Only CDs Is Sounding Like These # 3: Metallica, Master of Puppets (1986)
A new occasional series - CDs are coming back baby! And I’m here for it. BIGTIME!
There’s a fairly accepted-across-the-board view that Master of Puppets is the best Metallica album. And I was never on board with this. Until just very recently. I always plumped for Ride The Lightning, partly to be a tiny bit different (I can’t lie), partly because I truly meant it - and tied with that, mostly because it was the first Metallica album I ever heard. As such, it’s the only Metallica album I’ve ever bothered to own on vinyl. But I never really played it - so sold it and most days I barely even think about that.
But what I have been thinking about - a LOT - lately is how I don’t really love listening to metal on headphones. I do it. Now and then. And sure, there are times - it can be great gym music etc - but I mostly want to blast it out so I can hear it and whoever else…
The problem with that is I like sharing my house with my family. And I very much love my family. So I take the little victories (my son loves Led Zeppelin, my wife is digging Nine Inch Nails a whole heap right now) and I don’t really push it beyond that. Besides, and it helps, I’m a fair weather metal fan. I never went full bogan (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I wear more black t-shirts now, in my 40s, than I did in my teens, twenties or thirties. And I probably listen to more metal now too - but it’s in concentrated bursts.
So, right now, I’m home alone and I’ve been listening to lots of Slayer and Obituary and NIN and Mr. Bungle and Faith No More and Sabbath and Megadeth and AC/DC and, yes, Metallica.
I used to love Metallica. But then they got all silly really. And it happens to most. Then they felt like they were ‘coming back’ slightly. But also not really.
But there’s enough in that back catalogue - especially the first five albums - to return to.
And it’s been finding a copy of Master on CD (I used to own all of them way back) that has got me hooked on this album, newly. Big time hooked. And I can see why everyone loved it so - sentimental reasons no doubt but also musical and image reasons.
This is the last album to feature the ‘true’ lineup. It is therefore the last album where you can hear the bass playing and it’s good - it is also the last album where Lars sounded fully competent behind the kit and was produced accordingly. You might say it’s the last album where Kirk’s lead guitar just didn’t repeat itself in a damp squall of sound; where James’ voice wasn’t just a cartoon growl; where the riffs were HUGE.
It is an ominous sound for sure - but one that is tight and wrapped all around the songs.
And some glorious songs too. Battery is the perfect opener. A call to arms. A charge. The title track is just a classic metal jumper - Metallica not quite giving away their speed metal origins, but so fully integrated in the thrash sound too. Welcome Home (Sanitarium) is another high spot among high spots. And Orion and Damage, Inc. are just perfect closers. There’s not a foot wrong in between though, every song a gem.
And though I would have first heard this on cassette tape, and though many metallers still love their vinyl or even their tapes, I feel like albums such as this and Faith No More’s Angel Dust just feel right as CDs. I mean the technology was only just moving towards the mainstream when Puppets was released - but it feels so thoroughly like a CD album for me. It was not the first Metallica CD I bought - that was the ‘Black album’, followed by Ride, but this was next. And all the time I talked about it being “good, but not as good as Ride The Lightning” I might never have quite actually meant it.
That said, I’ve been revisiting Ride The Lightning a lot lately. And of course it still stands.
Metallica had just the right amount of grit and sludge here though. It felt ominous but never ridiculous. They fell too heavily, too quickly towards the ridiculous.
