10 Perfect Albums That Have Awful Production

Coming off of the tragic bus accident that killed Cliff Burton, Metallica were at the end of an era making And Justice For All. They knew that they wanted to continue with the band, but bringing new member Jason Newsted into the fold almost didn't feel right, knowing that their musical brother was no longer with them anymore. The solution? Just cut the new kid out of the record altogether.

While Jason does have a handful of writing credits on the album for songs like Blackened, you'd be hardpressed to find him anywhere in the mix, with Lars Ulrich specifically asking that the bass be turned down so low on the record to the point where you can barely hear it. It might have been a part of the hazing ritual that got Jason into the band, but the resulting album ends up sounding like a glorified demo recording, with the guitars sounding way too bright and little to no bottom end anchoring any of the songs by the end of the record.

That's before you even get to the songs themselves, which tend to be fairly overdone during production, trying to shoehorn in every single riff that they can and winding up with songs that stretch out for 9 minutes at a time for no good reason. And Justice For All might be the final great album of Metallica's glory years, but you can absolutely understand why they needed to get better production for the Black Album just a few years later.