Before drummer Lars Ulrich even thought about acquiring Basquiats to auction off in the future, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett was most stoked on obtaining the first issue of the Fantastic Four comic, which established Marvel as a big name and is now estimated to be worth around $135,000. The unmitigated success of Master of Puppets, inarguably one of the greatest metal albums of all time, let him do that, and set him on a path from obtaining valuable pieces of pop culture to becoming an icon in the culture itself. When asked about why he wanted the rare comic, Hammett replied, “To obtain the unobtainable is a real rush in itself.”
The lasting characteristics that took metal from its heavier rock offshoot to its own distinct form were already taking shape by the time Metallica released their third album Master of Puppets in 1986. The Bay Area thrash scene where they originated—and quickly divested themselves from—was born from one of the most successful mergers in music: metal riffs and punk energy. Melody was increasingly prominent, bringing with it a wounded and raw beauty. Thrash also brought about an element of social consciousness, adding flourishes to British crust pioneers Discharge’s brute simplicity. Metal was both assimilated into pop culture and a bastion of musical expansion, a reimagination of progressive rock with more direct propulsion. It was music not content with its own alienation, ready to lash back as a big-tent alternative that demanded a deeper understanding.
Will this reissue of Master of Puppets—a remastered and expanded box set, featuring studio outtakes and live performances from around the world and one of bassist Jason Newstead’s first shows at a club in Reseda, Cali.—convince you it’s the greatest metal record of all time, if you’re not convinced already? The numerous early takes and rough demos have a diehard appeal (there’s a reason Metallica has a dedicated archivist on their payroll), though the live recordings present a band going through its most monumental transition punctuated by monumental tragedy. Recording a masterpiece was the easy part. Genius does not appear out of thin air and Puppets was a culmination of Metallica’s influences and forward direction, so yes, it will give you a more rounded sense of how a masterwork came to be. That the early roughness stands starkly shows how relentless they were in making a defining metal record.
Its predecessor, 1984’s Ride The Lightning, began with “Fight Fire With Fire,” a song fueled by nuclear paranoia, which was not at all uncommon in the ’80s. Puppets opens with “Battery,” a celebration of destruction as a liberating force, trading in commentary for a purely aspirational message, albeit one the heshers could revere. It’s basically “Fire” widened in philosophical scope and tightened in performance. In this way, Puppets wasn’t a radical break from Lightning. Both mostly follow a similar structure—acoustic intro, second song as title track, a “ballad” on the fourth song, a long instrumental—and yet Metallica were not copying themselves or refining their approach. They were crazy enough to think they could top Lightning, and they did. It’s what separated them from the rest of the thrash scene, and from most metal in general; they were the furthest thing from Def Leppard, but they wanted to push their own boundaries of metal as high art as much as Def Leppard was trying out-slick and out-pop their Los Angeles rivals. In hindsight, game recognize game. Metallica abandoned Los Angeles because they couldn’t hang with the pop bands there—all of those Decline of Civilization Part II Aqua Net rejects couldn’t fathom wanting to ascend to Metallica’s heights anyway.
Puppets deals with the very nature of control, presenting the hangover of its allure. Metal is fight music for underdogs and while that is empowering and worthwhile, Puppets shows the consequences of control in the wrong hands. The title track was Hetfield warning himself about addiction, something he would become intimate with, and he wouldn’t listen until their 2004 tell-all documentary Some Kind of Monster made a tragic comedy out of Metallica’s near collapse while recording St. Anger. Through its raging rhythm and heart-wrenching valleys, where bassist Cliff Burton brought a distorted symphony of the mind, Hetfield’s pleas for sanity sure don’t sound like someone coming to grips with how fucked up he is.
