40 years ago today: Metallica released Master of Puppets

Widely considered the masterpiece of the band’s entire career, Master Of Puppets, is not just one of Metallica’s best albums, but one of the most ambitious and genre-defining albums of the 1980s.

Released as Hair Metal was starting to feel the pressure from the more aggressive and authentic underground of grunge and thrash metal, the album received little or no airplay, but still managed to copper-fasten the band’s massive following.

As iconic bassist Cliff Burton’s swan-song before his tragic death in a horrific bus accident while the band were on tour, the album is a testament to his genius and revolutionising use of the bass as not just a component of the rhythm section but as a lead instrument.

The title track, ‘Welcome Home (Sanitarium)’ and and ‘Orion’ showcase their developing progressive sensibilities and their Sabbath and Maiden influences. Not their biggest-selling, but their hardest hitting.

Key Tracks:

‘Master Of Puppets’

'Welcome Home (Sanitarium)'

‘The Thing That Should Not Be’

Kirk Hammett:

"I don’t think there’s such a thing as our ‘best album’ by Metallica. I can tell you that my favourite album at this point is still Master Of Puppets..."

(2003)

Robert Trujillo:

On Stranger Things introducing a new generation to 'Master Of Puppets':

“It’s so strange, because it was something that happened naturally. It wasn’t forced or spoonfed to anybody, it was just discovered. It was on the series and people went, ‘Wait a minute, that’s cool! I’ve never heard that song before.’ So you get a whole new generation of young people jumping onboard and discovering the band.”

(2023)

Revisit Master of Puppets below:

Metallica play Dublin's Aviva Stadium on June 19 & 21.