#7 Most Influential Album - "...And Justice For All?" by Metallica

I grew up during the "album rock" era, which included midnight album spotlights chock full of selections by Robin Trower, Pink Floyd, Yes and many others who produced albums which in some cases entire sides of the album (Google "album" sometime if you're too old to know what they were) were only one song (listen to Pink Floyd's "Meddle" and you'll see what I mean). By the time the 80's rolled around, apparantly the ADD era was ushered in and people could no longer contain a train of thought for any longer than 3 minutes and 30 seconds. I never really cared for the bubble gum so-called "metal" of the 80's where men looked and dressed more like women and the women did. Motley Crue had a couple decent albums then quickly sold out, but beyond that is was pretty much all cookie cutter cheese.

Metallica broke that mold with "..And Justice For All?" released in 1988. Often referred to simply as "Justice" this album is a monster without apology, which I believe the average length of each track was around 6 1/2 minutes.

If you've never heard this album, I highly recommend listening to it with headphones on. "Blackened" kicks the album off and it's one of the most definitive metal tracks ever. The twin guitars fade in signaling that something big is about to happen and it does.

"One", in my opinion is one of the most ass-kicking metal tracks of all time, which if you've ever seen the video you would understand it is clearly a song about the results of war, and contains clips from the classic film "Johnny Got His Gun". The album contains other strong tracks such as "Shortest Straw" and "Eye of the Beholder", but "Dyers Eve", which ends the album, is one of the most overlooked tracks on the album which after years ended up on many of the band's set lists on their recent concerts.

The first time I saw the band, amazingly enough, was in Bald Knob, Arkansas at the site of all the old Strawberry Jam concerts put on by Barth Grayson, which featured two other bands Raven and Axe. I think there were maybe 300 people there and I believe people stayed away either because they were either scared to death of that type of music or just didn't get it. I thought Metallica was the best band there, but to me they were slightly better than the average garage band which I played in at the time. After their set, the members just roamed around the crowd and drank beer and cheered on the other bands like everyone else. Little did I know at that time would they become such a global force in the decades to come.

I really liked their previous releases "Master of Puppets", which could have easily registered higher than "Justice", and "Kill 'Em All" was a great debut, but the "Justice" album really captured the true essence of the band and very few other albums have ever, or ever will, match this type of creativity and energy.