«Master of Puppets» is Metallica’s third album and it was released in 1986 by Vertigo. The band from Los Angeles had shown from its first steps how fast and heavy it could sound, but here the sound gained a cleaner production and greater volume without losing any of its power. The album came out at a time when thrash was still testing its limits, and it stands as one of the points that pushed it forward.
“`Country: USA
Style: Thrash Metal
For fans of: Slayer, Megadeth
The album balances speed and melody. The riffs run like a gallop, Kirk Hammett’s solos are sharp and the rhythm section of James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich and Cliff Burton keeps every track tied together. Compared with the previous albums, the sound is more compact and more solid, without the garage feel of the first recordings, and each song has its own identity without wearing you out.
The title track «Master of Puppets» is an eight-minute piece about drug addiction, with riffs that every guitarist learned as soon as they picked up the instrument. Beside it stand the opening «Battery», with its acoustic intro that breaks into a fast tempo, «Welcome Home (Sanitarium)», inspired by Ken Kesey’s «One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest», and «The Thing That Should Not Be», based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft. «Orion» also stands out, the instrumental that shows the band does not need vocals to prove what it can do, as does the driving «Damage Inc.» that closes the album.
«Master of Puppets» is regarded as one of the most important records in the history of metal: it showed that thrash could be hard, smart and carefully made at the same time, and it laid the foundations for what followed in the genre, next to the old school thrash albums that started it all.
See also
Slayer – Reign In Blood | Metal Territory and Metallica – …And Justice for All: The Album That Closed Their Classic Era.
