. 'Released: July 2, 1986Master of Puppets is the third studio album by American band. It was released on March 3, 1986. Recorded at the with producer, it was the first Metallica album released on a major record label.
Master of Puppets was the band's last album to feature bassist, who died in a bus accident in Sweden during the album's promotional tour. The album peaked at number 29 on the and became the first album to be certified. It was certified 6× platinum by the (RIAA) in 2003 for shipping six million copies in the United States.
The album was eventually certified 6× platinum by and gold by the (BPI).The album is critically praised, widely considered one of the best heavy metal albums of all time. Its music and political lyrics drew praise from critics outside the metal community. Critics credit it for consolidating the American thrash metal scene. Bands from various genres of heavy metal have covered the album's songs, including tribute albums. Master of Puppets was deemed 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant' enough for preservation in the by the United States in 2015, the first metal recording to do so.The cover was designed by Metallica and and painted by Don Brautigam. It depicts a cemetery field of white crosses tethered to strings, manipulated by a pair of hands in a blood-red sky.
Instead of releasing a single or video in advance of the album's release, Metallica embarked on a five-month American tour in support of. The European leg was canceled after Burton's death in September 1986, and the band returned home to audition a new bassist. Metallica honored the album's 20th anniversary on the tour, by playing it in its entirety. A remastered version was released in November 2017. Contents.Background and recording Metallica's 1983 debut laid the foundation for with its aggressive musicianship and vitriolic lyrics.
The album revitalized the American, and inspired similar records by contemporaries. The band's second album extended the limits of the genre with its more sophisticated songwriting and improved production. The album caught the attention of representative Michael Alago, who signed the group to an eight-album deal in the fall of 1984, halfway through the album's promotional tour. Elektra reissued Ride the Lightning on November 19, and the band began touring larger venues and festivals throughout 1985. After parting with manager, Metallica hired Q Prime executives Cliff Burnstein.
During the summer, the band played the festival at, alongside and to an audience of 70,000.Metallica was motivated to make an album that would impress critics and fans, and began writing new material in mid-1985. Lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist and drummer were the main songwriters on the album, already titled Master of Puppets. The two developed ideas at a garage in, before inviting bassist and guitarist for rehearsals. Hetfield and Ulrich described the songwriting process as starting with 'guitar riffs, assembled and reassembled until they start to sound like a song'. After that, the band came up with a song title and topic, and Hetfield wrote lyrics to match the title. Master of Puppets is Metallica's first album not to feature songwriting contributions from former lead guitarist. Mustaine claimed he had co-written 'Leper Messiah', based on an old song called 'The Hills Ran Red'.
The band denied this, but stated that one section incorporated Mustaine's ideas. When I saw two kids who worked there in London wearing T-shirts of a local San Francisco band, I knew I was onto something. When I heard their record, I knew they were the one band that could sell to both mainstream and underground metal audiences.— Cliff Burnstein, on signing MetallicaThe band was not satisfied with the acoustics of the American studios they considered, and decided to record in Ulrich's native Denmark. Ulrich took drum lessons, and Hammett worked with to learn how to record more efficiently. Ulrich was in talks with 's bassist and vocalist to produce the album, but the collaboration never materialized because of uncoordinated schedules. Metallica recorded the album with producer at in, from September 1 to December 27, 1985.
The writing of all the songs except 'Orion' and 'The Thing That Should Not Be' was completed before the band's arrival in Copenhagen. Rasmussen stated that the band brought well-prepared of the songs, and only slight changes were made to the compositions in the studio. The recording took longer than the previous album because Metallica had developed a sense of perfectionism and had higher ambitions. Metallica eschewed the slick production and synthesizers of contemporary hard rock and albums. With a reputation for drinking, the band stayed sober on recording days. Hammett recalled that the group was 'just making another album' at the time and 'had no idea that the record would have such a range of influence that it went on to have'. He also said that the group was 'definitely peaking' at the time and that the album had 'the sound of a band really gelling, really learning how to work well together'.Rasmussen and Metallica did not manage to complete the mixtapes as planned.
