You can on the good ones.

The thing about Justice for me is that not only was this at a time when album production wasn't nearly as bad as it is now, but they also just turned the bass down all the way. On modern records they just mix everything else really, really loud to the point that you hafta go specifically searching sonically for it. Not that that makes it any less stupid, mind you, but as a whole I am really, really, REALLY against inaudible bass on rock and metal records, to the point that I automatically give a record at least a few more review points if the bass is audible.

Because it was especially bad on Justice. Oh, Metallica likes to claim that James' guitar tone just hid everything, but if you listen to the clean parts in One, where it's just clean guitar, bass, and drums, you still can't hear the bass. They had it turned way down in the mix, simple as that. Jason pretty much caught the post-cliff-death anger from the guys the entire time he was in the band, he's said as much in interviews.

Though bass may not be a big deal on a lot of metal albums, the lack of bass on Justice matters because its presence added a lot to the first 3 albums, so it'd make sense to keep it audible on the follow-up.

Anthrax, Testament, Megadeth, Metal Church, Overkill, and Exodus would all like a word with you.

Not to mention Artillery. Heck, 'Khomaniac' smacks you in the face with a tasty bass solo right near the start of 'By Inheritance'.

I love to hear the bass.

I believe James and Lars have publicly fessed up to editing Jason out of the final mix, or at least heavily turning him down. I don't know if they have entirely apologized for it but they did at least admit it. The reason being, Lars wasn't entirely comfortable with Jason's playing, and yeah, as mentioned, they were all kind of hating on him because he was there and Cliff Burton wasn't.

Honestly, if you have a hearing range greater than that of a tuna fish, you can hear the bass in most albums, extreme metal or not. It's something I've learned to abhor since becoming a review mod. If you mention "Well I can't hear the bass but that's normal lol", then you're not trying hard enough, and if you say "Well the bass is actually audible, so that's different", then you're a noob to metal. NO EXCEPTIONS.

It's already self-explanatory that posts like these were going to pop-up whenever someone makes a thread about Metallica:
-Metallica's first four albums
-Black album
-Post-Black albums
-Metallica is old
-complaints about Metallica

But anyways, I wasn't really that surprised about this "epic" news to be honest. If you think about it, most of the bands they are going to sign probably won't be that good anyways (a slight chance some might be good/decent).

If Ghost hadn't already been taken by Universal then Metallica would have easily picked them up for Blackened.

Actually, I thought it was only a matter of time until Metallica did this. Let's see how it turns out and what bands they sign to it, because surely they can't all be bad. In the meantime, not a single fuck was given.