Metallica Mixer Explains Missing Bass on 'And Justice for All' 

The short anwser:Lars The long anwser:Lars Ulrich

To summarize the video: “Everything was great” 1-"but Lars..." 2-"then Lars..." 3-"so Lars..."

"Vocals. Guitar. Bass. Drums. Long ago, the four members lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when Lars opened his mouth."

I really, REALLY wish I could hear the version of this album that THIS man wanted to mix. “I wanted to make Puppets sound like a demo.” Fucking beautiful.

And Justice for All? More like Adjust It for Lars

This video was perfectly edited. Then Lars came into the room.

This video editing is unbelievable. We feel like we are missing so much of the stuff that *you* shot, literally for us to watch. What is this, your own version of Lars’ing or something?

The three biggest Metallica crimes soundwise: - St. Anger's Snare sound - Death Magnetic's sound compression. - And Justice For All's basslessness.

Metallica was ahead of their time creating karaoke for bass players...

"and then Hetfield went like this" * no cut away to show what Hetfield did * Director of editing: Lars Ulrich

Lars really is an enigma. Without him, Metallica wouldn't even exist and without his artistic vision we would have missed out on a lot of highlights of their career. Ironically, however, *because* he is in the band we have also been subject to the absolute lowlights of their career. All in all I have a lot of respect for the guy, but wow, he really has made some dubious choices! Also he can't keep the tempo live. I don't think he ever really has.

I just broke a rib laughing my ass off! This is exactly why I quit recording and producing bands. And one of the last bands I worked with (ironically), Flotsam & Jetsam 😂 Just before Jason left. I'll never forget him asking me for some duct tape. He put a baseball hat on, then the headphones. Then wrapped the tape around the headphones so he could headbang doing his Bass tracks.

"And Hetfield went like this..." You chose that moment to cut to b-roll? Please, please recut this. I really want to know what Hetfield's reaction was.

I have literally never heard a story about Lars that actually improved my opinion of the guy.

I bought the cassette the morning it came out. I went back to my dorm and my roommate and I listened to it. We kept messing with the EQ thinking it was my stereo. We went down the hall to some guys who had CD players. They all sounded equally shitty. I went back to the record store and asked if they got a bad batch. The guy told us, " they all sound this shitty."

Just a quick reminder that Steve also mixed Appetite For Destruction by GnR and Poison by Alice Cooper. Just imagine how great Justice would have sounded if Lars didn’t fuck everything up

Great editing! Go to a cut scene during a part where he’s using physical gestures to tell the story!! Genius move

Who else wants to hear the way this guy woulda mixed it? I really want to.

I can’t believe they have not yet had the bass lines redone and re-issued it. That’s baffling to me does anybody else feel that way?

This is what happens when a band has too heavy a hand in the final sound of their record. This man is a professional mixer and should have been aloud to put his own touch on the album. Would have been 10000x better too.

"...and Hetfield went like this" Well... how? How did Hetfield went like? Thanks Loudwire for not showing that important part.

I feel like Kirk was the only one who mildly respected Jason.

My late mother once told me that loss and regret are the most distressing human emotions. You can really sense his regret at not having mixed it the way he wanted and kept a spare reel. What we wouldn't give to hear that now. Not that "Justice" is a bad album. In fact, it could be their best, according to Flemming Rasmussen, who produced it, which really turned a lot of musicians onto Metallica, including the technical death metal crowd. But it does sound a little flat.

"James went like this -" Loudwire: *Edits video so you can't see the gesture he was making* Who edited this damn video, Lars?

The way they treated Jason is unforgivable. I don't care who passed. No excuse. You shouldn't have hired him if you were just gonna hate bang him for decades.

So Lars is the reason that the only damned thing you can hear on St Anger is that damn pot and pan set he's beating on. I haven't heard that album in like ten years and I can still hear that snare pinging in my head.

Back in 2004 I was in a studio in Hoboken, NJ with Mike Barbiero and he told the same story. James and Lars said, "Here are the polaroids of the mixing desk we recorded at. Do the same with your faders." + "Pull the bass down till you can't hear it and raise it 1db." And Mike and Steve would argue, "This isn't the same mixing board! It won't sound the same." Didn't matter. He also told me, "we'd put the bass up when they were gone, then they'd fly back in to hear the mixes and make us put everything back they way they told us before. The only song I could sneak any bass onto was 'The Ballad'." Shoutout to the old school copy of THE STAND behind Steve's head there.