Instead, the multitrack recordings were sent in January 1986 to, who finished the album's mixing. The cover was designed by Metallica and Peter Mensch and painted by Don Brautigam. It depicts a cemetery field of white crosses tethered to strings, manipulated by a pair of hands in a blood-red sky.
Ulrich explained that the artwork summarized the lyrical content of the album—people being subconsciously manipulated. The original artwork was sold at, New York City for $28,000 in 2008. The band mocked the warning stickers promoted by the with a facetious label on the cover: 'The only track you probably won't want to play is 'Damage, Inc.' Due to the multiple use of the infamous 'F' word. Otherwise, there aren't any ' anywhere on this record'.The album was recorded with the following equipment: Hammett's guitars were a 1974, a, and a Stratocaster copy; Hetfield used a played through a amplifier modified as a pre-amp; Burton played an through Mesa Boogie amplifier heads and cabinets; Ulrich played drum equipment, and borrowed a rare S.L.P. Black Brass from drummer.
Music and lyrics Master of Puppets features dynamic music and thick arrangements. Metallica delivered a more refined approach and performance compared to the previous two albums, with multilayered songs and technical dexterity. This album and its predecessor Ride the Lightning follow a similar track sequencing: both open with an song with an acoustic intro, followed by a lengthy title track, and a fourth track with ballad qualities. Although both albums are similarly structured, the musicianship on Master of Puppets is more powerful and epic in scope, with tight rhythms and delicate guitar solos. According to music writer, Master of Puppets introduced a new level of heaviness and complexity in thrash metal, displaying atmospheric and precisely executed songs.
Hetfield's vocals had matured from the hoarse shouting of the first two albums to a deeper, in-control yet aggressive style. The songs explore themes such as control and the abuse of power. The lyrics describe the consequences of alienation, oppression, and feelings of powerlessness.
Author Ryan Moore thought the lyrics depicted 'ominous yet unnamed forces of power wielding total control over helpless human subjects'. The lyrics were considered perceptive and harrowing, and were praised for being honest and socially conscious by writer Brock Helander. Referring to the epic proportions of the songs, 's Eamonn Stack stated that 'at this stage in their careers Metallica weren't even doing songs, they were telling stories'. The compositions and arrangements benefited from Burton's classical training and understanding of harmony. The lyrics on 'Master of Puppets' are from the point of a voice of a personification of addiction. Author puts forth manipulation by 'the invisible forces of control that govern all our lives' as a theme that runs throughout the album.Problems playing this file?
Battery' refers to angry violence, as in the term 'assault and battery'. Some critics contended that the title actually refers to an artillery battery, and interpreted it as 'Hetfield singing of a war tactic as the aggressor' personifying destruction. The song begins with bass-heavy acoustic guitars that build upon multitracked layers until they are joined by a sonic wall of distorted electric guitars. It then breaks into fast, aggressive riffing featuring off-beat rhythms and heavily distorted minor where root-fifth might be expected.
Hetfield improvised the riff while relaxing in London. ' consists of several riffs with odd meters and a cleanly picked middle section with melodic solo. The song shares a similar structure with 'The Four Horsemen' from the band's first album: two verse-chorus sets lead to a lengthy interlude to another verse-chorus set. The opening and pre-verse sections feature fast downstroked riffing at around 220 in mostly 44 time. Every fourth of each verse and the outro is cut short by more than a beat; the of these bars is often inaccurately analyzed as being 58, but it is closer to 2132. A lengthy interlude follows the second chorus, beginning with a clean, arpeggiated section over which Hetfield contributes a melodic solo; the riffing becomes distorted and progressively more heavy and Hammett provides a more virtuosic solo before the song eventually returns to the main verse. The song closes with a fade-out of sinister laughter.
