The mid ’80s was a great time for heavy music. The burgeoning thrash movement had fused the furiosity of punk with the musicianship of metal, American hardcore was redefining the sound of the underground, and Ozzy Osbourne and Appetite For Destruction were setting the bar for hard rock. One album, however, stood head and shoulders above the rest.
Even in a year when Rick Rubin produced the accidental hard rock hit “Fight For Your Right To Party” and the far more deliberate Reign In Blood album for Slayer, 1986 saw Metallica set a bar that has never been topped in the field of heavy metal. Complex, authentic, attitude-filled and fearless, Cliff Burton’s final record with the legendary band is one-of-a-kind.
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Metallica’s Master Of Puppets Remains A Masterclass In Metal
It Is The Benchmark For The Band And The Genre
Over eight tracks and for fifty-four minutes and fifty-two seconds, Master Of Puppets is literally perfect. Metallica’s first five albums were met with universal acclaim, and for good reason, but every one of them contains a track that’s not quite at the quality of the others – but not Master Of Puppets. Metallica’s third opus does not dip in quality for a second.
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Spectacularly, Master Of Puppets represents the moment that Metallica transcended thrash. Ride The Lightning contains “Fade To Black,” which hinted that there was more to the band’s songwriting ambition, but “The Thing That Should Not Be” and “Leper Messiah”‘s change of direction felt more pronounced, adding mid-tempo menace to Metallica’s arsenal without dipping the heaviness.
Its Influence Lives On In The Music Of Today’s Metal Heroes
Even if thrash’s success was almost exclusively in the 1980s, Master Of Puppets is revered by today’s metal bands. It excels in variety and its influence ranges from mainstream to underground. The emotion and virtuoso musicianship of “Orion” can be felt in Gojira, Tool, and Mastodon, while Blood Incantation’s latest masterpiece’s final track opens with a riff that owes a debt to “Disposable Heroes.”
Master Of Puppets was certified eight times platinum by the RIAA in 2025.
It is a strange subplot in metal that a band speaks about making their “black album.” It represents a band trying to condense their perceived greatness into shorter bursts for mass consumption. The reason bands don’t talk about writing their Master Of Puppets is because it is unachievable.
It remains the perfect metal album, and the bar that Metallica set with it cannot be leaped by any other metal band to have ever existed.
- Date of Birth
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October 28, 1981
- Active
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Yes
- Number of Albums
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11
