of a mix as the Black Album, but the booming low mids of the guitars give it a distinctive sound that anyone would instantly recognize.@@oliverfajnor2071

"symbolic" was a secret pun

I know this is older, but I’ll reply anyway. To Live is to Die is written in the way their grief played out. The beginning is their serenity when they have Cliff. The fade in of the abrupt distorted guitars is intentional to signify the chaos and complete shock overriding their serenity when they crashed and realized Cliff was dead. Then it basically goes through their stages of grief. I got annoyed when he rolled his eyes, and later bashed the spoken words as “a stupid saying”. What was said was personal to Cliff, something he partially wrote combined with something from an author he liked. Shit, part of that is written on his tombstone for fucks sake. I doubt he knows any of this, so it’s not his fault, but it definitely rubbed me wrong.

​@@clonexxthanks for explanation. Good timing too.

First time watching this channel...has he come up with a Metallica song since they put up this video? I'm sure what the answer is..

Ok wait when he said that? I’m watching but maybe I skipped?

This "expert" have no idea about music what so ever. Just thrashing one of the biggest bands of all time with nothing to come with at all by himself. Very very bad reaction to one of the biggest metal albums ever created

@@unoeinars746to be fair he says he is not a music expert, his job is to capture audio and mix it and produce it to it’s most favourable sound. The rest is his opinion, as in what he likes etc.

Thousands of bands *HAVE....* but there can be only *one.*

Agreed. The speaking part is on his tombstone. It was a dedication to him as it was something he wrote in poetry. That and they were grieving during this phase of his death. So original poster please take back your blasphemous remarks .

^^^^^

I mean, their reaction to To Live Is To Die is a case point of importance of knowing context. To a certain degree I may agree with some of their points from strictly "technical" side, but when you include the context of this song, the tragedy behind it, this song instanteneously gains another dimension.

@@MyGodIsDJ Definitely agree with you!

Idk if they knew that or not but I think if they kept that in the back of their mind while listening to it I think they would’ve appreciated it a lot more, also I think the reason it’s an instrumental because all of Cliff’s main song were also instrumental

The Book of Counted Sorrows... That's where Cliff got those words. Check it out. It's crazy sh*t.

Because it is.

Yeah I don't trust his opinion on lyrics. Mixing, yeah. But these are some of the best lyrics they've written. Far from Kill Em All where they started. This album and Load/Reload have some awesome powerful lyrics.

@@NandR I don’t even entirely trust his opinion on mixing….he’s said some questionable things about sounds and I disagree.

I just saw this video even though it’s older, and his take on To Live is to Die is ignorant. The harmonies and writing for that song is heart wrenching, and it is a full on tribute to Cliff. The “stupid” fade in of the distorted guitars interrupting the serenity in the beginning is symbolic of the bands serenity being destroyed when the bus crashed and they realized Cliff was dead. Him bashing the spoken words as “throwing in a stupid saying” really rubbed me the wrong way. I doubt he knows that Cliff wrote part of that, combined with something from an author he liked. The part he wrote is even on his tombstone, so the disrespect of it really didn’t sit well with me at all.

The whole time besides one and to live is to die pat loved it tho?

Dudes just mad bc he’s fat and bald

ok so should everyone love this album because you think it's good? The point of this video is to give an actual professional opinion, as opposed to just saying it's good without caring about what is being played. I actually think that people challenging the music is what makes the album so great

​@@costacus7581Professional? He hears three seconds of a song and yells "garbage". Very professional.

​@@costacus7581problem is, they are so embarrassingly not professional. 😅

Actually my favorite song 🤌🏻

Eye of The Beholder better

​@@WFly101 literally my least favorite song on their first 4 albums 😂

I can't believe he was dissing the lyrics as if its not some of james best work

​@@Oscar101996Yeeeesss

Almost, dare I say it, too much bass. Lol

I am Not shure, but i think ITS the original tone from the cd

​@@stivanwin I grew up listening to the CD. That bass was not there. I don't know what they're listening to, but it's absolutely not the original released version.

@@VitoVitonerLanci might be the remastered version released. If it was "and justice for jason" they would have told us.

@@AeroFix94 The remastered version on Spotify sounds nothing like this. There's no way it's the Spotify version cause the bass practically flies in your face in the version they're listening to, and it's barely audible in the Spotify one.

