“Disposable Heroes” by Metallica

Track five on Master of Puppets, Metallica's third album, from 1986, "Disposable Heroes" marches off to war and finds no glory there. It follows a young soldier whose fate belongs to the men giving the orders, the record's running nightmare of helplessness and lost control moved to the front line, and its title was lifted from Fahrenheit 451.

James Hetfield sings and plays guitar beside Kirk Hammett, Cliff Burton holds down the bass and Lars Ulrich drives it through seven or eight minutes of shifting parts; Ulrich called it an intense epic where one lapse means missing the next change. The passage that closes each verse is Hammett aping the music of war films. The band produced it with Flemming Rasmussen, who engineered, and Michael Wagener mixed. Robert Trujillo, the band's current bassist, counts it among his favorite Metallica songs ever.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.