Metallica Album: “Master of Puppets”

Metallica truly shows their maximum talent in this amazing album. This 24k gold CD holds beautiful sound quality that will blow any fan away. This spectacular CD is defenitely worth the purchase, especially if you are a die hard fan...10 times better than regular "puppets" album.

Master of Puppets illustrates why Metallica was one of the most important metal bands ever.

After giving birth to thrash with Kill 'Em All, Metallica began refining their innovations with Ride the Lightning, which added a bit more maturity and compositional quality. Master of Puppets is a much larger step in the same direction, and had the band incorporating more progressive elements into their music. It'd be hard to count the metal bands doing half the pioneering things Metallica was doing.

The acoustic, quiet introduction to "Battery" explodes under an aggressive onslaught of hyperkinetic, muscular riffs and thick, heavy arrangements that characterize the entire album. That's not to say it's redundant, though. All eight songs are excellent, featuring enough variation of tempo and texture to ensure that they never get boring, which is crucial when some songs extend for eight minutes ("Master of Puppets," "Disposable Heroes," "Orion"). Cripes, you could dissect the riffery of the title track and probably create half a dozen normal metal songs. That"s part of Metallica's appeal: they cram a ton of ideas into their music, but all songs are perfectly crafted without the slightest sense of disjointed songwriting.

Speaking of the title track, it in particular sports a dynamic composition, where its middle section diminishes into a quieter, evocative guitar solo (one of the few played by Hetfield) before taking off all over again. "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" mirrors "Fade to Black" in its progression of intensity. It starts with haunting melodies, turning up the crunch for the chorus, then kicks into high gear with a weighty, fast riff and a glistening lead that carries the song to its vengeful apogee. Hetfield isn't quite a master lyricist, but for the first time in Metallica's career, the lyrics were insightful with effective diction. Note the telling and vitriolic "Disposable Heroes" or "Leper Messiah." Hetfield was never a great singer, but he was a good metal vocalist. Although his ferocity was tempered by youthful pipes, he still managed to convey the viciousness required of music so heavy, so furious.

And even when the band eschewed words and singing, they could impress. "Orion" is a marvel of metal songwriting, being an eight minute instrumental with precise, articulate solos (including a short-but-sweet one from the late bassist Cliff Burton) and big, chugging riffs. Most metal bands wrote instrumentals that were three or four minutes long...never eight. But Metallica did it, and they did it well enough to make songs like "Orion" and "To Live Is To Die" (from ...And Justice) among my favorite metal instrumentals.

Add my voice to the many, many fans who have rated this album five stars (about 362 at the time of this writing). If Master of Puppets isn't the best metal album ever, it's very very close.

Metallica's third full length release, Master of Puppets, is possibly their finest work. The lyrics are smart, the fast sections(and I mean fast) are impossibly tight, and the slow sections are melodic and chilling. James Hetfield's vocals aren't exactly pretty, but his intensity matches the music perfectly. Drummer Lars Ulrich manages to hold things together through myriad tempo changes and time signatures(not an easy task) but bassist Cliff Burton seems to get lost in the mix at times. Not to knock Cliff. Listen close in "Sanitarium" and "Orion" and you'll hear some of the best rock and roll bass ever recorded. Lead guitarist Kirk Hammett is a chameleon, blending in as the situation calls; he is at times frenzied, at others morose. James Hetfield's rhythm guitar work is so fast and precise one wonders how in the world he manages to sing while playing. The production is a little rough but even that seems to fit. All in all, it's scary how good this album is. Listen and see why in 1986 all of the heavy metal haters were scratching their heads and saying, "wow, these guys can really play."

Master of Puppets is the second chapter of what I like to call Metallica's Trilogy. It is considered by many fans (myself included) to be not only Metallica's best album, but also the greatest heavy metal album ever. Metallica made a quantum leap from RIDE THE LIGHTNING, which in turn was a quantum leap from KILL'EM ALL.

On MOP, it became evident that Metallica wanted more than just being the heaviest, fastest, loudest band on the planet. They combined the dark heaviness of Black Sabbath, the speed of Motorhead, plus the musical and lyrical intelligence of Rush. Smarter lyrics, stronger melodies, and more diverse songs were what the band strived for then. MOP focused on all of that with a vengeance using eight masterfully constructed songs that contained not one wasted note. The band improved upon all of their song styles that I mentioned in my review of RIDE THE LIGHTNING. Only this time the prevailing theme was CONTROL.

Lyrically, this album was an indictment on the (mis)uses of power. "Battery" dealt with being controlled by one's violent urges; "Master of Puppets" is about drug addiction; the horror of war and the military establishment is made painfully clear in "Disposable Heroes"; and one my favorites is "Leper Messiah", a song about TV evangelists that was released one year before the PTL scandal. Unfortunately, Metallica never wrote a song about the MTV/radio trend control that they would later fall prey to. But I think I attacked that little mishap on my review of LOAD.

MOP showed something that you very rarely see, people working at the top of their potential. This is Metallica at their most diverse, best produced, and at their most intense level. Though they came close on 1988's ...AND JUSTICE FOR ALL, they would never again reach anything near this level of creativity.

Master Of Puppets(1986). Metallica's third album and last with bassist Cliff Burton.

By the time Metallica released Ride The Lightning(1984), it was clear that the band had a promising career ahead of them, as they amassed a great underground following, and didn't give a care about money or fame on MTV (at least in the 80s anyway). Two years enabled the band to build on RTL's success and release a follow-up that was not only worthy of RTL, but also improved upon that album as well.

Master Of Puppets: eight tracks of pure thrash perfection, and perhaps Metallica's finest hour. Hetfield, Hammett, Ulrich, and Burton are all playing in top form here. Hetfield's vocals especially are perfected on this album, delivering growling, angry, and melodic (on this album's slower tracks) vocals alike. Lyrically, MOP is mostly about the abuse of different types of power, oppression, war, and/or drugs and its effects on people. Battery kicks off the album extremely well, starting off as a spanish-acoustic guitar piece and then EXPLODING into a balls-to-the-wall speed thrash number. The title track and Disposable Heroes are equally impressive and full of lightning fast riffs. The Thing That Should Not Be and Welcome Home(Sanitarium) are two of MOP's slower, yet very haunting tracks, in the same vein as RTL's Fade To Black. Leper Messiah and Damage, Inc. are more outstanding thrash tracks, not as noteworthy as the previous ones mentioned, but by all means they still belong here. Like RTL, there is also a lengthy instrumental called Orion, where the band shows off its playing power.

If you don't already own this masterpiece of metal, then don't hesitate to grab it! MOP is undeniably a 5 star album. Unfortunately, shortly after the tour for MOP, Cliff Burton (God rest his soul) was killed in a bus accident, which only leads fans to wonder "What if..." It was sad having the world become 1 bass-playing perfectionist less. The band did persevere with the next album ...And Justice For All, though lyrically and instrumentally it was more complex than MOP, it was also plagued with shoddy production. Forget all the new popular [stuff] this band has been playing on MTV and the radio. MOP remains to this date as the strongest and best produced Metallica album of all time. 17 years later, this album hasn't aged a bit. Have you?