Same here man and when he said they should have another singer wtf!!!!

Everything about 'ONE' works. It's a fucking masterpiece.

@@metalage9751 100%

@@metalage9751One is overrated, best part is the epic machine gun riff

Yeah idgaf what this guy says, One is my favorite song ever because it inspired me to teach myself to play the guitar and fall in love with Metallica

This album is an abomination production wise lol. But its classic

The guitar was so bottom heavy the kick drum needed that tick on top to highlight it. I remember when my friends with their huge subs in their cars for the bass heavy rap would play this disk and the whole car would vibrate. And no you don't hear the bass,it has been admitted the bass was all but eliminated in the mastering. And Kirk's tone and playing was heavily influenced by Kirk's lessons he was talking before the recording with Joe Satriani. And much of the of the "tone" of the guitars is due to the active EMG pickups they were using which some say is kinda sterile sounding,but I love.This took the thrash sound as far as it could go and it is my favorite album of all time.I wouldn't change a thing,this is where they were at that time,that's the point of an "album" it's a collection of where the artist was creatively or thematically at that time.

@@robertshepard2117 I remember I first heard the album on cassette on my dad's boombox and every time sonething palm-muted was played it seemed it was about to explode.

"the most agressive guitar-tone ever" i love this guitar tone but c'mon there's at least 50 albums with more aggressive guitar tones

@@robertshepard2117 The tone isn't really due to the EMG pickups, it's more to do with James and Kirk actively choosing this tone and dialing it in through their amps and effects. I have the exact same pickups on my guitar and it's not like you get this tone out of the box with them.

To live is to die>The call of ktulu>Orion>suicide and redemption>anesthesia pulling teeth

We recorded the reaction for Black album a couple of days ago! I just have to finish the edit and then upload it! We talked FOREVER and had such a good conversation!

Load had great production. The snare was WAY too loud in the mix on the black album. Nearly ear piercing on The God that Failed.

The Black album is a glorified Def Leppard album. The best tone and production is MOP, and it's not even close.

​@@zane4575Anything after ajfa has better production and the black album has the best one

I loved every Metallica album except Saint anger which the snare sound absolutely ruined. The black album though is my favorite.

As a big metallica fan though it is vastly overrated and to me it's nowhere near the best song even on the album, I meen the leads are iconic and the ending is awesome but let's face it the majority of the song is just waiting for it to kick in to the heavy part its not consistently awesome from front to back

Don't get me wrong I don't think it's bad bad, just the verses are abit boring to me rhythm wise, Kirks lead playing is some of the best he's done period

I don't respect his opinion lol. An audio engineer with no understanding of musicality? The guy on our left was far more interested in listening than commenting, and he has my respect.

I don’t, he’s fuckin slow

I don’t respect his opinion at all 😂

It's tough for me between this and master, both are soooo good.

@@PresentChrisAre you actually Chris from video?

Also personally I think the guitar tone on this album is incredible. It’s certainly the most unique and obvious album guitar tone of all time. It’s so fucking punchy. I have it tone matched on my axe fx and I use it soooooo much for so much I play it’s just so badass. However I will agree from a technical standpoint it’s not the BEST tone out there. I also truly fucking LOVE how heavy and deep the black album tone sounds and I love the MOP tone too

The pre-echo thing is so unique! I have only ever heard that in a handful of songs before!

It’s one of those songs you listen to and mid way through you’re like holy fuck I remember how good this song was, not many songs have that affect most you remember and then skip parts of it, blackened every second is gold, I don’t blame you for it being your number #1 , badass song man.

Yeah, was the first song I ever head of Metallica, I wa sold.

@@TheJerseyNinja I remember when Hardwired came out and I heard someone go back and record Moth to a Flame and Hardwired using the And Justice tone and I realized that album was just as heavy as And Justice was. It's definitely an iconic guitar tone.

Oh that does sound interesting!

​@Patrick Musilek The slow intro, written in a Spanish style,repeats like an infinite memory - over and over again... The heavier part: A symbol for the loss and aggressions they felt. Solo #1: Kirk's feelings can be heard in every string he hits. The slow part: The slow part which sounds very silent is now including more harmonies - acceptance of the loss and the will to carry on... Solo #2: It is a kind of a laid back and more harmonized solo - It's representing how deep the death of Cliff Burton has touched them. The heavy part again: They tribute Cliff in doing what Cliff would want from them: To carry on with the music. The outro: Exactly the same as the intro - symbolizing that the song (the memory on Cliff) won't ever have an end. The last riff is cut which is symbolizing Cliff's life - cut short at such a young age.

