Feb 24

Feb 24 Metallica - Master of Puppets

Metallica
Master of Puppets
Release Date: March 3, 1986
Label: Elektra

Review by Jared Stossel

It took three albums, but the young upstart thrash metal act from the Bay Area had done what many believed they would never do: release a masterpiece. The prior releases of Kill ‘Em All and Ride The Lightning only served to showcase what Metallica was capable of doing. After years of writing solid guitar riffs, memorable solos, refined lyrics and packaging them together in heavy metal opuses that could run upwards of eight minutes long, the culmination of these skills came (for now) in the form of Master of Puppets. Just barely clocking in at an hour long and recorded over three months at the tail end of 1985, Puppets serves as an example of hard work and dedication to the craft paying off in dividends. It’s still one of the band’s most popular albums, considered by many to be one of the most significant metal records of all time. It even became the first metal album to be selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry.

With the success of Ride The Lightning and relentless touring beginning to catapult them into the spotlight, Metallica ended their deal with Megaforce Records and signed with the major label Elektra Records. After reissuing Lightning in November 1984 and adding a heaping of festivals and large-scale venue tours to their itinerary, the band was more inspired than ever to take their music to the next level. There’s a noticeable difference in the writing on Master of Puppets. All of the songs are primarily written by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, but credit is given to Kirk Hammett and Cliff Burton on various tracks. It is the first album to be completely written by the band that people were getting to know; there were no more leftover riffs from the Dave Mustaine days. This was the first time Metallica were truly on their own as songwriters, starting from scratch.

Sonically, some of the fastest thrash metal moments occur on Puppets, from the full-scale assault of the album’s opening track (“Battery”), followed up immediately by the eponymous title track. While the album finds the band playing at perhaps their most aggressive, these songs are broken up into sections, always speeding up and slowing down, assembling riffs and instrumental passages that make the heaviest moments stand out even more. Songs like “The Thing That Should Not Be” and “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” provide slower moments, but the intensity never wanes. Hetfield’s lyrical delivery is cogent and stands out far more here than on the band’s previous offerings. “Disposable Heroes” and “Leper Messiah” tackle heavy subject matter at blistering speeds before leading into the multi-layered instrumental that is “Orion”, one of the longest Metallica songs in existence, and the last true documentation of bassist Cliff Burton on a record before his untimely passing. Things are brought up to speed with the concluding track, “Damage, Inc.”, before the album comes to an abrupt halt.

Lyrically, Hetfield explores themes surrounding violence (“Damage, Inc.”), the hypocrisy that accompanies religious fanaticism (“Leper Messiah”), and the control that accompanies addiction (“Master of Puppets”) The latter track is especially intriguing; the album’s title could be a reference to anything surrounding control over another person, be it war, government, religion, but lyrics strikingly seem to refer to cocaine addiction (“Pain monopoly / ritual misery / Chop your breakfast on a mirror / Taste me, you will see / More is all you need / You’re dedicated to / How I’m killing you”) What’s brilliant about the lyrics through Puppets is the vague interpretations that most of these songs have; while the band may be touching on a specific topic, the lyrics to a song like “Master of Puppets” or “Battery” can be open to a wide variety of interpretations. Other tracks like “The Thing That Should Not Be” and “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” pull from literature, with the former referencing H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth and the latter being based on One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, dealing with the isolation that accompanies being locked in a mental institution. “Disposable Heroes” is one of the album’s most powerful moments, a scathing anti-war commentary that speaks on the way the world raises young men just to kill them in battle (“Soldier boy, made of clay / Now an empty shell / Twenty-one, only son / But he served us well / Bred to kill, not to care / Do just as we say / Finished here / Greetings Death / He’s yours to take away”). The pre-chorus winds down, Hetfield commenting on the inhumanity before the character is met with a barking order of “back to the front!”. In war, you’re not supposed to question anything. On Master of Puppets, the band question the power dynamics of everything.

Master of Puppets would mark the beginning and the end of a portion of Metallica’s career; the release of this album would bring them tremendous success and horrific heartbreak. Regardless of how things panned out in the band’s history, the channeled ferocity and dedication to the craft still reign supreme in their catalog, and it remains a remarkable record of a time when four friends were destined to take on the world with their music. Echoing a sentiment I made at the beginning of this piece, there’s no other way to put it: Master of Puppets is a masterpiece.