The lyrical theme is addiction. Hammett performing the 'Master of Puppets' solo in the late 1990sAll of the songs have been performed live and some became permanent setlist features.
Four tracks were featured on the nine-song set list for the album's promotional tour: 'Battery' as opener, 'Master of Puppets', 'Welcome Home (Sanitarium)', and 'Damage, Inc.' The title track, which was issued as a single in France, became a live staple and the most played Metallica song. 's Chad Childers characterized the band's performance as 'furious' and the song as the set's highlight. Rolling Stone described the live performance as 'a classic in all its eight-minute glory'. While filming its 3D movie (2013) at the in Vancouver, crosses were rising from the stage during the song, reminiscent of the album's cover art.'
Welcome Home (Sanitarium)' is the second-most performed song from the album. The live performance is often accompanied by lasers, pyrotechnical effects and film screens. 'Battery' is usually played at the beginning of the setlist or during the encore, accompanied by lasers and flame plumes. 'Disposable Heroes' is featured in the video album (2009) filmed in, in which the song was played on the second of three nights at the. 'Orion' is the least-performed song from the album. Its first live performance was during the tour, when the band performed the album in its entirety, honoring the 20th anniversary of its release.
The band performed the album in the middle of the set. 'Battery', 'Welcome Home (Sanitarium)', 'Damage, Inc.'
And the full-length 'Master of Puppets' were revived for the band's concerts in 1998 and 1999, after having been retired for a number of years. Track listing All lyrics written. The bonus tracks on the digital re-release were recorded live at the, on August 29 and 30, 1989, and also appeared on the live album (1993).Side oneNo.TitleMusicLength1.'
Weekly charts ChartPeakposition8141841US29Chart (2017)PeakpositionPolish Albums 34Year-end charts Chart (1986)PositionUS87Chart (2015)PositionUS ( Billboard)13Chart (2016)PositionUS Top Catalog Albums ( Billboard)11Certifications RegionCertification/SalesBelgium Gold25,000.Canada 6× Platinum600,000 ^Finland Platinum81,051Germany Platinum500,000 ^Italy Gold50,000.New Zealand Platinum15,000 ^United Kingdom Platinum300,000 ^United States 6× Platinum6,000,000 ^.sales figures based on certification alone^shipments figures based on certification aloneReferences. Retrieved February 21, 2017. Library of Congress. Retrieved May 15, 2016. Retrieved November 12, 2014. ^ Brannigan, Paul; Winwood, Ian (2013).
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Select 'Album e Compilation' under 'Sezione'. Select albums in the Format field. Select Platinum in the Certification field. Type Master of Puppets in the 'Search BPI Awards' field and then press Enter. If necessary, click Advanced, then click Format, then select Album, then click SEARCH.External links. at (list of releases).
Review Summary: Is something controlling you?There’s something about Master of Puppets that you may not catch the first time around, or perhaps even the tenth time around, but it’s something that’s always present. In fact, you could practically slap the “concept album” label on it because of this. And what would “this” be' Control. As if the album title didn’t outline that fact enough, nearly every song exhibits the theme of control in some way, whether it’s “Leper Messiah”’s expression of control through religion and televangelism, or it’s the title track’s condemnation of the tight grip drug use can have on a person. The reason I bring this up is because the theme lends itself to how well-constructed Master of Puppets is.
