Master of Puppets

Metallica

album cover

This Heavy Machinery Requires Skill

Those whose diet consists of "heavy" orchestral fare—Mahler, Wagner—will find much to appreciate in Metallica. Through its many stylistic changes, the Bay Area heavy rock quartet has expanded metal's ritualistic pummeling with music of impressive, even daunting, intricacy. Its dense textures establish connections between metal's Sturm und Drang and the percussive string ensemble passages of major symphonic works. Metallica's crowd-revving anthems (for years, Yankees reliever Mariano Rivera was introduced with its "Enter Sandman") exhibit a Wagnerian sense of pageantry.

This is the album where Metallica fully recasts metal as thinking-person's music. In some ways a formal restatement of the innovations found on the previous Ride the Lightning (1984), it's the band's first consistent set of songs, with doom-laden lyrics (about mind control, leprosy, and sanitarium living) propelled by hiccuping odd-meter syncopations and other devices, all wound up tight and played a touch faster than safe speed.

Constantly threatening to careen out of control, Master shows how thrilling metal can be when its fully torqued. Drummer Lars Ulrich plays like a technical demon whose job is to irritate the others. And lead guitarist Kirk Hammett pushes right back, giving the up-tempo thrash of "Damage, Inc." its outsized (but never gratuitously theatrical) menace. There are plenty of highlights in the band's catalog, but Master of Puppets unites the fury and the finesse in a bludgeoning attack that is viscerally thrilling, and at the same time really smart. Kinda like Wagner.

Genre: Rock
Released: 1986, Elektra
Key Tracks: "The Thing That Should Not Be," "Damage, Inc.," "Master of Puppets"
Catalog Choice: Metallica
Next Stop: Anthrax: Among the Living
After That: Richard Wagner: Götterdämmerung
Book Page: 499

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Comments:

#1 from Brent Carter, chilltown Va - 12/11/2008 4:53

This is a great cd. Metallicas first few cd’s were amazing. Kill em All, Ride The Lightning, Master of Puppets but ..And Justice for All is my favorite. I think Iron Maidens “The Trooper” should be on here just due to the fact that the guitar solo sounds so amazing

#2 from Acai Berry, USA - 02/12/2009 1:41

I love Metallica’s old stuff. The latest ones were kinda sub-par though, such as the S&M and others after.

#3 from jd, new jersey - 05/28/2009 11:47

i gotta go with ...and justice for all over master of puppets. i think justice is their masterpiece and they steadily went downhill from there. i cant even listen to the new crap - ever since they did ‘turn the page’ - a horrible song that they managed to make worse i ceased being a metallica fan.

#4 from Joey, Milwaukee, WI - 06/08/2009 6:46

I’m actually under the impression that Metallica peaked early and Ride The Lightning was their best album. I’ve often said that if “Orion” was added to the Ride The Lightning track list it would have been perfect, but every time I think that, I immediately have doubts because Master Of Puppets and ...And Justice For All are both so perfect as well. I love the Kill ‘Em All record, but it’s not nearly as universally appealing as the following three albums, it’s more of a “metal-fans only” record, in my opinion.

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