...And Justice for All

...And Justice for All is the fourth studio album by Metallica, released in September 1988 on Elektra Records and produced by Flemming Rasmussen, the first album recorded with Jason Newsted, who had joined the band following Cliff Burton's death, and the last album of Metallica's thrash-progressive phase before the deliberate commercial simplification of the Black Album. The album is best known for its extreme production, in which Newsted's bass guitar is almost entirely absent from the final mix, an outcome attributed variously to engineering choices, studio politics involving the surviving core members' grief over Burton, and the physical mixing board limitations of the era. Hetfield and Ulrich co-wrote all tracks; the nine-minute opener 'Blackened' and the title track at over nine minutes represent the most compositionally complex material in the Metallica catalog, with time signature changes, multiple thematic sections, and orchestral structural logic applied to electric guitar arrangements. 'One,' the album's sole single, was accompanied by the band's first music video, incorporating footage from the 1971 film Dalton Trumbo, and reached number 35 on the Billboard Hot 100, the band's first chart entry on the singles chart. ...And Justice for All earned Metallica their first Grammy nomination (losing to Jethro Tull in a decision widely mocked within the metal community) and is considered the definitive document of thrash metal's progressive aspirations.