Metallica: Master Of Puppets Songs Ranked

For as much as hair metal bands thrived on their sentimental side, you were never going to hear a Metallica "monster ballad" track. Instead, the band's slow jams always possessed an inward melancholy, with "Welcome Home" being one of their most spine-chilling.

Inspired by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the protagonist recounts their life living in the confines of an insane asylum. The open-string verse riff even hints at something which is a bit unstable. The man peels back through his brain to find that he only feels content when left to his own device. As this patient is looked down upon and labeled as deranged, the only way he can find solace is dreaming of escape.

Once the band's dream of escape seems to be coming to fruition, the song radically shifts in tempo to become a thrash metal juggernaut. Our hero realizes that the only means of escape is to kill the workers around him and breach through security to leave happily. The solo illustrates the man's murders with the band using its guitar harmony to symbolize the journey of his escape. With the song coming to a full band ending, the story is left ambiguous. Maybe our homicidal hero is still walking the Earth to this day.