@@johnsetzler6911 I see the intro being you coming into this life then the end being you leaving it.

@@johnsetzler6911except James played solo 1. It’s the second song he did a solo on, the first being solo 1 of master right after the harmonized descending guitar line.

It really is a dry record! I think that is why i liked it so much as well.

Remastered version

​@Madhouse2332 no its the And Justice For Jason version. Look it up on RU-vid.

@@HighOnFire1997 My bad

Exactly. @PatrickMusilek says in the vid this is the '2018 remaster' but that's straight up impossible. I'm afraid people may start buying the 2018 remaster to get the bass... Damn I just almost did it myself. But a careful study on Discogs shows theres also inaudible bass in the 2018 version. So what are they listening to here???

Yeah, I had to go and listen to the remaster to check and while the bass is marginally better, it's still nowhere as audible as it is here. This has to be one of the "Justice for Jason" versions.

@@timlovegrove1097 I find it hilarious TBH. It's a talk of 'audio engineers' not knowing they haven't heard the real AJFA, and thus missing the elephant in the room by several miles. And how come Chris Parker (supposedly a 'Tallica fan) wasn't shocked dead? He should start screaming "wait wait!" like 30 seconds into Blackened:) Now, there is also a possiblity they mixed some other audio here in the vid than what they heard (??). Anyhow, this entire series is strange. In another vid, Kill'em All also doesn't sound the same. I've no idea.

@@monohedron9633 I'd be very surprised if Chris Parker said anything about this album at all, considering he's not in the video.

Oh,also, would love to hear some megadeth reactions as well.

That's a great case study, because the music is fantastic, one of my favorites, but the production choices are questionable. So you can get a lot of interesting reactions.

It puts the song in a different perspective for sure!

It’s on RU-vid and it’s called “and Justice for all 2018 remastered” it’s not official so someone probably turned the bass up a littlw

I use elipses way too much….and I use them wrong…but I love them lol

@@cullertransportation They can also be used for a number of reasons, including a pause, so you're probably using them right! I'm just super into this stuff because I'm a copywriter, so it's my job. I think we can have creative license for how we use punctuation.

@@chriskeilman i totally agree, and don’t mind misuse of punctuation… I just don’t like when people use no punctuation at all

They said it in the video

They said it was the remastered version, but the remastered one on Spotify lacks bass as well. I don’t know if Patrick bought it directly on Metallica’s website and there that’s another remastered version

@@5VHIB5VHIBE5VHgb3tp Could it be a "Mastered for Itunes" version, just like the one they used in the Death Magnetic video?

@@jerkerjansson386 IDK, but I just ordered a remastered 2018 CD version of AJFA to hear if it sounds like the one on this video. I’ll keep you posted

@@5VHIB5VHIBE5VHgb3tpdid it?

Update usss​@@5VHIB5VHIBE5VHgb3tp

Completely agree. I hate the video version though.

@@twelvemonkeys8786agreed. All the reaction videos I watch it seems like new listeners only pay attention to the video and not the music and lyrics

How'd you comment then

It's my favorite of the three we have listened to so far!

Awesome!

The official remaster from the 2018 re-release. There is a deluxe set featuring like, 146 songs but also just a single disc version with only the original 9 tracks. We listened to lossless versions of that disc.

​@PatrickMusilek that's strange because I am listening to that exact remaster right now with lossless audio and you can't hear the bass.

On the deluxe box set they put rough mixes of the album with more bass which is probably what you listened to

@@user-BenjiCS The rough mixes also don't have the solos though, and these do.

@@FyreofShadow good point

The whole album is the 2018 Blackened remaster. It is the mix on the $5 CDs currently for sale on Amazon and at Walmart.

Every die hard Metallica fan is well aware of what they do on their live performances

@@thrashmetal00 a. How do you define 'diehard fan'? b. What about non-diehard fans who may be interested? c. Why the need for a smart-ass comment?

@@TerribleEnglish the smart ass comment was from you trying to give information on something any die hard metallica would already know.

