I had returned to school for the start of Year 11, on one of the first days of March 1986. My friends and I had started on a quest towards discovering the love of heavy metal music. Some had started earlier than others, and my own initiation had only really begun towards the end of the previous school year. On this day, we were discussing what we had all done on our summer holidays, when one of our number said he had heard of this band called Metallica, and had read good things of them. Another of our group concurred that he had heard similar things, and that we should try and get some of their music. It was then that the first informant did a deal with his accomplice, suggesting that if one of them went out and bought an album called Ride the Lightning that he would go out and buy the album entitled Master of Puppets. And so it was agreed. That morning conversation, sitting on plastic school chairs gathered in a circle underneath the trees in a corner of the seniors common area, is still crystal clear in my brain. I can still see and hear it all now. Within the week, through the magic of two people each buying a vinyl album and the rest of us throwing blank cassettes at them to record them for us, we all had these albums, and a life long love affair with a brilliant album had begun.
How do you properly review an album that isn't just one of my favourite releases of all time, but is as much a part of who I am and how I have become that way over the years? Music takes on different roles for different people. Many people just like music and enjoy it when they listen to it. It means more to me than that. I wouldn't go so far as to proclaim that Master of Puppets changed my life and opened my eyes in any sort of biblical sense, but it did become an amazing tool over the years as I grew from awkward teenage geeky nerd to awkward twenty-something geeky nerd to slightly awkward forty-something husband-father geeky nerd. It became an album that I could listen to no matter what mood I was in, and it would almost instantly transform me from that mood into whatever mood I wanted to be in. I have other albums like that too, but this is one of the best, in almost every regard.
"Battery" is a monster of an opening track, lulling you in as it does with its clear guitar, almost classical, before the single drum beat and riff flay into the frenzied start of the song. I'll never forget the number of times you could sneak this album onto the stereo at a party, and people would comment on how lovely the opening bit is, and then start screaming for the album to be replaced the moment the song cut in to its heart.
"Master of Puppets" is arguably the finest heavy metal song ever composed and written. It immediately caught my attention and imagination when I first heard it, and along with "Fade to Black" was the first song to draw me into the Metallica fold. Why? Probably the fact that Metallica could mix this brilliant high energy fast guitar and drum aggression with the amazing clear melodic guitars that make the middle break of this song and so much of "Fade to Black" from the previous album, and all without tarnishing the quality or the integrity of the song. This song has everything, and I will still sing every damn word at the top of my voice with the correct amount of aggression every single time it comes on.
"The Thing That Should Not Be" is a different animal entirely from the opening two tracks. A rumbling, creeping bass line and guitar riff sludges along with Lars' mid-tempo drum work to create an unbelievably atmospheric song. Back in the days when vinyl was transferred to cassette to listen to on portable tape players, to fit this album on one side of a 90 minute cassette I had to forgo one of the tracks. This was the one I chose, in deference to most of my friends who chose another song (see below for further explanation). This wasn't because I disliked the song - completely the opposite in fact. But as a teenager, looking to have the fiercest vibe as possible in my music, this was the song I felt could be abandoned in this instance. It's still brilliant, and the days of CDs and digital tracks means no choice now has to be made.
"Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" is another classic, and one where Metallica broke the mould on song composition. Again, it has elements that set it apart from a typical heavy metal song, without losing the roots of what they play. The intro to the song is just fantastic, and in many ways it defines how Metallica (at this point in their career) stood apart from all other metal bands.
"Disposable Heroes" opens up side two of the album in a panicked frenzy, bringing out the best in brilliant riffage, supersonic drums and anguished, angry vocals. The war cry of "BACK TO THE FRONT!" and "I WAS BORN FOR DYIIIIIIING!" is spine chilling stuff, and still brings goosebumps whenever I listen to the album. There's nothing much left unsaid here.
"Leper Messiah" follows, and again doesn't leave anything to the imagination on the subject matter of the song. Great riffs abound, and the drumming here is terrific. This is the song my friends had missing from their cassette copy rather than "The Thing That Should Not Be". Coming home to Kiama from a road trip to Bega with two mates whose band I was in at the time, I played my copy of this album, and when this song came on they asked "What's this?!?" They'd never heard it before, didn't even know it existed. Having played and repeated it about twenty times during the course of the trip home, I got a phone call the following day to tell me to start practicing it, because we were playing it in the band. The power of the song is right there.
"Orion" is the instrumental of the album, and almost steals the show. This is an amazing piece of music, building and flowing all the way through, changing its mood as it does, and utilising every member's talents in the process. Cliff Burton's sensational bass playing, which is the crux of the song, James and Kirk's mournful guitaring through the middle section before breaking out into the solo section to conclude the song, while Lars' drums just hold it all together. Magnificent.
"Damage Inc." concludes the album with brutality, speed and power, reminiscent of the band's earliest work. There's no time to breath through this track, with Lars ripping through drum rolls as the others blaze along on their guitars with ridiculous triplet picking. Sure the other songs here reek of a maturity from the speed and thrash metal roots from which the band emerged, but it's pretty much thrown overboard here as they shred their way through the final five and a half minutes of the album, just to remind everyone that they can still do it.
Lyrically, there have been few albums that have been so coherently and explicitly and expressively belligerent as Master of Puppets. Hetfield's lyrics paint portraits here that are impossible not to see in full Technicolour vision. In the good old days of vinyl, when you could open the gatefold or pull out the insert, put the record on the player, and sit cross legged on the floor and read and memorise all of the lyrics on the album, I would at times not necessarily take in the full power of the lyrics, but just make sure I knew every word to sing along to. But on Master of Puppets it is impossible to steer away from the stories being told by the amazing invective thrust upon you. Even just taking a few lines from each song is not enough to give the full picture, but it is a start.
"Lashing out the action, returning the reaction, weak are ripped and torn away"
"Pain monopoly, ritual misery, chop your breakfast on a mirror"
"Messenger of fear in sight, dark deception kills the light"
"Whisper things into my brain, assuring me that I'm insane"
"Barking of machine gun fire does nothing to me now, Sounding of the clock that ticks, get used to it somehow"
"Marvel at his tricks, need your Sunday fix, blind devotion came, rotting your brain"
"Fuck it all and fucking no regrets, never happy endings only dark threats"
The band is at the peak of their theoretical powers. Not only that, Hetfield's vocals are the finest on this album than any other - they have matured from the high pierced screams from the first albums, and have not devolved into the lower register he was forced to take once he blew out his vocal chords on later albums. This is where they are at their best, and it falls in with everything else this album provides.
I have lived and breathed, headbanged and moshed, air guitared and lap drummed, and air-raid siren sung this album for almost thirty years now, and it never gets tired and it never gets old. It forms a major part of my final school years, my short-lived university years, my work life, my marriage and my family life. The band I was once a part of played four of these eight songs, and probably would have played all of them if we'd been together longer. It still brings together my small circle of lifelong friends whenever we put it on. It brings out some of the best moments of my life, because it always seemed to be played at those moments. This remains for me one of the finest three albums ever written and recorded. It is an all time classic and an absolute masterpiece
Rating: Drain you of your sanity, face the thing that should not be! 5/5.
1 comment:
Wow. How can I not go and buy Master of Puppets after that recommendation. I will have a copy by this afternoon.
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