Master of Puppets

There were no more riffs left after this album. Easiest 5 stars I'll have to give.

5.0/5.0: Iconic

Toen ik 11 of 12 was, wapperden mijn leeftijdsgenoten altijd met dit album. Het was toen 'heel erg oud'. Mwa, een jaartje of 5, maar zo gaat dat in het hoofd van kinderen.
Ik was er toen nooit heel erg van onder de indruk. Vond het veel te eentonig. En dat merk ik nu ook. Maar vooral op de momenten dat de eentonigheid doorbroken wordt. Bijvoorbeeld tijdens de goed gecomponeerde titeltrack of als in Welcome Home de gitaren het woord krijgen.

By far the best Metallica album and probably the best metal album period. Kicks ass from start to finish. Easy 5.

This is probably the most Metallica of Metallica albums. At least in pop culture? Solid album, iconic cover. Songs get a bit tedious though.

3.875 per track.

Ahh man too many corny ass guitar solos. Still better than I expected

Birth. School. Metallica. Death.

Definitely the best of the big 4 in my opinion. One of the best Metallica albums for me, though it's not as thrashy as I remember. Still a banger all the way through. Mixing could've been better--it sounds hollow at times and the vocals can get lost in the mix depending on the sound setup. 4.5/5

Delighted to see this pop up, I've been listening to it a lot this year. This is Metallica's only perfect album IMO. A big improvement on ...AJFA, and better than the self titled. I'm still not sure why so many Metallica albums are included, this one and The Black Album would be enough.

High energy. Fun album, but some of the songs drag on pretty long and the whole things starts to blend together.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. I've been all over the place with Metallica on this list but this one I liked. Or maybe I was just in the right mood for it.

There was some decent headbanging going on during particularly gnarly moments, and some decent foot tapping too. They're really tight as a band, with some great musicianship, but it's just relentless.

Master Of Puppets was released in 1986 and improved on the sound of Ride The Lightning. Production and songwriting have been perfected and missteps like Escape have not made the cut like on its predecessor. Even the structure of the album is almost identical. The first track Battery hits right in after a quiet intro. Metallica at its loudest.

The title track, as well as Disposable Heroes, with their eight+ minutes, are epic songs in which everything comes together. Hard, fast riffs, a quiet passage with beautiful melodies and a lightning fast solo by Kirk Hammett.

The quiet Welcome Home (Sanitarium) is then a ballad with a somewhat harder chorus and beautiful guitar solos that eventually builds to a great climax.

The instrumental Orion is another highlight. Atmospheric, chock full of riffs and solos and a real bass solo from Cliff Burton. Burton also opens the album's closer, Damage, Inc. With this sledgehammer blow, the album is closed even more furiously than it opened.

Metallica would never reach the level of this album again. Master Of Puppets is still regarded as one of the best and most influential metal albums. The metal album everyone should know.

Master! Master!

I like this older Metallica more than the newer stuff, but still can't get into thrash metal too much. I am always impressed by the musicality of these guys, but Kirk and James can absolutely shred and Lars is a pretty great drummer (at least in the faster type stuff). 2.5/5

ugh

Well, I didn't expect this to be as hard to decide what to rate as it did. I figured it would either be a case where I only liked Master of Puppets and the rest was boring (I already have had run ins with Battery and Sanitarium and I still think those are boring), but the songs I had never heard are suprisingly good. In an almost cruel twist all the best songs are the long ones, while the shorter ones almost always seem too long. Basically the whole album is high highs, such as the absolute fantastic guitar, and lows such as the honestly very subpar singing, which wouldn't be that big of deal but it usually makes up half of the songs run time (seriously, Orion was a godsend and a nice break before the finale), and for whatever reason the band acts as though it's just as important as the musicality, when obviously the instruments were the most impressive. It does feel far better though then the Metallica output nowadays, where they actually seemed like they cared about the music and not just because they were THE metal band. I'm just all over the place here with thoughts, and I'm gonna smack it right down the middle of the rating system, but my thoughts here feel more conflicted than a star system can really express. All I know is that as this was Cliff Burton's last album, I wish his bass playing showed through more. Throw a bass solo in there, you were willing to back in your debut! It almost feels like they're hiding it in audio remasters, but perhaps my listening apparatus of choice for this album is at fault.

Meh. Sabbath did it better.

This album is a 5 just out of nostalgia alone. The way that Metallica was able to weave tension into their music was like a bomb going off in my tiny little brain.

This is the fucking thing with 80s metal, man! If each of these songs were like 50% shorter, this would’ve been really solid, but as is they’re not interesting enough to justify how long they make you spend with them.