Inside Metallica’s ’80s Masterpiece, ‘Master of Puppets’

Metallica's 1986 opus Master of Puppets is legendary for all the right reasons. There are no "filler" tracks on here, and the record features fantastic production, incredible lyrics, wild guitar riffing and passionate vocals. It's often called Metallica's greatest album of all time, although, of course, everyone has their favorites.

Metallica and Master of Puppets really helped shape the style of heavy metal music and were pioneers in the genre. While Metallica wasn't the very first metal band of all time, with that honor going to Black Sabbath, there's no disputing that James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Lars Ulrich and the band's bass players have helped create the sound of heavy metal that is still known and loved today.

Metallica's sound has changed over the years, but they always stayed solidly in the space of heavy metal. Initially, Metallica was pure thrash and grew a huge underground following, but fairly quickly, they changed their sound to a more melodic metal style. While that change really came out on The Black Album, it's easy to even hear some of those more melodic styles on Master of Puppets.

Metallica's story starts with their first concert on March 14, 1982, at Radio City in Anaheim, CA, and it's been such a long career that today, the band is still selling out arenas around the world. It's impressive, because not many metal bands, or artists of any genre, can say that they can sell out arenas and stadiums decades after they first formed, but that's the case with Metallica.

Master of Puppets is undisputedly one of the greatest heavy metal records of all time. Songs off this record really helped shape the sound of heavy metal, and for that, we're forever grateful. Let's dive into this classic album.

Even though Metallic showed a little of their affinity for melodic metal on Master of Puppets, a lot of this record was still pure thrash metal. The album's title track, "Master of Puppets," is often called one of the greatest thrash metal songs ever created, largely because of its complex strong structure, heavy riffing, aggressive rhythms and quick rhythms.

In an interview with Medium in 2014, Hetfield talked about the band's music, including Master of Puppets, and how many of the band's themes revolve around death. When asked if he thought it was weird that a band that writes about death a lot could do so well, he seemed to think it made sense.

"I think people relate to what we do, there's probably a universal thread of fear that we all share of death and what happens after that and why are we here," Hetfield told Medium. "People can relate to questions more than the answers" he added, noting, "answers are easily given but relating to a question is more bonding than having the same answer."

When making Master of Puppets, the band had to take into consideration the climate of metal music in the Bay Area at the time. As Pitchfork notes of the album's timeline, "The lasting characteristics that took metal from its from heavier rock offshoot to its own distinct form were already taking shape by the time Metallica released their third album Master of Puppets in 1986. The Bay Area thrash scene where they originated—and quickly divested themselves from—was born from one of the most successful mergers in music: metal riffs and punk energy."

Master of Puppets was Metallica's final album with bass player Cliff Burton, who passed away in a bus accident during the album's tour in 1986. For that reason alone, it stands apart from their other releases.

Hypnotizing Power: The Making of Master of Puppets is a fan-made documentary about the making of the record. "A fan made documentary that compiles hours of footage which tells the making of Metallica's third studio album, Master of Puppets," the movie's synopsis states in IMDb. "With accounts from the band members, the film details how the band struggled through the making of the record and goes on to detail the success of it, then how the thrash metal pioneers cemented their legacy in metal history."

Watching that documentary, it's obvious that Metallica put a lot of heart, soul and brain power into this album. There's a reason it's such a great album, and that's because the band really took their time with it to create a masterpiece.

In a 2016 interview with Ulrich, the drummer talked to the The Guardian about the making of Master of Puppets. He emphasized the importance of variety on the set. "We had a tendency to look at our albums as a collection of different dynamics: there's a fast song, a mid-tempo song, a ballad, an instrumental," he said. "It's like food groups – you need your carbs, your protein, all of that."

In an interview with Louder Sound that was revisited in 2022, Ulrich said of the album, "I would like to say that there was something magical in the air in the summer we wrote Master Of Puppets, something that hasn’t been there before and has never existed since, but that would be a lie. I guess we just had the right attitude and the right openness to ideas." He also said the band was getting more confident.

Of Master of Puppets, musician Devin Townsend told Billboard in a 2017 interview that when the album was released, "it was a paradigm shift for me and the people around me as the stage had been set for them to really continue their momentum and they delivered in every way. Even the tonalities they chose, intentional or otherwise, were of such a foreign and antagonistic quality that it stood alone in a sea of fantasy inspired and image-centric heavy metal."

Riffology adds that at the time the band made the album, "glam metal dominated MTV, while underground bands in America and Europe pushed music to darker, heavier, and faster extremes. Metallica stood at the front of this movement, blending aggression with complexity and ambition."

So, Metallica stood out with Master of Puppets, and for that, we're forever grateful.