MASTER OF ALL TRADES

METALLICA - MASTER OF PUPPETS

Elektra/Asylum, 1986

All together: MASTER! MASTER!

There is literally nothing original anybody can say about this album. In the twenty-seven years since its release, it's been routinely held up as the Metallica album, which in turn marks it out as one of the heavy metal albums. Covering every aspect of the Metallica sound, this was a young band at the absolute apex of their creativity: the title track alone is basically a potted history of heavy music bashed out over the course of eight labyrinthine minutes.

Bookended by two thrash metal masterclasses (no pun intended) in the almost parodically intense "Battery" and "Damage, Inc.", the album isn't all about speed, also featuring the single heaviest song in Metallica's canon: "The Thing That Should Not Be", in which the band, guided by bassist Cliff Burton's interest in horror author H.P. Lovecraft, explore the concept of darkness by making it darker. Featuring a truly spinechilling guitar solo from Kirk Hammett, the crushingly heavy track does an admirable job of simulating the madness and brain-melting horror that almost universally befell the unfortunate protagonists of Lovecraft's work.

Speaking of Cliff Burton, the album contains what has been dubbed his swansong (by a thousand-and-four derivative hacks), the towering instrumental "Orion". A monument to his talent, creativity and compositional skill, this savagely beautiful masterpiece features a bass solo most people don't even realise is a bass solo, and a level of atmosphere that conjures images befitting the titular great hunter.

Even the less well-known tracks are solid gold. "Leper Messiah" is, in the hands of any other band, just another rumination on the greed of religious leaders, but in the hands of Metallica in 1986, it becomes a weapon: a lethally heavy, sarcastic and cynical weapon. Likewise "Disposable Heroes": to the untrained ear just another metal song about war, but a student of the genre and a devotee of this album in particular can tell you this is one of the most precise and focused thrash assaults ever essayed, only letting up for a matter of seconds through its entire eight-minute runtime.

Somehow these four morons wrote one of the best albums of all time.

One of the most notable things about this album is anger. Real anger, and the less said about the unfortunate group therapy session masquerading as a heavy metal album St. Anger the better. Honestly, James Hetfield's every word on this album drips with venom and spite. That's what makes "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" work so well: while basing a song on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a fucking brilliant idea, it admittedly ran the risk of sounding like a "Fade to Black" clone, falling as it does in the traditional 'ballad spot' on the album immediately following Ride the Lightning. However, what sets it apart from the aforementioned song is its delivery. Instead of sad James, we get ANGRY JAMES, and ANGRY JAMES is always better. Unless he's quit drinking, of course. Thus, because of the passion and anger in his delivery, it stands apart as its own song, unlike the truly awful "The Day That Never Comes", which sounds like an obvious ripoff of "Fade to Black", despite being released a whole seven albums and twenty-four years after it.

So yes, the ultimate heavy metal album. More than that, though: it's one of the all-time ultimate albums, regardless of genre. Razor-sharp guitars, Lars Ulrich's most consistent drumming performance, intelligent lyrics (apart from the two "fighting is totally fucking metal" songs), a genuinely angry as hell (and drunk as shit) singer, and behind it all the great lost genius of thrash, guiding the band's energy and power to new heights. It would become both a triumph and a tragedy for Metallica: the triumph of recording one of the finest albums of all time, and the tragedy of never writing anything to equal it.