{"id":270583,"date":"2025-10-02T00:57:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T00:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/270583\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T00:57:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T00:57:09","slug":"metallica-producer-still-doesnt-understand-justice-no-bass-mix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/270583\/","title":{"rendered":"Metallica Producer Still Doesn’t Understand ‘Justice’ No-Bass Mix"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Metallica<\/a> producer\u00a0Flemming Rasmussen once again mused on the\u00a0conspicuous, endlessly discussed lack of bass on\u00a0the band’s fourth album,\u00a0… And Justice for All<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Spoiler alert: He\u00a0still doesn’t\u00a0understand why they\u00a0made the confounding decision to\u00a0scrub newly recruited bassist Jason Newsted<\/a> from the mix \u2014\u00a0but not for lack of trying.<\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> Metallica Albums Ranked<\/a><\/p>\n

Flemming Rasmussen’s ‘… And Justice for All’ Feedback:\u00a0‘You Forgot the Bass’<\/p>\n

Rasmussen discussed his involvement\u00a0with\u00a0… And Justice for All\u00a0in a recent interview with the Chilean radio station Futuro<\/a>, which you can watch below.<\/p>\n

“Lars [Ulrich]<\/a> has a thing that every time they’ve done an album, he comes and plays it to me,” the producer said. “And he always hopes that I nod and say, ‘That’s a good lad.’ And when he came and played \u2026 And Justice for All for me, I just looked at him and said, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘That’s the mix.’ I said, ‘No, it’s not. You forgot the bass.’ But there’s no bass on there.”<\/p>\n

… And Justice for All marked the third consecutive collaboration between Rasmussen and Metallica, following\u00a0Ride the Lightning<\/a> and\u00a0Master of Puppets<\/a>. Rasmussen initially wasn’t going to work on the album as he was busy with other projects, but after some cajoling from the band,\u00a0the Danish producer reshuffled his schedule and flew to Los Angeles to\u00a0help finish the album.<\/p>\n

“By the time I got there, they already got some hotshot Los Angeles mixers, Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero, to mix it,” Rasmussen recalled. “And the story is that\u00a0Metallica flew in, listened to what they’d done, and they went, ‘No, no, no.’ ‘Where’s my drum sound?’ ‘Where’s my guitar sound?’ And actually Lars said, ‘Now take the bass down so you can just hear it.’<\/p>\n

“They did that. You can see it on YouTube. There’s plenty of videos of Steve Thompson\u00a0talking about this. And then once they’d done that, he said, ‘Take it three dB [decibels] more down.’ So, it’s Lars and James [Hetfield]<\/a> that decided, and why they did that, I’ve asked them a thousand times. I do not know.”<\/p>\n

Flemming Rasmussen Discusses Metallica’s ‘… And Justice for All’Flemming Rasmussen Speculates Why Metallica Scrubbed Jason Newsted From\u00a0‘Justice’ Mix<\/p>\n

Rasmussen speculated that the absence of bass on\u00a0… And Justice for All was a result of the other members of Metallica mourning the loss of former bassist Cliff Burton<\/a>, who died<\/a> in a bus accident in 1986 at the age of 24.<\/p>\n

“I think the reason why they turned the bass down, 50% of it is because they were on tour with Van Halen<\/a>, and they flew in and heard the mix,” he said.\u00a0“And\u00a0I think that’s the point where Lars and James realized, ‘We don’t have Cliff anymore. It’s not his bass. It’s a totally different sound.’ And I just think they couldn’t relate to that at that point.”<\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> Every Thrash Metal ‘Big 4’ Album Ranked From Worst to Best<\/a><\/p>\n

The producer also\u00a0surmised that the\u00a0… And Justice for All mix was an extension of the well-documented hazing Newsted\u00a0had to endure upon joining Metallica.<\/p>\n

“What they hated most about Jason was that he was such a Metallica fan,” he said. “So every time they asked him anything, he just did it. So I think they took it down just to piss him off, ’cause they were expecting him to say, ‘Can you turn the bass up?’ And\u00a0he probably never did. That’s why the bass is so low.”<\/p>\n

Rasmussen\u00a0said he had good reason to lament the lack of bass on\u00a0… And Justice for All.\u00a0“As one of the few people in the world who has heard the bass [tracks] on\u00a0… And Justice for All, I can just say Jason did a hell of a job,” he declared. “They sound really good. They are really good bass tracks.”<\/p>\n

The Silver Lining to ‘… And Justice for All’<\/p>\n

Although Rasmussen was frustrated with the album’s final mix, he did note a silver lining.<\/p>\n

“The funny thing is that, in hindsight, I read somewhere recently that …\u00a0And Justice for All is the number one album in the world that people say is the reason why they started their own band,” he said. “So\u00a0… And Justice for All has created more new bands than any other album in the world. So if you\u00a0want to start a new band, don’t be a bass player.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ranking the Opening Song on Every Metallica Album<\/p>\n

We ranked the opening track on every one of Metallica’s studio albums.<\/p>\n

Gallery Credit: Philip Trapp + Chuck Armstrong<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Metallica producer\u00a0Flemming Rasmussen once again mused on the\u00a0conspicuous, endlessly discussed lack of bass on\u00a0the band’s fourth album,\u00a0……\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":270584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[171,981,975,50,983,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-270583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-metal","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-rock","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115301859230437523","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}