Metallica’s 1986 effort truly is one of the most well-rounded and tightly-arranged thrash albums you’re likely to hear, which is pretty damn amazing considering its 55-minute runtime. While the first two records’ tracklists felt much more arbitrary with song placement, Master of Puppets seems consciously constructed to be played from start to finish so you experience the fullest extent of its dense songwriting and flirtations with progressive rock. And sure, And Justice for All may be more dense and more progressive, but it doesn’t quite maintain the razor-sharp focus and deliberate song progression we get here. In essence, this is both a continuation and refinement of the groundwork that Ride the Lightning laid out for the band two years earlier; every one of the band’s figurative tools has been sharpened this time around, from James Hetfield’s incredibly precise rhythm guitar stabs and chugs to the late bassist Cliff Burton practically being given a new role as a third guitarist/soloist with his instrument.But what really struck me about Master of Puppets was how its concept and imagery was reflected in the music itself. The beginning of what I consider the album’s highlight, “Disposable Heroes,” is kicked off with a punchy bass drum attack – as well as high-speed tremolo riffing in the next big riff - that resembles the kind of war zone that the song describes; on the other side, you have the slow downtuned sludge of “The Thing That Should Not Be,” whose Sabbath-drenched riffing makes you feel like you’ve descended into hell itself. The same goes for the faster tracks too, as “Battery” and “Damage Inc.” are just as furious and headbang-inducing as the violent imagery that Hetfield spews out with his gruff delivery. Of course, the high-energy shredding from Kirk Hammett and the solid rhythm section (yes, I said something positive about Lars here) elevate things even further.
Actually, I have to give Kirk Hammett a lot of credit on these older Metallica albums. He may get ridiculed quite a bit, but it’s quite impressive how he can switch between blues, classical, and all-out thrash bits on the lead guitar so fluidly. Master of Puppets is a great showing of that, as well as many of the new effects and technology that Kirk would use – and unfortunately tend to abuse – later down the road (can anyone say “more wah-wah”'). And of course, Cliff Burton is just on another level here. Not only are his solos fantastic, but he was also quite the master of atmosphere. The melodic framework he gave the soft section of “Orion” lends a beautifully spacey texture to the piece; it almost feels ethereal in a sense, and the minimal accompaniment from the other members really gives Cliff a lot of space to shine as a soloist. I’m going to close things out by talking about the only song I haven’t mentioned yet, “Welcome Home (Sanitarium).” The title should give a good sense of what the song is about, but the music gives such a strong feeling of being trapped in a mental cage.
The clean guitar work is eerie and foreboding, the slow tread of the drums is both haunting and anxious, and Hetfield’s vocal delivery is an incredible balance of desperation and anger. And that, my friends, is how Master of Puppets can truly be summed up. Look at yourself in the mirror.
What kind of flaws do you have' Do you feel controlled and tethered by your personal demons' Chances are, Metallica have come up with something that’s relatable to you on Master of Puppets. And chances are, they complimented it with some of the best metal music ever written. 1 of.Once Upon a Time.Metallica hit their peak on a fabulous piece of beautifully crafted thrash metal.Undoubtedly a classic, but I'll stick with Ride the Lightning.Ahh good ol' Metallica. A band that needs no introduction. Possibly their biggest hit albu.Master Of PuppetsThe critically acclaimed album from the one of the biggest acts: Metal.One of the greatest thrash metal albums in history, this album is a masterpiece.
It's got.Is that it?An excellent album, but not the magnum opus it's made out to be.Master of Puppets is arguably one of the best thrash metal albums of all time, and with go.It may not be one of heavy metal's all-time greatest albums, but it certainly comes close.Absolutely epitomal.The art of stagnancy done properly.This is a must listen for any metalhead and any music lover in general, it's the perfect M.Metallica release an album that frowns down upon all other thrash albums, yet is it really.This is one of the most overrated albums of all time! But it's still pretty damn good. M.Too long without any substance to the songs whatsoever.
Cover is printed on brown cardboard.The Distributor is spelled correct as MUSIDISC on the center labels.On the back of the sleeve you can read 'Extrait de l'Album 2320' ('excerpts' of two songs of the album!) As the record plays at the speed of 45rpm the playing time per side is limited to approximately 5 1/2 minutes, but 'Master of Puppets' lasts 8:38 min and 'Welcome Home (Sanitarium)' 6:28 min. So due to the limited playing time both tracks are shortened 'fade out' versions! 'Master of Puppets' fades out after 3:30 min. Right before the acoustic guitar part sets in and 'Welcome Home (Sanitarium)' lasts only 4:00 min.An almost identical counterfeit pressing of exists.On the counterfeit pressing the distributer is misspelled as MUSICDISC on the center labelsand the cover is printed on white cardboard.See pictures to compare.Extrait de l'Album 2320.Published by Creeping Death Music.℗ 1986 Music For Nations.Distribution Musidisc.
