Metal Up Your Bass! TransAtlantic duo remaster entire early Metallica catalogue with bass parts restored and made louder

In 2013, a YouTube user named Josh10177 took it upon himself to rectify one of the greatest crimes ever perpetuated against heavy metal, namely the burying of Jason Newsted's bass lines on Metallica's 1988 album ...And Justice For All.

His project, cleverly titled ...And Justice For Jason, was made possible due to five songs on the original album - Blackened, ...And Justice For All, One, The Shortest Straw and Dyers Eve - being included in the popular video games Rock Band and Guitar Hero, allowing their multitracks to be remixed.

Now a TransAtlantic duo - YouTube users EchoBass2 and irushforth - have boldly taken the concept a step further, by 'remastering' Metallica's entire early catalogue with bass parts restored and made louder.

"I can’t explain how much grief I dealt with – and still deal with – over that record," Newsted told Guitar World in 2009, looking back on his debut full-length with the band, recorded at One on One studio in Los Angeles from late January to late May 1988.

"I was so in the dirt," he admitted in another interview. "I was so disappointed when I heard the final mix. I basically blocked it out, like people do with shit."

"I was fucking livid!," he admitted to Metal Hammer. "Are you kidding me? I was ready [to go] for throats, man!"

"The bass was obscured for two reasons," James Hetfield told Guitar World. "First, Jason tended to double my rhythm guitar parts, so it was hard to tell where my guitar started and his bass left off. Also, my tone on Justice was very scooped—all lows and highs, with very little midrange. When my rhythm parts were placed in the mix, my guitar sound ate up all the lower frequencies. Jason and I were always battling for the same space in the mix."

Not everyone is fully on board with Hetfield's version of history here, however.

Mixing engineer Steve Thompson was better placed than most to know the truth.

According to Thompson in a 2015 interview with ultimate-guitar.com, Lars Ulrich was the one who ordered that Newsted's bass parts were buried.

"He goes, 'See the bass guitar?'" Thompson recalled. "And I said, Yeah, great part, man. He killed it. He said, 'I want you to bring down the bass where you can barely audibly hear it in the mix. I said, You’re kidding, right? He said, ‘No, bring it down.’ I bring it down to that level, and he says, Now drop it down another 5 dB. I turned around and looked at Hetfield and said, He’s serious? It just blew me away."

Ulrich doesn't remember things in the same way.

"It wasn’t [a case of], Fuck this guy – let's turn his bass down," he insisted. "It was more like, We’re mixing, so let’s pat ourselves on the back and turn the rhythms and the drums up. But we basically kept turning everything else up until the bass disappeared. It was me and James running everything with an iron fist."

"When Lars came and played …And Justice for All for me, I just looked at him and said, What's that?" recalls producer Flemming Rasmussen. "He said, 'That's the mix.' I said, No, it's not. You forgot the bass."

So here's how ...And Justice For All could have sounded.

...And Justice For All (Re-Remastered) - YouTube

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"I think what my American collaborator and I have done is the closest anyone has got to restoring Jason's original basslines for the whole album," says irushforth. "I think it also helps to debunk the myth that Jason just followed James's guitar parts, one of the many reasons given for why they turned him down in the mix: his parts were much more interesting and varied.

"They didn't turn Cliff down by as much," he adds, "but I still think he got a bit of a raw deal in the early albums. Thankfully, Bob Rock steered them towards having a decent presence for bass guitar from the 'Black Album' onwards."

Listen above to ...And Justice For All Re-Remastered, and check out the same YouTube channel to hear bass-boosted versions of Kill 'Em All, Ride The Lightning, Master of Puppets, and The $5.98 E.P. – Garage Days Re-Revisited.