Steve Thompson is awesome. The album is awesome . A very influential album and a masterpiece . That mid scoop sound is cool but too bad the bass wasn’t a bit more audible or it would be perfect

and Hetfield went like WHAT???? was Lars editing the video?

Remember when Lars accused James of being a control freak

2:06 great editing, guys. lol. good interview though it's nice to hear what happened.

This was the first Metallica record I heard, and at around 10 years old it really kicked me in the ass. The way the drums were so dry and intense it almost made the music sound illicit. The snare at the beginning of Blackened set the tone for something that was unlike anything else at the time. It may not have made for the best mixed album of all time, but it kicked off a lifetime of fascination and love for thrash metal that will never die, and that's why for me it's the quintessential thrash record over Master of Puppets, Rust in Peace or even Beneath The Remains (which is probably 2nd imo).

As Metallica progressed and succeeded in their careers after Cliff died, the "what would Cliff do?" or, "what would Cliff say?" was always asked. The fact that newsted got snubbed on Justice, I can only imagine that Cliff was rolling in his grave in udder disappointment with Lars and James. To think they'd treat his successor with such disrespect would anger him to no end.👎

And years later Lars develop his sound, and creates the St. Anger's drums.

Man… I was vocalist in a band and when we recorded the album the guitar played and bass player were going into the studio behind my and the drummers backs. They kept turning themselves up in so far in each song you could barely hear the lyrics or feel the drums. I ran the recordings past a friend of mine who is a very highly regarded producer. He laughed at how absurdly out of balance it was. I brought this up with the drummer and then we brought it up with the guitar and bass players. They promised to fix this and gave us a mix that sounded great. We all signed off on this mix. Then they reverted back to the mix they wanted with guitar and bass in total domination of everything. The mix was then sent to be mastered…. The guy going the mastering of the album had to pull the entire middle range out of the album to take back their ego edit for publishing. When the album came out it sounded so thin and tinny it made me furious and I quit the day the album was released… which was the bass players plan all along, the bass player then re-recorded the vocals herself and rereleased the album with the same cover inverted to a negative image of the original. So now when you look up the band on Spotify there are two identical album, both sounding thin and tinny but with different vocalist. I won’t even state the name of the band because they are such fucking clowns. The drummer left shortly after I quit. 😂

I am a musician, live engineer and producer. Call it my ego, but if i was Jason, i couldn't have tolerated that mix and i would just have left the band. I saw Metallica in 89 and 91. Jason on stage was so awesome. The whole band was awesome. AJFA could have gone down as one of rock's greatest albums, for me i haven't listened to it for 20+ years. Would be great if Metallica would rerelease it with Jason on bass, and push Lars's drums way back in the mix 🤣🤣🤘🤘

Band: We need more bass Lars: Fine, I'll get a third bass drum.

Whole world: Turn up the bass Lars: Turn down the bass

AJFA is a great album. Had they listened to this man, it could have been even greater...

As much as there are reasons for mixing down the bass that dont make sense, ive almost wondered if it was a sort of subconscious way to cope with the loss of cliff. He left a massive hole in theirs and our hearts and that album is almost a testament to how big of a hole he left in the bands sound too. Its like a whole album of just James, Kirk, and Lars jammin away without Cliff and its like its all for Cliff. Especially when you think of To Live Is To Die. That being said it doesn’t excuse how they treated Jason then and all the way till he quit.

"And Hetfield went like this..." and Loudwire is showing live footage. Some editor is getting fired at Loudwire today. Way to fuck up an exclusive.

Lars: take out the gestures untill you can't see them at all.

Theres a fan mix of the album called "Justice for Jason" that they've somehow managed to crank the bass back up and it actually makes the album so much better. Jasons got an absolutely blazing bass line under all that, and nobodies heard it. Maybe I'm biased because I'm a bassist, but Jason got done dirty by that and its really unfair because its the best metallica album that he's on, and due to Lars and Hetfield being asshats due to unresolved g PTSD from losing Cliff (Kirk seems to have a lot of guilt about this, but I refuse to believe Hammetts ever been mean to another human in his life, the dudes a soft spoken teddybear of a man), he got shanked out of his place on that album.