Like their previous album, Ride The Lightning, Master Of Puppets was recorded at Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen with Flemming Rasmussen engineering and serving as co-producer. What made that studio special?: 'We had a really kick-ass drum room. We had the Trident mixer, which was not the newest thing, but some of the new desks that came out were not the greatest circuit desks, and ours was transformers and everything, and it just sounded better. So, that would be the main thing. And then of course.
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Rasmussen also worked on the band's next album.And Justice for All. Please or to post comments.
Comments: 128. Adam from New ZealandJust some thoughts on the structure, timbre, and performance, and how they convey the themes communicated by the lyrics.The music starts off fast-paced and distorted, like a desperate addict about to get their next fix. As the song continues, there's a calming instrumental with clean guitars and a mellow drum beat backing up a soothing melody that seems to portray the euphoric high the druggie goes through before the music turns dark, distorted, and agitated as the first frantic solo plays, giving a sense of mania and panic as the druggie becomes desperate for his next trip even as he 'comes crawling faster!' For the bridge, the rhythm is slow (by comparison with the main riff), heavy, and seems to indicate anger and desperation at the druggie's plight as he realises that the drugs promise only lies, while he is helpless to resist them - indeed, it seems as though the drugs, or perhaps his chemical/psychological dependency on drugs is indifferent to his desperation and misery, ('laughter! All I hear is this laughter!
Hundreds of them. Rising from the rotten grass, bedecked with the kit of fallen soldiers, each one with a thin silk line rising to a pair of bloody hands in the scorched skies. It was the kind of sleeve that stopped you in your tracks, but then Master Of Puppets was the kind of album that made time stand still.The statistics, as they might be viewed by a record label bean-counter, don’t do it justice.
Sure, Puppets was enormous, but Metallica would make bigger albums. The point is, they never made a better one.This third record is a line in the sand between the gutter and the stadiums, and, if we’re honest, the reason we kept faith during the double-dip of Load and ReLoad, tolerated the hook-ups with the orchestras and squinted for greatness in St Anger.It’s the connoisseur’s choice: the perfect mix of poise and fury, with the best songs from the band’s greatest line-up. Lars Ulrich might have been the quotable mouthpiece and Cliff Burton the classically trained whizz, but when it came to Master Of Puppets, it was James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett who were pulling the strings. Don't MissPrev Page 1 of 7 Next Prev Page 1 of 7 Next. Before Master Of Puppets, Metallica were a joke. A good joke, perhaps, but certainly not a band to be mentioned in the same sentence as ‘world domination’.Two albums had put the quartet on the radar and club circuit, and now they gurned from the foothills of the rock press – all spots, vests, denim and hair like wet straw.
They were a mash-up of every hateful quality of the mall-rats in their San Francisco headquarters. For now, Metallica were not iconic, they were just moronic.At their best, the four musicians had obvious talent, with 1983’s Kill ’Em All and 1984’s Ride The Lightning home to such classics as Seek And Destroy and Creeping Death. Nobody expected these songs to infiltrate the 80s mainstream, though, not least the band themselves, whose ambition appeared to stretch little further than living up to their nickname, Alcoholica. “We don’t mind you throwing shit up at the stage,” announced Hetfield at one show. “Just don’t hit our beers – they’re our fuel, man!”To anyone who witnessed the post-show carnage, this was a band with permanent double vision. In fact, Metallica had their bloodshot eyes clearly on the prize, and by 1985, they were musically telepathic and ready to be taken seriously.
