Justice for All: The Truth about Metallica

Justice For All is an extensively researched and well written book. For sources, McIver draws primarily from about 70 self-conducted interviews with musicians, journalists, and music industry insiders, many of whom were directly acquainted with Metallica. McIver seems to embark on two separate projects with this book. First, he is presenting an historical account of the band intended to tell the Metallica story in vivid detail. This he does quite well, and it is for this reason that I think the book is worth buying. I haven't read any other full biographies of Metallica, but I can't imagine there's a better one out there that is as recent as this one, which was released in 2004 and includes information through the St. Anger/Some Kind of Monster sessions. Second, McIver is offering a full, song-by-song record review for every Metallica album released (including St. Anger). The author makes no pretenses about being objective--he states at the outset that he will give his opinions. And give his opinions he certainly does. Put simply, McIver believes Master of Puppets was the apogee of Metallica's musical genius--what came before it was an ascent to greatness, while what followed was a series of disillusioning let-downs that left many fans (McIver included) feeling alienated. What I found frustrating about each of his record reviews from ...And Justice For All forward was that McIver incessantly demanded that Metallica give him "Master of Puppets II". He seemed to ignore the fact that most artists don't want to create the same work twice; they want to grow musically and constantly aspire to new sonic possibilities. As a musician and songwriter, I found it somewhat irritating that McIver was so persistent with his insistence for more of the same from Metallica. What made this even more of an issue for me was that McIver, only three pages into the text, exhorts the reader to "keep an open mind" (xv). I found myself thinking back to this line each time McIver made an assertion like the following (in reference to Load and Reload): "The one overriding fact is that these two albums simply aren't very good" (253). What happened to keeping an open mind? However, these are just opinions, and I don't think one should base the decision to purchase the book on whether (s)he shares McIver's views or not. While I think the book might have been stronger as a pure biography (i.e., minus the record reviews), the reader can look past McIver's opinions if (s)he desires. In short, Justice for All is a valuable history/biography regardless of your stance on Metallica's music. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in understanding the band's origins and history or the 1980s metal scene more generally.

this book was written by a real fan of metallica who tells it like it is he thinks most of the new stuff sucks but explains why he thinks they havent sold out they have just grown old and evolved this book has lots of rare pictures of old metallica and is worth buying for the large section on cliff burton with painstaking research on how they started and tons of hilarious storys never told before metallica may be old farts now but they forever changed rock music and no current metal band comes close to the complexity of metallicas old stuff if you want to know the full story and learn more about the amazing cliff burton buy this book it tells u about the entire early thrash metal scene and how metallica rose to the top of it

Finally, someone with the guts to tell it like it really is. It's painfully obvious that the author is intimately familiar with Metallica. After reading some of the negative reviews about this treasure, all I can do is laugh at their sheep-like attitude as this is THE Metallica book. Anyone who has actually followed Metallica since their early thrash days WILL love this book! It's quite accurate, factually and as a fan of thrash I particularly enjoyed the interviews with Metallica's peers and others in the music business. This book has it all. Joel's descriptions of the songs are written with surgical accuracy. Joel is the 1st writer with the balls to say what every true old school Metallica fan has been thinking since MOP/AJFA. All Metallica fans (except the worshipping sheep) NEED this book, period. Thanks for such a treasure Mr. McIver. Trust me, those who know...know! ;-)

Joel has done a tremendous job on research.....you can tell he was a passionate Metallica fan who is TRYING to figure out what the band are doing now...the book explains all.

Damn I've been waiting 20 years for a book like this. Metallica rule and so does this book. It tells about every bit of there career and is full of stuff I never heard! Buy it whether you like Metalica a lot, a little or even just a tiny bit!!