This isn’t unusual for cautionary drug songs, yet “Puppets” doesn’t sound like a morality play—“Master! Master!” is servitude delivered as arena unity, where you grow stronger, not indentured, by yelling it louder and louder. “Disposable Heroes” and “Leper Messiah” explore the illusion of control through more conventional topics—“Heroes” takes on war and “Messiah” skewers televangelists as any decent ’80s metal band would—and still manage to be more powerful than most bands at their best. Metallica embraced more complex structures without diluting themselves, a rare instance where a band gets more accessible by getting more complicated.
Puppets’ fusion of beauty and savagery is best defined in its last two songs, “Orion,” an instrumental, and “Damage Inc.” Both tracks were co-written by Burton, effectively sealing his legacy that still looms over Metallica three decades later. His presence is strongest on “Orion,” making thrash move like ballet, a swelling motion that’s not just about crashing into things. The bridge takes the control motif and creates worlds with it, creating tenderness and majesty, showing what a man’s hand masquerading as divine can summon. “Orion” is celestial through meaning, not explicit text, Hawkwind’s high-mindedness combined with Lemmy’s more direct glance.
“Damage Inc.” closes how “Battery” opened the album: reckless carnage as a cleansing, necessary fire. While it’s more of a contrast than fusion, they still coexist with a purpose to elevate metal. It’s even more apocalyptic than “Fight Fire With Fire”—there’s no mention of nuclear war, just a focus on getting mowed down for someone else’s survival. “Fuck it all, fucking no regrets” proved to be such an impactful line, Hetfield reused it again in 2003, on St. Anger’s title track with a teenager’s enthusiastic clumsiness.
Nevertheless, Hetfield is, bar none, metal’s standout rhythm guitarist, handling blazing speed with a precision and heft. Metallica are so ubiquitous that this perhaps has gone under-recognized; hummable as his riffs are, and the legions of hummers massive, Hetfield’s role as frontman obscures his contributions as a guitarist. The rough mixes included in this deluxe reissue are mostly devoid of solos and vocals, and they become pantheons to Hetfield’s rhythm stature. It’s jarring to hear gaps where Hammett’s solos or Burton’s fills should be, and yet through him (and our collective memories) the songs still flow as they should. Hetfield-Hammett-Burton-Ulrich is one of the few metal lineups where every member was equally integral, where if you removed one, the band would be radically altered. Hetfield was the bond between everyone else, a ground to Burton’s ambitions and Hammett’s squalling lead work, a reason that Ulrich didn’t need to be flashy because he certainly couldn’t be.
Puppets brought Metallica to their artistic climax, but its touring cycle proved a severe challenge to such loftiness. The live recordings here are closer to the tapes that Metallica made their reputation off of than the polished productions on the 1993 box set Live Shit: Binge & Purge, the cash-out from touring all corners of the globe. As demanding of perfection they were making Puppets, live they were still more concerned with tearing through, out-of-place leads be damned. Except for a 1987 VHS Cliff ‘Em All!, there weren’t a lot of official live recordings from this era, odd given how Metallica made their name as a live band. The live tracks here are rough, unpolished, but you can basically smell the beer and sweat from the band and the crowd throughout.
Before Burton’s death from a bus accident in 1986 on tour in Sweden, Hetfield considered kicking out Ulrich, an alternate timeline that scores of metal fans might still wish into existence. Loving Metallica and hating Ulrich are not mutually exclusive; Metallica could make more money charging fans and ex-fans to spit on him than they ever did making music. Even as the fantasy lingers, it’s impossible to imagine Metallica without Ulrich. Puppets is the product of brashness with an eye towards heaven, and that’s Hetfield and Ulrich to a fault. And Hetfield was going to make that relationship work: he described early Metallica as the family that replaced his own, his mother died from treating cancer with Christian Science and his father abandoned him when he was young. Burton’s death reopened that feeling of abandonment, making him grip to control even more. Trying to obtain the unobtainable is not for the foolhardy, and it will drain you into a husk if you’re lucky. That’s what Hetfield tried to warn you about on Puppets by yelling at you about chopped breakfasts on mirrors: control is a deathwish that keeps you alive.