“We were honing it on Lightning,” noted Ulrich, “and Puppets came the closest to a bullseye for that type of stuff.” Prev Page 2 of 7 Next Prev Page 2 of 7 Next. In hindsight, all the signs were there that Metallica were readying a grand statement.
In contrast to the few days taken to bang out Kill ’Em All on a shoestring, Hetfield and Ulrich had crossed continents in search of the perfect studio, before familiarity and economics saw them return to Copenhagen’s Sweet Silence with Ride The Lightning producer Flemming Rasmussen.Even more telling of the band’s broadening horizons was an apparent desire to create art, not noise. Where before Hetfield had screamed himself hoarse on vague themes, Master Of Puppets had a concept – “manipulation in all its forms,” was how Hammett saw it – and songs with sentiments, from the battlefield hell of Disposable Heroes to the broken ruminations of an asylum patient on Welcome Home (Sanitarium). “The idea for that came from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” Hetfield told Guitar World, and combined with Hammett’s arpeggiated minor add9 intro, the result was deeply unsettling. Lyrics were one thing; the real evolution was the way Metallica were now approaching their music. No longer were riffs tossed off like vodka shots. With sessions starting in September ’85, Puppets was their first record to be truly crafted, painstakingly assembled over five months.
Hardly a lifetime by Axl Rose standards, until you considered that the music had been ready for months. “The only two songs that weren’t finished were Orion and The Thing That Should Not Be,” Hammett told Guitar World.James is the best rhythm guitar player in the world by a mileSo the time was not spent on writing but on honing, with Metallica chasing down their signature brick-wall tone and squeezing every last drop of juice from the mixing desk.
One song might feature up to 52 tracks, though it’s not always apparent, with Hetfield’s surgical precision letting him stack left, right and central rhythms that always sound airtight (some songs have more, while Battery and Damage, Inc sounded “a bit muddy”, and only have two).“James is extremely exact,” Rasmussen told Metallica biographer Joel McIver. “He’s the best rhythm guitar player in the world by a mile. There’s no-one better than him when it comes to downpicking. It’s unbelievable. He’ll do eight tracks and it’ll sound like one guitar.” Prev Page 3 of 7 Next Prev Page 3 of 7 Next. Rock encyclopaedias concur that Metallica are a ‘thrash band’. Maybe so on full-throttle moments like Disposable Heroes and Damage, Inc, but spin Puppets next to, say, Slayer’s Reign In Blood, and you’ll find the former is far more melodious and experimental.
Sometimes too much, felt the band.“We felt inadequate as musicians and as songwriters,” Ulrich told McIver. “That made us go too far, around Master Of Puppets in the direction of trying to prove ourselves: ‘we’ll do all this weird-ass shit sideways to prove that we are capable musicians and songwriters.’”With respect, he’s wrong.
It’s precisely this light and shade that keeps Puppets fresh while lesser thrash albums blur into a sea of galloping riffs. Take Battery: an opener that has the balls to start with weaving flamenco guitars, one laying down a four-chord bed in which the bass note rises by a semitone each change, before harmonised electrics swing in like a wrecking ball. “The idea to make the intro to Battery so big evolved in the studio,” Rasmussen said. “There are tons of guitars on there and we just kept tracking.”Battery is heavy as hell, but strangely light on its feet, with the time signature dodging between 4/4 and 5/4. And by the time Hammett had blazed a warp-speed legato solo in E minor, the tune had practically cracked the Earth’s crust. There’s no time to recover.Without breath, Battery gives birth to the jaw-breaking title track, an anti-drug song that ironically sounds like a bad trip. Master Of Puppets is a guitarist’s paradise.
