Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Metallica
Label: Vertigo Records
Release: 1986
Length: 54:45
Rating: 5/5
Metallica are gods! Well, in the eighties at least, they were the undisputed despots of metal, and the credit for that, without a shred of exaggerated praise, goes to a run of outstanding records that showed off incredible talent and inspiration, and above all proved that the then-young guns had a lot less of the arrogant lukewarmness that gets servilely poured into the ears of naive kids today. But let’s leave that! Let’s get into the juicy meat of the record that left plenty of critics speechless, and that let those of us who are a bit older (or at least look the part) and love our gritty sounds blissfully surrender to the herd-like worship of the biggest metal band of our time. We were tangled up in the strings of greater musicians who held the world in their hands, and the masterpiece that bewitched the world is called Master Of Puppets. Instead of baby steps, Metallica took just three giant leaps to become the central axis of the metal world.
Metal undoubtedly wouldn’t be what it is if, soon after the breakthrough of Kill ‘Em All, which saw the light of day in 1983, the four young guns hadn’t decided to hone their musical skills rather than bother with flashy hairdos, tons of pointless leather, and posing and blustering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z-hEyVQDRA
The soul of the band took shape gradually, through gruelling, back-breaking touring. James Hetfield developed his unmistakable rhythmic style of manly lovemaking with the guitar, backed up by an outstanding raspy baritone. Back then you could count on the fingers of one hand just about all the soloing talents who could pour solos into your ears that would actually stay there, rather than just noodling at speed and indulging in sonic masturbation. Metallica had such a genius, and his name was (and still is) Kirk Hammett. Behind the drums sat the thunderous provocateur Lars Ulrich, and the metal trendsetter of this hellish foursome was the bass innovator Cliff Burton. And this record is a colossal monument that, as the swan song of Burton, who died tragically in a bus accident soon afterward, puts every quality of a thrash metal classic front and center, and still burns sweetly and timelessly today, a good quarter of a century later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzD0cOqOsmY
The step forward from the previous outstanding record Ride The Lightning, which shook the music scene just two years earlier, was made toward a remarkable set of lyrics, epically solid music, and fat production, and Metallica’s third album climbed all the way to the top of the charts, even though it got very little radio play. Metallica outdid themselves by never reining in their onslaught of harmonic rage and heart, which booms out of the speakers with the acoustic treat that opens Battery and heralds a divine 55-minute pilgrimage through the world of almost epic progressive thrash. Every track on the record is utterly convincing and stands as its own peak of the half-hour… er, of the whole ride. Batterry has a sweetly romantic mood at the start, and once the opening acoustic sounds fade, it pours gallons of heartfelt kerosene on the flames. The song changes tempo as if Hetfield and company were trying to set a new world record in acceleration. “Lashing out the action, returning the reaction / Weak are ripped and torn away / Hypnotizing power, crushing all that cower / Battery is here to stay / Smashing through the boundaries / lunacy has found me / cannot stop the Battery / Pounding out aggression / turns into obsession / cannot kill the Battery / Cannot kill the family / Battery is found in me” is the sweet wordplay that Hetfield wins you over with right off the bat, and the extra argument for an endless YES is a string of phenomenal, perfectly placed solos. The uncompromising ride rolls on into the bombastic hit of its day, the title track Master Of Puppets. It’s almost impossible to grasp that Metallica gift us with a full eight and a half minutes of rage. “Master of Puppets I’m pulling your strings / Twisting your mind, smashing your dreams / Blinded by me, you can’t see a thing / Just call my name, ’cause I’ll hear you scream / Master” thunders James’s angry vocal, like a great preacher settling accounts with addictions and with people being clamped into the shackles of modern voluntary slavery. Your heart skips after the second chorus, when Hammett and Hetfield lock into a huge melodic colossus and spew out streaks of sweet guitar tones. The lyrics take on dark undertones, and it’s time for another furious reckoning with a series of dark demons, so monstrous that you forget about time entirely. The song, despite its length, doesn’t drag for a second, almost flies by too fast, and all of a sudden you find yourself in the world of the short story Shadow Over Innsmouth, penned by the ominous and demonically alluring writer H.P. Lovecraft. The Thing That Should Not Be cuts to the core with a slow, mid-paced tempo, as Metallica capture all the claustrophobia of Lovecraft’s struggle against otherworldly legions of creatures of darkness. The key to salvation is faith in your own inner light. “Not