Hot off of the meteoric success of their 1984 album Ride The Lightning, Metallica found themselves in a curious position. Bursting with fiery ambition and lofty compositional ideas, by the summer of 1985 they had effectively outgrown thrash, just as that very scene had begun to explode. That third album would be a crucible in which they would forge all of the speed and aggression of their first two releases with vibrant new melodies and incisive lyrics. Today the Master Of Puppets album is viewed as the unqualified high point for a band whose career plays out as a series of high points. And nothing exemplifies its brilliance as perfectly as its anthemic title track.
It was the summer of 1985, and on July 14 the band got together in the garage where they bashed out the first round of demos for what would become the followup toAmong them was a rough instrumental that would soon be revved up, stretched out, pumped full of blazing riffs, jaw-dropping solos and anthemic lyrics. It was titled And Metallica sussed that it would be the title track of the forthcoming album.
