“The Black Album” is by far Metallica’s best-selling album, but the band’s finest hour is their landmark 1986 release, Master of Puppets. And there are several reasons for this bold statement — it’s one of the few “perfect” albums in rock history (in other words … all killer, no filler), and arguably the greatest thrash metal LP ever recorded. Tragically, though, it would prove to be the last Metallica album to feature the legendary Cliff Burton on bass.
With their home base set in San Francisco, Metallica issued a pair albums that caused an enormous buzz in the metal underground — their 1983 debut, Kill ‘Em All, and 1984’s Ride the Lightning – which saw the band merging the speed of Motörhead with the riffing of Black Sabbath. And with a clear line being drawn between punk and metal at the time, Metallica were one of the first bands bold enough to merge both styles together. But after Ride the Lightning was reissued by major label Elektra Records (shortly after its initial release), it didn’t take a genius to recognize that Metallica were quickly emerging from the underground, and that massive breakthrough success was inevitable.
With hair metal serving as the go-to style of MTV and metal mags by the mid ‘80s (Mötley Crüe, Ratt, Twisted Sister, etc.), Metallica – comprised of frontman James Hetfield, guitarist Kirk Hammett, bassist Cliff Burton, and drummer Lars Ulrich – served as a much-needed reaction against all the glam and glitz. Most obvious being their refreshingly dressed-down fashion sense — non-sprayed long hair, not a single smear of make-up, and sporting a seemingly endless quantity of sleeveless Misfits T-shirts.
Hooking up once more with producer Flemming Rasmussen (who had manned the boards for Ride the Lightning) and occupying the same studio (Sweet Silence in Copenhagen, Denmark), the sessions for Master of Puppets ran from September through December 1985. The album, with an iconic cover featuring an illustration of a cemetery with two hands pulling strings on the crosses below, dropped on March 3rd, 1986. The LP peaked at No. 29 on the Billboard 200 chart and soon earned gold certification. What made this such an extraordinary accomplishment was that it was done with absolutely no radio or video airplay (both were key components to breaking bands at the time).
A large part of the album’s sonic success was the strength of the material and the band’s airtight performance. The popularity of the “guitar riff” had dwindled somewhat amongst metal acts at the time, but Master of Puppets was simply crammed with riffs that were so melodic that you could actually sing along with them. Case in point, the album-opening “Battery” and, most notably the masterful opus that is the album’s title track. Master of Puppets also showcased Hetfield’s distinct style of rhythm playing — palm-muting the low E string and rapidly downpick it, while playing a chug-chugging rhythm — which would soon be copied by countless others throughout the metal kingdom.
While seemingly most thrash bands at the time chose nonstop mayhem from the first note to the last on their albums, Metallica took a cue from such metal and hard rock forefathers as Sabbath and Led Zeppelin to break things up with a serene tune or two. Which in turn, not only created a contrast between the lighter and heavier moments, but made the heavier moments somehow sound even heavier. For example, the classical guitar interlude that precedes “Battery”, the slower parts of “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”, and portions of the mood-shifting instrumental “Orion.” Of course, there are also moments of pure fury, such as the aforementioned “Battery” as well as “Disposable Heroes”, and, especially, the album-closing “Damage, Inc.”