This is my favorite album by Metallica, and to think what it would have been with a more prominent bass makes me feel like this dude. MOP is a close 2nd but this one is #1 for me.

2:00 the audio engineer: makes face and hand expressions to recreate the moment better video editor: it would be too bad if someone would cut extremely old and irrelevant metallica footage on it.

We want ‘And Justice for Bass’ remixed and remastered release.

Just like most musicians: Lars came in to listen to the mix and was ONLY listening to himself instead if the entire song. The next thing he listened to was the bass. When you focus on a single instrument in a mix, of course it's going to sound louder. I would put mixes I was working on in the background at a moderate level while I set mic stands, amps, etc. (WITHOUT actively listening to the mix). Many times, I found a stray sound that I missed in the control room and I was able to correct it before the final mix. This is exactly what happened when Lars asked if there was bass in the mix. If he would have just listened to the original mix and lived with it for a while, he would have heard the sound that we fans WANTED to hear from Metallica, instead of the thin, wimpy mix we got on "And Junk for All".

The fact that the album is called "And Justice For All" is extremely ironic considering that they didn't give justice to Jason's work, nor Cliff for that matter.

When someone uses non verbal communication to emphazise or explain a certain situation you do not overlap the audio with random visuals. You can not hear "the look on his face".

On the bright side, makes it a perfect album to play bass along with. You can even write your own lines and as long as you're in key and on time, it fits nicely. This album was made specifically for bass players to practice to.

"I changed his drum sound. He was so angry he seethed for over 10 years before making St. Anger."

As an original fan from the beginning it would be nice if they released a remastered version of Justice with adequate bass line. I saw them live twice on Justice and you could hear the bass line, it was better that the studio recordings. Probably never happen.

Lars 1988: Turn down bass until you can't hear it Lars 2006: He left the fockin' band!

"and Hetfield went like this"

If I were Jason and I found out that my bass parts were basically getting removed I would’ve quit the band on the spot.

"...and Hetfield went like this" The editor didn't think to show his face at that part?

And 15 years later Lars finally got that drum sound on "St Anger!". 😆

Just fantastic editing of this video

About time they restored this album what a beautiful remaster, I don't understand why Newstead was outed this is why you need audio engineers whose fine instrument is audio hearing range and perception

This guys got my respect, he mixed Appetite for Destruction, one of if not the best sounding albums ever.

I remember an interview with Scott Ian and Danny Spitz from Anthrax, talking about how Elektra hired Thompson and Barberio to mix Persistence Of Time. And apparently the first thing they said to the Anthrax guys was, "Let's make this record sound the way ...And Justice For All COULD have sounded".

Funny fact, I always loved how “and justice for all” sounded! We’d never heard anything like that before! How the bass sounded actually made a new guitar sound, never heard before! I’m really happy they did what they did! And if you blame that on Lars, then kudos to him ❤️

This was my first CD at the age of 11, got it from a cool aunt. Never heard of metal or Metallica before that. I loved this album and sound, still do. It has heavily influenced my taste in music from that, prefering the "oddballs" like Faith No More, Living Color, NOFX, Primus, Tool etc while all my friends and classmates was into Green Day, U2 and everything Metallica did after the black album.

"hetfield went like this" .... Plays live metallica footage....

Everyone who has ever worked with Lars: “are you serious?”

As an engineer myself, I disagree that it's ultimately the band's record, and you have to do whatever they say. They are hiring you for your expertise; which is expertise that they don't have. So it's more like a marriage. You doofuses don't know how to record, so you're paying me to basically show you. If you don't like that, then do it yourself. Your career and your reputation are on the line also. It's your job sometimes to say "No, this idea is idiotic, I'm not doing it.". If you get fired, fine. You probably saved your reputation as an engineer or producer.

That's why everyone needs to replace the OG album with ....and Justice for Jason. Bass track restored to original.

Till this day I wonder what James Hetfield did.

You know this is probably the ONLY band that could sell a MILLION copies of an old REmixed record. They could get it done with a proper mix and it would outsell their next album.

We need the Steve Thompson mix! RELEASE THE THOMPSPON CUT!!!

A lot of bands did this back then. Bass was second thought like background noise. Non important. Sad too, a lot of us bass players got screwed over like this.

I own the bass tabliture book for And Justice For All. ...I assume it's correct...