First, there’s the doomy bedrock of thrash rhythms, played in E and F# using downstrokes, and made brilliantly hectic by Hetfield’s calling card of stabbing three notes ‘across’ the beat. “The riff was pretty messy,” he said, modestly, in Guitar World. “Constantly moving.”We were trying to prove ourselves: ‘we’ll do all this weird-ass shit sideways to prove that we are capable musicians and songwriters’But then, just as you have the song’s card marked, it throws a curveball with the love-it-or-hate mellow section in which Hammett strokes out a sublime minor key solo, followed by the truly creepy ending, which has backwards guitar parts swimming through the mix.“To get them I played a bunch of guitar parts that were in the same key as the song and laid them down on quarter-inch tape,” Hammett told Guitar World. “Then we flipped the tape over and edited it, so we had two or three minutes of backward guitar. We put it in the last verse.”Puppets is a schizophrenic masterpiece, a song so good you’ll even forgive Hammett for fluffing a note in the first solo, where he pulls the E string clean off the fretboard of his Jackson Randy Rhoads V.
It’s the only mistake that made the cut. “We heard it back, and I was like, ‘That’s brilliant! We’ve gotta keep that!’ Of course, I’ve never been able to reproduce that since.” Prev Page 4 of 7 Next Prev Page 4 of 7 Next. Disposable Heroes is even better. Arguably the album’s peak, it’s built on the telepathy of Hetfield’s super-tight Eb riffing and barked sergeant major vocals (“back to the front!”), and the oddball end-of-verse Hammett swells that, bizarrely, were inspired by attempting to mimic the bagpipes in old war movies.Equally unlikely is Damage, Inc, a heads-down thrash juggernaut with an intro inspired by a long-dead German composer.“I was into the whole Euro-metal thing,” Hammett told McIver, “and I used a few different scales. The Phrygian Dominant was the one that Cliff showed a lot of interest in.
Master Of Puppets Metallica
He used to watch me playing lead, trying to learn guitar licks and trying to snag bits and pieces of information. We would talk about theory and how it worked, just casual conversations about it.Cliff told me that the intro to Damage, Inc is actually based on a Bach piece“He loved theory and he loved classical music. He was a big fan of Bach. He told me that the intro to Damage, Inc is actually based on a Bach piece called Come Sweet Death, which was a little bit ironic in the wake of what would happen to him Burton was killed in late 1986 when the Metallica tourbus overturned in Sweden.” Prev Page 5 of 7 Next Prev Page 5 of 7 Next. Respect to Rasmussen, and to the 20 fingers of Hammett and Hetfield, but let’s not forget the vital importance of gear in the Puppets sound. If the gear setup was slim by modern standards, then the promotional campaign for Master Of Puppets was positively emaciated. There were no hit singles to reel in radio listeners.
Master Of Puppets Album
No music videos to offer the nascent MTV.It’s hard to believe it now, but Puppets never actually climbed any higher than No 29 and No 41 on the US and UK charts. Yet the band stood strong by their creation. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is a fucking great album’,” Hammett reflects. “‘Even if it doesn’t sell anything, it doesn’t matter to me because this is such a great musical statement.’”But the boulder was rolling. Puppets started selling and never stopped, riding a word-of-mouth buzz that grew louder as Metallica crossed America on a six-month Ozzy Osbourne tour shortly after the album’s release. By 2003, it had shifted six million units.
Not bad for an album that was troubled, awkward and divisively brutal.“Maybe Master Of Puppets was the record that a lot of the early fans identified with,” Hetfield told McIver. “There’s still an innocence about it and just a real ‘fuck you, world’ attitude to it.”So Metallica had it all. The album of their careers. A legendary line-up firing on all cylinders. An adoring fanbase and an international market with its jugular exposed.
For this one-time ragbag of no-hopers, everything was working out. Then the tour bus pulled away on the Damage, Inc Tour, towards the fateful stretch of motorway north of Ljungby, Sweden, and it became clear that some higher puppet-master had other ideas Don't MissPrev Page 7 of 7 Next Prev Page 7 of 7 Next.