Metallica: 10 Awesome Lyric Meanings You Totally Missed
5. Disposable Heroes
Of all the songs on Master of Puppets, "Disposable Heroes" seems to be the heaviest track on the entire album. From the word go, the song is out for blood as it strikes you down with its breakneck tempo and furious riffs that must have left many metalheads' arms in shambles attempting to learn it.
The song is all about the headbanging riffs throughout, but the actual story Hetfield tells is something much more terrifying. With the title taken from watching football commentary about injured players, Hetfield flipped the concept of disposable heroes to be about young men who go off to war and have their minds warped. The character in the story is thrown into the carnage of war without any preparation and has to live a life of killing his fellow man in order to survive as the higher-ups try to benefit from his torturous practices.
By the end of the tune, this man is left without much of a soul left, as he approaches the end of his life with his firearm as his only security blanket. It could be describing PTSD or the just the atrocities of war, but these frank statements will leave even the most hardened listener with chills.