Metallica
Master Of Puppets

THE REVIEW

"Master Of Puppets" Metallica 1986

It’s rare, very rare, that it happens: those with an introverted and glacial personality tend almost always to keep everything inside, somewhere between the ribs and lungs, without feeling the need to vent/talk about it with anyone. Yet it happens.

My blue, almost gray eyes suddenly feel filled with small red veins, jaws and molars clench in an impenetrable grip. I can't breathe, my heart violently pumps blood, the veins in my neck fill up, and my muscles are tense, ready to erupt. I scream and simultaneously raise my fist, ruining it on the solid wood desk with all the force of my well-trained 75 kg. It doesn’t even budge, and this wooden indifference only sharpens the distillate of pure wrath and furious anger just arrived at dawn. Far from satisfied, as I look incredulously at the screen again, I find nothing more satisfying than throwing—no, hurling—the chair to the ground and cursing, articulating the words so that someone I don't believe in can hear. Something that usually deeply annoys me to hear, even though I've been agnostic for almost 15 years, but irrationality now reigns supreme. I want to grab something and smash it, crush it with my hands: I'm sure I wouldn't recognize myself if I caught my gaze in the mirror. I hop down the stairs, rummaging through the CDs, carelessly throwing them on the ground in the desperate search for that one, the right one, and blaring it uncompromisingly through the stereo! Without gloves, in time with the furious notes, I punch and kick the 35 kg bag. Ten minutes is enough, and the anger slowly slips away, transforming into burning disappointment. I’m dripping with sweat, leaning with red hands and a sore right wrist on my knees to catch my breath. The CD has lost much of its potential: I let it die out. The brain begins to think. The best way to rationally face the situation that has brought out my animalistic and primitive side. I am back to normal.

It is not by any means a perfect CD, as most stubbornly want to depict it, yet it has sold and will continue to sell millions of copies. Why? Why, for example, did I buy it? It doesn’t embody my musical tastes, after all, I have quite an ear to hear that it has mediocre production and it's not even well sung. I ration it. On occasions like this, and only sporadically during more normal moments, I like to feel its undeniable power. Thus, it often collects dust, but despite everything, I am happy to have it in my collection for those rare times when the record spins.

As much as some novices or laypersons may believe it to be one of the most deliberately evil CDs existing on Earth, in its genre it is not at all extreme. On the contrary, even though it is “Thrash” 100%, it has a relatively strong dose of melody, embedded there in stunning Hammettian solos and arpeggios like that of "Battery" and manages to give vent to the personal anger inherent in the listener with tight and rough riffs ("Orion"), accelerations, restarts ("Welcome Home Sanitarium and "Master Of Puppets"). Even James's not very technical voice is able to embody the desire to shout to the world the personal and temporary outburst we would like to make someone hear.

"Master Of Puppets" I've found it in the collection of unsuspected lovers of sounds light years away from those of the Americans. Is the reason this CD sells and will continue to sell due to the name it has built over more than two decades? Certainly yes: it has become fashionable to have it, I don’t deny it. However, I romantically like to think that that mix of brute strength combined with sparse, yet essential, melody manages for many to rightly embody that restless sense of anger that occasionally, without warning, catches each of us and that this is the reason why we feel those notes of 1986 are intimately ours.

ilfreddo