A rather large complaint by bassists that are fans of Metallica is that in the original studio recordings for the album …And Justice For All, Jason Newsted’s bass can barely be heard.
The response to this by Metallica fans who wanted to hear the best was to literally remix the entire album using the tools and tracks they had available to them.
What happened is a totally unofficial re-release of the album which goes by several names, a few of which being …And Jason For All and …And Justice for Jason.
This is the entire album with the “enhanced” bass track:
“Bass too loud?”
So now we have the “fixed” album, but complaints started filing in that while the bass can definitely be heard now, its place in the mix doesn’t seem to fit all that well due to the fact the remix is a fan-based effort.
This however is a minor complaint, because better to hear something instead of nothing.
Why was the bass buried in the original studio release?
In this article, a co-producer of the album stated it was James and Lars that specifically said to turn the bass down during production.
But in the same article, Jason stated the bass was buried because of a “sonic wall” issue, being that both the guitars and the bass were battling it out for the same frequency range and that is why the bass isn’t heard.
Is one story true and the other false, or are both true? We’ll never know for sure.
But it’s cool that a “fixed” version of the album exists where the bass can be heard, even if the mix isn’t the best.
[Update: Alternative fan remix with better info]
Below is an alternative fax remix, but with one rather big difference. This one actually stated which ones were original Jason tracks and which ones were covers, as follows:
1. Blackened – 0:00 *Original Jason’s bass track
2. …And Justice For All – 6:38 *Original Jason’s bass track
3. Eye Of The Beholder – 16:30 Bass Cover
4. One – 22:51 *Original Jason’s bass track
5. The Shortest Straw – 30:20 *Original Jason’s bass track
6. Harvester Of Sorrow – 36:53 Bass Cover
7. The Frayed Ends Of Sanity – 42:38 Bass Cover
8. To Live Is To Die – 50:25 Bass Cover
9. Dyers Eve – 1:00:11 *Original Jason’s bass track
You can decide for yourself which of the two fan remixes has the better bass audio clarity. Regardless of which you choose, it’s nice that some fans took the time and effort to actually put these together.
HELL YEAH!!!! MUCH BETTER!!! could have gone with a little more bass, but I’m being bias, cuz I’m a bass player….. lol
Same problem with current bass player they won’t turn him lose. Just listen to his other work on Enfectish Grooves
Robert Trujillo? Yes Mark – he’s a MONSTER player. And very Articulate player too But they turned him into a Millionaire in a couple of seconds, when he still thought he was auditioning. He’s not really too bothered.
“Enfectious”
What a bunch of effing Prima donnas. They just buried him with there egos and conniving. You only have to watch the Metallica film ‘Some kind of serious issues that most people deal with at 13’ or what ever it’s called, to see where they are coming from.
I don’t know much about Lars childhood, but James Hetfield had some seriously bad parents. His mom died of cancer because her religious beliefs didn’t allow for medical treatment. I can only imagine what such extremely closed mindedness can do to a kid. I had some not amazing parenting and it took quite a few years to recover from some of it. Also these guys were in their mid 20s and just didn’t have the maturity. Jason really doesn’t seem so bitter about that period.
Jason is the reason I picked up bass and spent two grands and a half to get a bass rig even though I’m a guitarist )))
It seems the producer tells the truth, Newsted also tells the truth. It’s no surprise they (Lars and James) did what they did, they were full of themselves and they considered Jason as a session player back then, but they had to come with a BS reason to justify their decision. And Jason simply said what they have told him. Fortunately his bass sounds awesome in every Black album song.
I’m astounded at how much better this sounds with some bass in the mix! I think that these guys were typical of metal bands in the 80s…they were SO guitar driven that bass wasn’t seen much as a creative addition, in the traditional sense of acting as the glue between melody and rhythm, but more as a means to thicken up the live mix. Many bassists in the genre at the time just doubled the guitar lines and didn’t help their case at all. I’ve heard entire albums from that time period in which the bass strictly doubled the guitars without even a single bass fill.
Whatever your views on the music of the 90s, one good thing to happen was appreciation of bass. Bass became prominent in genres such as hip-hop and rap, so people really started craving bass and low end. This caused bass, in general, to come out of the shadows and to be appreciated (again) as a musical and creative force.
The story I’ve always heard was that James & Lars, as part of hazing Jason and somehow mourning Cliff Burton, was that they ordered the bass turned down despite Jason working hard to do the material justice. Jason has more or less confirmed this, and the statement mentioned above strikes me as being “party line” more than anything else, depending on how recent it was, I think. I remember reading an interview he did in the early 90s where, even then, I could tell he was toeing the James & Lars party line in a big way regarding a few different things, and it was sad. Jason is a capable player and it wasn’t and isn’t fair to him that this happened.
Lars is the antichrist of bass. Hetfield sold out to Lars, easy to see why, he too is a sellout as I saw him on a vid say they are the “greatest rock band in the world” ! “Rock”, this is metal not rock, he’s just trying to widen their scope of fans. What’s the deal with Lars squatting water from his mouth onto the crowd … what a pretentious imbecile. What’s the deal with the latest 2CD they have, barely anything on disc #2, oh yeah, it counts as two cd’s in the sales rating game. They sold out a long time ago. Can’t wait for Lars to die.
After seeing a 2″ 24 track “drum master” reel of Lar’s, with dozens and dozens of razor edits to adjust his terrible timing, I was convinced that they’re the biggest joke in the music industry… every engineer I know that has worked with them has no respect for them..other than their incredible ability to believe their own BS…HOWEVER..
As to Jason being lost in the mix, despite Lars and James being &^nts, remember this was still the days of vinyl, and low end was hard to deliver on vinyl…and most recording studio main monitors did not have subwoofers then, so there was not a lot of ability to reproduce low end Like we can now…but Metallica are still Klowns to me…
I hate it when the guitars are in my frequency range!
Metallicrap = glorified garage band………
What happened to the video – YouTube killed it. Is it hosted anywhere else?