If there’s one untouchable thing in Metallica is Hetfield songwriting, vocals and guitar playing. That shit was silly

Oh no! I have a very bad score then lol! I did try to do better the more Metallica I have reacted to!

Speak less, listen more

@@blitera7261when the reactor reacts to the song 😱😱😱😱😱

Since hardwired Lars has a click before songs so that he starts them at the same tempo

They used click for sure. Not sure about Kill Em All but For Whom the Bell Tolls was recorded to a click track already. I'm sure other Ride The Lightning songs were done to a click track as well. And obviously next albums too. Black Album no doubt.

Seriously? Do you think the 80's was stone-age? Of course bands used clicks back then! Almost ever im history of recordings clicks was used in one or another way. And Metallica used clicks on every single Album they recorded in the 80's of course. Flemming Rasmussen did a lot of interviews where he tells how they recorded RTL, MOP and Justice, and he said several times they used clicks. Of course they did! No one, not even in the 1930's, recorded a record without a click or a guide track that was "recorded" with clicks!

Nah Lars sounded great thru the 90s too. He fell off after St Anger.

@@NanoverseProductions He sounded good in the 90s.

Nope, look up the 30th anniversary concert and rob plays it on bass

@@andybates50 He does for the first phrase (together with Kirk), but then switches to playing the underlying bass line and Kirk continues to play the swells.

❤❤❤❤❤❤

Fun Fact: Mikael Akerfeldt has said before that if not for that part in the middle of To Live Is to Die where it all cuts out and its just James playing that clean part, if not for that then Opeth might have never existed. Knowing this go back and listen to that part and think of Opeth and it really sounds like them. It's so cool that this one moment in a song inspired him to that degree.

Very interesting! It's probably no surprise that I don't really know any Van Halen (Jump is the only thing that comes to mind)! And I have said many times that I don't like reverb drenched distorted guitars, but I can see that being a good way to get a bigger sound for sure. If everything else in the mix is effect-heavy, why not the guitars as well?

​@@PatrickMusilek And it really hits upon your point that if you've got improvisational elements or loose rhythm playing in the guitars, you simply can't reproduce it in a way to get double-tracked stereo. I think that's the big influence that lead to the big hard-panned reverb track for Eddie's guitars. This was the late 70s, and it really was an innovative approach. Boston & Fleetwood Mac had only just blown the doors open for how to produce rock music that sounded enormous, and the landscape changed overnight on how to produce rock for the pop audience. Van Halen entered the studio for the first time the same year "Rumours" came out, and they had a big problem. Eddie Van Halen was essentially a stunt guitarist, in the same vein as Jimi Hendrix, and asking him to stay contained enough that he could repeat his performances would be cutting the heart out of the act. So, they improvised, and "reverb doubling" (as I call it; I don't know if there's a technical term) was born. I'm a hobby musician (guitar & vocals), who has started making home demos with limited tools and perhaps even more limited interest in learning how to actually engineer & produce music. I've employed reverb doubling a few times, and I've liked the results, particularly as a way to give the chorus some lift (since I'm otherwise using all the same instruments and sounds). Is it ideal? No. Does it work? Kinda, and that's good enough for me!

We listened to the 2018 Remastered version!

Yes I definitely recognized the "oh-wee-oh"!

We plan on reacting to a few songs from Blacklist, but there are just too many to do all of them! I know I personally want to hear the Dave Gahan (from Depeche Mode) version of Nothing Else Matters!

And more than half of it is shite. One might think these were homages to Metallica. Well, most of them are not. I bet Hetfield would throw that hipster crap in the garbage can if it wasn't for Lars playing the open-minded philanthrope.

The chubby guy's opinion is way too important to not be heard over the music. I especially needed him to describe what everyone is hearing.... nothing like a running commentary

@@zane4575 Chubby guy is trash. He can make quite reaction videos...

@@zane4575well it is his channel... but I do agree with you, hahaha

It's kind of the whole point of channels like this though, listen to the music by itself if you don't want it interrupted.

@@zane4575 yeah if he made any remarks that were true you are right, but he doesnt know jack shit. I dont even believe he is an audiio engineer.

It is the 2018 Blackened version. It is the exact version on the CD copy you can go buy right now at Walmart or on Amazon for just $5!

It is the 2018 Blackened version that is the official audio for the album now. You can go to a Walmart near you and pick up the CD version of Justice for just $5 and that is exactly what we are listening to.