Back in the early nineties my 16 yr old nephew was dying of a brain tumor and I was working on a tour where Metallica opened for one show. I asked the band to sign an autograph for him. (he played drums) Lars was the only one who said no, James not only signed an autograph but grabbed my cellphone and called him. Was the thrill of his short life and speaks to the difference between those guys.

*Steve Thompson:* "Look....umm...i'm not pointin' the finger or anything like that....but the missing bass aahhh...is because of" (nods toward couch) *Lars:* (sitting on couch, eating sandwich and wipes hand on couch) "This fokken sandwich is amazing" (burps, wipes hand on couch)

With all the remixes of the Justice record online these days, I’d be interested to hear Steve’s version, if he’d want to do it just for his own enjoyment. Like a director’s cut of a movie. That seems to be a popular thing now.

...And Justice for Bass ...And Justice for Jason

This video was edited by Lars.

I feel sorry for the way Jason was treated by these guys. It's clear he loved the band and the music more than the fuckers who started it. Watch the classic album episode on the black album and watch the scene of Kirk and Jason talking about the songs. The atmosphere is uncomfortable as fuck. Kirk literally ignores him half the time. I'm shocked the dude stuck it out as long as he did, but he's the winner out of it all. He stuck around enough to make enough royalties to not need them any more. Even on the later documentary where they don't want him as part of the Idol show because "he lost his idol status when he left Metallica". Just straight up high school level shit.

Never let any drummer have that much control over the sound. How ridiculous. At least consult a musician.

So, basically Lars was pissed off at 'sabotaging' the sound he wanted (regardless of what the SONG needed). And he, being on emotions, just took revenge by turning Jason's bass down?

you can mix it your own way if it's mixed just how I say!

I love how you put footage of Hetfield plating over the part where the mixer is making a facial expression relevant to the story.

I loved the way it sounded back in the day. My big, carpeted speaker boxes had no bass anyway, but I had midrange for days. I could crank it up louder than just about anything else I owned.

For those of you that don’t already know: Keep in mind that Steve Thompson mixed the Appetite for Destruction record. He also mixed for Korn, Whitney Houston, and others. Steve knows his stuff. It was certain people in the band that made the mix sound the way it did when it was released. Edit: In Lars’s defense, I do realize they probably had a story they wanted to tell to their fans, obviously with the album being in memory of Cliff, and Jason getting hazed like crazy as the new bassplayer, the new kid on the block on steroids, etc. It’s just my opinion that it doesn’t necessarily make for the best record. But at least Jason got some respect when the Black Album came out.

Best name drop ever. " So it was kinda funny, coz i was hangin out with Jimmy Page there too..." Jimmy Page does not reappear in this story.

I don't remember anyone complaining about the lack of bass guitar when this Album came out.. actually probably not until the mid 2000s

I wish he'd been able to mix it like he heard it too. It's a great album but that thing he said "Make master of puppets sound like a demo" hints at what might have been the most crushing record of all time.

and Hetfield went like "live footage".....

In 20 years, we'll get to see a "Loudwire editor explains missing video on 'Metallica Mixer Explains Missing Bass on "And Justice For All" [Exclusive]'" and it'll just be Lars not liking the way the video made his drums sound.

No one will ever forgive James for that. How did the record label even allow that to happen

When I was 13 Metallica was my favorite band and their CDs were the first ones I bought. I had also just started playing the guitar as well. I have a distinct memory of listening to ...and justice for all with headphones and my eyes closed listening as hard as I could for the bass and wondering why I could barely hear it.

Could you imagine how insane it would be if this mixer recorded what he mixed originally on a cassette and kept it before Lars came in?

Nobody: Lars: TURN THE BASS DOWN UNTIL YOU CAN BARELY HEAR IT

That's why many of their music did not have a perfect crisp sound. Bass is life in music!!!

I think that all we can take from this is that the album has the best guitar tone of any Metallica album and it's a premade jam-album for metal bassists everywhere. Plus, for us tone chasers we're lucky that F.R. kept notes of his settings and we can use these to replicate the guitar tones and enjoy ourselves hugely with amp sims

Whenever someone says "What's so bad about Lars?" I show them this video.

“I wanted to make “Master” sound like a demo”. That is one tall order.

Garage days came out a year before this album and Jason can be heard well. Justice is a masterpiece album just needs louder bass

"We did have bass on the record, didn't we?" *Palm to forehead*

I didnt know my Aunt mixed a Metallica album