The mysteries of the universe reveal themselves through divine patterns and repetitions. Mandelas, angel numbers and religious apparitions come to us in multiples, demanding our attention. When the Holy Virgin made her likeliness apparent on a mountain in Medugorije, Bosnia and Hercegovina in 1981, she appeared in multiple instances, to multiple youths. In a fashion journalism context, everything is patterns. Trends are apparitions. How many times have I seen those shoes? When did I start to see the shoes? What are the shoes telling me about the cultural zeitgeist and our socioeconomic climate? And now, what does it mean that every cool girl I ever knew could recite the government and stage names of the original lineup of Mayhem?
Metallica’s 4th studio album, “…And Justice For All,” long appeared to me as a contemplative moment of penance and atonement for the band, with frequent passages of frenzied ecstasy. “… And Justice” is by far the band’s most cerebral work. Considered the first time James Hetfield sang lyrics with an introspective theme, the album would be the first appearance of this characteristic that became a signature of his later songwriting. In addition to this, “…And Justice” introduced playing styles, soloing techniques, post-production decisions and motifs that carried the band through their most salient and famous era until the 2010s. In addition to this, it was one of the first notable instances of a metal band taking issue and articulating environmental anxieties. The music itself is a selection of complicated time signatures, progressive-metal style phrases and arpeggios, and multiple symphony-like sections that create a sense of awe and grandiosity that taps into a minor theme of the album. While on the surface, “Justice” is about Metallica challenging its own conventions while broadening them, it also took the opportunity to tap into the historical and “Old Testament” imagery of metal (Biblical references, plagues, historical executions, medieval torture, etc.). Introducing these common themes to new, political topics into the changing landscape of metal in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s to something more refined and commercially viable, Metallica was reckoning with the conclusion of the golden era of Thrash Metal they brought into the pop cultural canon.
“…And Justice” is for both the thinking man and the aesthete. Without the attitude and bravado that came after the commercially successful Black Album, Justice comes at an early but highly skilled plateau in the band’s oeuvre and development. At only 9 songs expanded over an hour and five minutes, the band explores the depths of revisited themes with a newly-earned maturity. Often discussing the traumas of war and the end of the golden era of American iconography, Metallica is a band that expresses a deep sympathy for contemporary men and the formation of masculine identity as one that is informed by violence, shame and a permanent nostalgia. Metallica is a band that grieves the death of the role models they had been given while recognizing the damage the collective conscious of patriarchal masculinity wreaks on the male psyche: physically maimed by war, psychologically tortured by trauma, and a compulsion to seek honour and duty to achieve self-actualization while the definitions and parameters of these very values change simultaneously underfoot. Metallica is a band that speaks to a moment in male development where he realizes the world of systems promised to him fails to deliver its stipulations. I’m not going to make the argument that Metallica is feminist because I would like to believe we have moved past the need to articulate everything as feminist to gain credibility, but I want to bring to light something more interesting that happens in metal as a genre: a place for men to be able to process failures, wounds, agonies, resentments, victimization, confusion and torments. Metallica is a guiding presence to those navigating the oblivion and existentialist constitution brought on by the lack of coherence and rationale in the corrupt world. Another word for this phenomenon is insanity, and the thrashing convalescent in the asylum is another popular image for the band’s folklore.
While every member of the band was 25 years of age or younger during recording, Justice is the album in which Metallica came of age. Famously the album in which bassist Jason Newsted faded into the ether/mix after falling short of finding himself in the band’s sonic and interpersonal dynamic, Justice is also the beloved, late Cliff Burton’s final songwriting credit, published posthumously. His last credited lyric on the album in the spoken word section of the fan-favourite “To Live Is To Die,” saying “All this I cannot bear to witness any longer. Cannot the kingdom of salvation take me home?”
The vague and unfinished nature of the ellipsis (…) at the front of the album gives it its ephemeral atmosphere upon first interaction with the album as a piece of combined media. Despite being released with a catalogue of photographs by regular collaborator Ross Halfin, a tour-diary-style footage in a box set called “…And Camcorders For All,” and featuring illustrations by metal album art legend Pushead, the album is still mostly confined to its format, almost permanently and solely fixed the physical manifestations of its recordings as a medium, and rarely released into its natural state via performance. With the average runtime of every song clocking in around eight minutes, the album was notoriously difficult to perform live despite its famously immersive stage performance complete with pyrotechnics and battle sounds. Many songs have not been performed since the early 2000s, and “Eye of the Beholder” had been unofficially retired from the live performance catalogue since 1989. At its very core, Justice is the most bound and devoted to its essence as a piece of art, and it is this fact that also makes this album the prime choice of the “mysterious girl” philosophy.
Technically surgical and yet compassionately sincere, Justice brought on the band’s first Grammy nomination with their guitar teacher magnum opus, “One.” I want to say something here about being six years old and watching an 8th grader named Carter or something like that at my school blow my mind performing “One” at a talent show and that being my first memory-recoverable exposure to Metallica’s music. This would have been the summer of 2003, following the start of the Iraq war, where many of the elder male relatives of my generation (older brothers, fathers, cousins and uncles, not to discredit the women that had served as well) would have begun tours in Iraq, echoing the sentiments and depravities of war Metallica spoke about. While this was more thoroughly explored on the album that preceded Justice, Master of Puppets, “One” became the masterpiece of their anti-war collection. 10 years later, as the Iraq war comes to a close, it is revealed that Enter Sandman, the major single off the self-titled “Black Album” that succeeded Justice and brought Metallica into the public conscious was used to torture the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay, to offend their cultural predispositions and “soften” their hesitation to share intel.
My growing understanding of the philosophy of “mysterious girl” continues to develop from running joke between myself and a real way for me to decipher this life of interpretation given to my pineal gland from which consciousness and information intake from the optic nerves of eyes begin. I went to sleep late again last night so I know my pineal gland is upset with me, especially because I woke up at 3 AM with my stomach feeling like it was full of sand so I ate a handful of air-softened-because-the-bag-was-open-all-weekend popcorn and went right back to my psychoanalytic stress dreams. The pineal gland is a part of the endocrine system that controls metabolism, reproduction, response to stress, injury, and mood. The pineal gland conspires with the pituitary gland at the base of the brain that controls all and understands that all the mysterious girls have a working knowledge and mental rolodex of metal bands, more than enough to carry on an impressive conversation. Mysterious girls are born in the farthest margins of liminal, outsider feelings, only to design their destiny and possibly challenge their fate by re-packaging and re-interpreting the lessons of this era to become elusive and fleeting. The constant fugitive, the permanent outlaw, one who observes all and cherishes the details in an ongoing state of reverence and piety. “…And Justice For All’s” subtly, dexterity and weight in the band’s catalogue make it the ultimate choice for mysterious girls and metal connoisseurs alike, of which the Venn diagram is a circle.
Continued reading:
Metallica 1989 Set Filmed On Lars Ulrich’s Camcorder
Metallica “…And Camcorders For All” Box Set Footage