I don't often post links to the A.V. Club's weekly Q&A feature, since my contributions tend to be a small fraction of the whole. But in this case, my answer to the question of which artists have the biggest gap between their best output and their worst prompted a response that clued me into something well worth sharing. Going after Metallica's recent output isn't exactly back-breaking labor, and I knew that there were some fans who parted company with the back as far back as their self-titled "black album." But I didn't know that some pulled the ripcord with ...and Justice for All, which I thought was their unassailed masterpiece, or that their complaints centered on the (supposedly) spiteful removal of departed bassist Jason Newsted's tracks from the final mix. That in turn led to the mention of "...and Justice for Jason," a fanmade corrective which adds in, depending on the source, either the isolated and amped-up bass tracks from Metallica' edition of Rock Band or new parts played by a 17-year-old metal aficionado. Not surprisingly given the band's generally poopy attitude towards music-sharing, a lot of the online links to the "...Jason" recordings hit dead ends, but a few are up on YouTube. Enjoy, and crank up the low end.
