Posted on 03/04/2011 10:48:23 AM PST by qam1
Considering how immediate the best of it feels, it's always a little bit surprising how well metal music ages. While not everything still sounds fresh, many of the genre's cornerstone releases hold up extremely well. Slayer's Reign in Blood still sounds as fresh and vital as it did when it first came out, and Black Sabbath's Paranoid remains top-shelf. While not all of their albums hold up well, Metallica's Master of Puppets — which came out on this day in 1986, a full 25 years ago — remains a stone cold classic and an album by which other metal albums should be judged.
The thing that stands out about Master of Puppets all these years later is how hard the whole thing is. Every chord crunch, every drum hit and every bellow from the throat of frontman James Hetfield is jagged and punishing, like the musical equivalent of a steel-toed boot constantly stomping on your face. Even the slower, slightly quieter moments (most notably on "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)") are infused with a snarling menace that permeates everything. Most people consider Metallica's self-titled 1991 album (the one with "Enter Sandman") to be their crossover, but Metallica is a full-on heavy album (a vibe they would inhabit for the remainder of the '90s). Master of Puppets is hard, and in retrospect, it actually does a better job than Metallica of splitting the difference between what the band was (the thrash-happy noisemakers of Kill 'Em All, Ride the Lightning and ...And Justice For All) and the band they were becoming (a stadium-filling anthem machine of epic proportions).
Indeed, it's the fact that Master of Puppets is so undeniably catchy that stands out more than anything else. Sure, the pounding rhythms of "Disposable Heroes" and the epic shred jam "Orion" are for hardcores only, but "Master of Puppets and "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" are absolute singalongs. You can clearly hear the roots of more obvious crowd-pleasers like "Sad But True" and "The Unforgiven," and it's pretty thrilling to be able to heard a band at the top of its game evolving in real time.
Of course, there's a lot of sadness attached to Master of Puppets, as it ended up being the final album the band recorded with original bassist Cliff Burton, who died in a bus accident on September 27, 1986. A certain era of Metallica was over, and a new one began shortly thereafter with the arrival of bassist Jason Newsted (and the creation of Metallica, of course). There's also an argument that Master of Puppets was the last great metal album of the '80s, which is not unreasonable (although fans of Tesla's The Great Radio Controversy would probably raise a stink). And considering Nirvana's Bleach came out only a year after Master of Puppets, change was already in the air for all of rock music. If Master of Puppets sounds like the end of days — and it does — that's probably because it sort of was.
Perhaps Jefferson Airplane/Starship had it right, if you have the same personnel, but your musical direction changes, perhaps you should just change the name of the band, to keep the “brand” more pure. So you couldn’t necessarily lump in “We Built This City” with “White Rabbit”, even though most of the personnel were the same.
“I saw ?em live back in 1994.James is the one who got me into guitar.”
2003 for me in Orlando with Limp Biskit. Mudvane, Linken Park and a couple others. They sounded great.
25 years....holy crap, where did the time go.....?
Almost. Rush had a couple of changes in their very earliest days, but since then, they've been the same trio for nearly that long.
S and M DVD.
Damn I feel old.
I was thinking the same thing when I saw the title. Just told Mrs. Mad I forgot what I was going to say!!!!
Now that you mention it, they might be.
And damn, Billy Gibbons still plays a mean Strat.
I nearly lost my eye working as a security guard during their And Justice for All tour. 2x4 to the head.
I still think they are great. :)
Oy, that doesn’t sound good. But then, I was a well-behaved metalhead. Where was that?
It was in an outdoor arena and people were trying to scale the 15’ high fence to get in. My job was to make sure they didn’t make it. One guy apparently took exception and threw a 2x4 from the top of the fence. I still wonder why he wasn’t a MLB pitcher with that kind of aim.
YORK, Pa. — A man trying to climb a 12-foot, wrought-iron fence into a concert venue fell onto one of the inch-thick spikes, impaling his thigh, then held on while rescuers worked to cut part of the fence away. The man drifted in and out of consciousness as firefighters used hydraulic cutters to snap three of the spikes, but he was speaking as rescuers loaded him into an ambulance about 45 minutes later, said John Kottmyer, assistant chief of York fire and rescue service. "He had to actually try to hold himself up there," Kottmyer said. The man underwent surgery Wednesday night and was still hospitalized Thursday, according to David Nichols, chief of the West Manchester Township Fire Department. His identity was not released; no police charges were filed. The fence's sharp-ended spikes rise about 8 inches above a horizontal bar, and when the man fell, one spike penetrated his leg completely. Nichols said the rescuers could not have removed the man from the fence. "Medical protocol is you don't ... remove an impalement because it may have severed an artery or nicked an artery and it could be holding back that blood," Nichols said. The man and several friends had been headed to the Bad Boys of Rock concert featuring the bands Hinder, Papa Roach and Buckcherry, according to York Fair vice president Gene Schenck. The man had a concert ticket, but officials said the group may have jumped the fence to avoid the fair's $5 entry fee. His friends jumped the fence safely. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296751,00.html
Those are triggers. He’s using real drums it just triggers a sound. I can understand why he did it because it punches the bass drums through the mix but there are other ways to do it, which I’m doing.
Oh man, you couldn’t have expressed that any better. That’s exactly how I feel about it too.
Who would the others be? My favorite is Mickey Dee from Motorhead.
My evidence is Load and Reload. Alternative rock.
Going too far towards prog metal would make them sound like Dream Theater. I’m thankful every day they don’t sound like Dream Theater.
I have to disagree - there are many a lot better.. Dave Lombardo, Neil Peart, Cozy Powell, Morgan Rose.....
“Rust in Peace” blows away musically anything Metallica ever did.
Dream Theater opened for them on the Final Frontier tour.
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