Metallica's "Master of Puppets"

What’s up guys, welcome back into the mind of Radeo where we go into music projects and see what they got. Today’s album was a recommendation from a friend I met at a party my sister hosted at my house. While she was gaining massive popularity points, I met someone who was giving me advice on what project I should listen to if I wanted to get into the metal genre of rock. Upon asking, he advised me to listen to Metallica’s third album “Master of Puppets”. Deciding that was a good option, I sat down, popped that sucker in, and gave it a shot.

Upon starting “Battery”, one thing that got me confused was the intro with soothing guitar instrumentals. What? I thought this was a metal rock band, where the- BOOM. The rumble from the stampede of aggressive sounds swarmed me instantly and I was loving it. The song was about how their fans are the ‘batteries’ to the group as they feed the energy at concerts. The band mentions how the fans never leave their side, being united on their views on music, their actions at concerts, and their lunatic attitudes pointed towards their problems. I thought this was a great start as it created a picture to me for what standard the band and the fans themselves hold themselves up to as being part of METALLICA. The album name “Master of Puppets” doesn’t come into play until I heard the second song that has the same name. This song was something incredible as it was the last thing I expected Metallica to sing about. I assumed that this group would be full of Satanic rituals, glorifying drug use, and breaking every rule that exists but I was wrong. This song is a prime example of the opposite case as it explains the control drug use has upon their victims. The drugs are masters who corrupt those who partake in it, making them slaves and thus ‘puppets’. This reminded me a lot about certain rap songs such as “Not Afraid” that provided an aspect of drug use being incredibly difficult to live with and to live without once you get a taste of it. The imagery of this song was top notch as Metallica does a great job at showing how ruthless drug use can be and how nonpartial it can seem to those that are desperate to leave it. The guitar solo bridge really solidifies this song as it allows an instrumental to symbolize the transition from a high to an ugly sobriety, making me respect the band for taking such an artistic approach towards depicting the theme in their album. This is shown again throughout many songs, but I was the most impressed with the solo in the song “The Thing That Should Not Be” as it resembles maniacal laughter to add on that sense of insanity that follows this song about Lovecraftian mythos.

Each song in this album had a similar structure that revolved around having quick stanzas of verses followed by a unified chorus and towards the end, a vivid solo that allowed the topic of the song to be cemented in the listener’s head. I mentioned before that the album’s name is “Master of Puppets” and besides the title song, Metallica does a great job at showing examples of where we are being controlled as individuals in a corrupted society. “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” is a song that revolves around an inmate in a mental asylum that’s being forced to believe that he is insane and can never leave the walls of his asylum. “Disposable Heroes” critiques the mindset of higherups in our military that allow innocent soldiers to fight battles for them in random fields to only have them die or come back as ugly, killing machines that are now tools for our country. “Leper Messiah” is about religious corruption and how certain platforms feed off of their consumers by manipulating them into believing false messages. This is also towards the TV Preachers back in the day that would sometimes just spew whatever agenda they wanted to share just because they had the ability to do so. Finally, “Damage, Inc.” does a great job at personifying the power corporations have in our society and how tricky they can be at committing ugly acts behind closed curtains.

I always talk about how much I love concept albums and “Master of Puppets” does not fail at giving me something I love. Each song gave me an opportunity to digest it and get a different story that relates to the overall theme. Metallica doesn’t seem to be scared of taking risks as they even included a song like “The Thing That Should Not Be” as it messes with Lovecraftian lore. The instrumental song “Orion” was also a great addition as I think it gave a great amount of flavor of what metal music sounds like. It’s a raw energy that can come in different waves but encourages active imagination throughout the whole process. This was a great album to start out with and I’m definitely am going to listen to more of them soon. I give this album a solid 9/10 because this was, to me, a great example of an artist creating a concise album that had a specific theme yet produced a great amount of artistic expression to further a theme that could have been seen as narrow. Hope you guys have a great rest of the week, take care!

Favorite Songs: Master of Puppets, The Thing That Should Not Be, Disposable Heroes, Orion, Damage Inc.