“Master of Puppets” by Metallica

"Master of Puppets" is the title track of Metallica's 1986 album and the only single pulled from it, released that July. The band cut it between October and December 1985 at Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen, producing it with Flemming Rasmussen, who engineered, while Michael Wagener handled the mix.

All four members share the composing credit, and James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich arranged it, which explains how many rooms this thing has. It's thrash metal built like a cathedral: Hetfield and Kirk Hammett's guitars hammer out riffs with machine-gun precision, Cliff Burton's bass grinds underneath like shifting bedrock, and Ulrich drives the whole assault at a punishing clip. Then it drops into a slower, melodic middle section before charging back into the fray, with Hetfield barking the vocal like a drill sergeant.

It drew praise for its sheer heaviness and has been a constant in the band's live shows. In Belgium, Studio Brussel listeners have kept voting it to the top of De Zwaarste Lijst, year after year.

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