Ultimate-Guitar.com recently caught up with producer/engineer TOBY WRIGHT, known for his work on METALLICA’s …And Justice For All, ALICE IN CHAINS’ Jar Of Flies, and KORN’s Follow The Leader. An excerpt from the interview is available below.

UG: You were assistant engineer with Flemming Rasmussen on …And Justice For All. Tell us about those sessions?

Wright: "Flemming was flown in after Mike Clink had left the sessions and I took over engineering from Mike. Then Flemming was contacted and brought in as producer and he was amazing, I learned so much stuff from him. There again it was about how to treat an artist and there were a lot of tricks he used with Metallica to get that sound."

UG: And how did you go about capturing the guitar tones on that album?

Wright: "From memory, James (Hetfield) had a bunch of heads that he had in storage, Boogie MKIIs, and he played all the rhythms with them and then Kirk (Hammett) came in and played all the leads later on. But the sound was accomplished through James’ 'recording rigs' of which he had several of. He brought those in along with his huge collection of guitars."

UG: Over the years there has been much written about why Jason Newsted’s bass is burried in the mix, what’s your take on it?

Wright: "Well, it is definitely there because I recorded it! It was due to Lars' (Ulrich) and James’ philosophy that if you could hear the bass then it was 2db too loud. When they went to mix that record, Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero mixed it, and I’m sure they were heavily influenced by Lars and James at that the time, as that was what they wanted. Lars was looking for a cutting edge record, something that was way different than anybody was doing out there and that is also how he came up with that kick drum sound. That was very different for the day, as it had tons of low end and lots of top. He used to carry around a little picture of the EQ we did.

Go to this location for the complete interview.