dead which eternal lie / stranger aeons Death may die / drain you of your sanity / face The Thing That Should Not Be” calls for a showdown with unholy apparitions, as if sailing straight into Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. A perfect combination of divine guitars, heavy yet caressing bass, and splendidly resonating drum skins conjures up a new vignette from the drug-cleared mental horizon of Welcom Home (Sanitarium). “Welcome to where time stands still / No one leaves and no one will / Moon is full, never seems to change / Just labeled mentally deranged / Dream the same thing every night / I see our freedom in my sight / No locked doors, No windows barred / No things to make my brain seem scarred”d here, Greeting Death / He’s yours to take away” ramps up the beauty of the soaring feeling, and after food for the brain comes food for the ears and soul, with thick layers of musicality. A less focused but by no means weakest part of Metallica’s offering is Disposable Heroes, which over eight minutes tightens its steely grip with truly outstanding drumming from Ulrich, and instead of sticking flowers in soldiers’ hats, its anti-war mood goes for a more direct, manly call to stick up your middle fingers, with a critique of a system that uses up healthy young men as bulwarks for its rotten ideals. “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 / Finishe heralds the future and a song like One even before its time. The passion doesn’t let up from there, because Leper Messiah shows Metallica with a completely fresh set of melodies and a talent for fusing criticism with sharper songwriting. Time to bow to the leprous saviors and to one of the record’s main brilliant moments, the incredible instrumental Orion, with which the boys blow past every expectation that had been sweated over down to the bone. Eight minutes with no needless waste of energy on words say more than many a compendium of knowledge, with a razor-sharp musical outpouring of emotion. The structure of the piece is complex, and its backbone is reinforced by the distorted, electrified intergalactic rails of Burton’s minimalist yet effective bass. A couple of notes as a tectonic turning point glue a string of outstanding solos and brutal dynamics into one cohesive mass, so that in the middle of the song we get one of the finest bass outpourings of solo genius. Your heart foams and tears apart at the thought that this exceptional musical visionary and poet died just a few months after the record came out, and Orion stands as the most beautiful tribute to the life and work of this important founding father of modern metal. The closing act of this journey is packed into the thrash classic gem Damage, Inc., where, alongside solid guitar staccato, the Danish drumming talent, Mr. Lars Ulrich, shone brilliantly. A five-minute stampede that crushes everything in its path. “Fuck it all and fucking no regrets / Never happy endings on these dark sets / All’s fair for Damage Inc. you see / step a little closer if you please” calls the bravest to the front rows, and the effort is rewarded right through to the last chorus and the last fade of monstrous guitar riffs, which thunder so sweetly also thanks to the refined production of Flemming Rassmussen, the man who did for Metallica what Rubin did for Slayer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6stlBbXCD7I
A monolith of heroic times past, the crunchily gorgeous Master Of Puppets marks a kind of dividing line and a farewell to the underground, with the record And Justice For All. Metallica were never so solid again as in the year Burton departed this physical world, at least not in character and spirit, because the years that did bring financial comfort robbed the band of purpose, rage, and worst of all, genuine, driven musicality, which is why Master Of Puppets can be seen as the second-to-last act of primal inspiration and pure essence of genius. Here Metallica are a cornerstone for future generations of musicians thanks to their honest heart, their hard graft, and above all their sincere belief in metal. They were young, they were boiling over with ambition, and yes, they were slightly naive, but they had a set of such earth-shattering musical ideas that, for my musical world at least, and my perception of what I heard, nothing could ever be the same again. Metallica brought catharsis, artistry, transcendence, and breathtaking power and meaning into my everyday life, and for that priceless gift, despite the later disappointments, I can only sincerely thank them, and, keeping alive the memory of the days when the gods of metal still walked the earth, I ritually, and still fairly often, sink into the sea of sound of the classic of my youth: the record Master Of Puppets. Everything else can only be a pale approximation and a rotten substitute!
Lineup
James Hetfield – vocals, rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar
Kirk Hammett – lead guitar
Cliff Burton – bass, backing vocals
Lars Ulrich – drums
Production
Metallica & Flemming Rasmussen
Track list
1. Battery
2. Master of Puppets
3. The Thing That Should Not Be
4. Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
5. Disposable Heroes
6. Leper Messiah
7. Orion (Instrumental)
8. Damage, Inc.
