Metallica: Master Of Puppets Songs Ranked

This song is by far the quintessential Metallica song, right from the starting gun. The downward intro riff is pure thrash metal before slamming into the full band entrance. Hetfield delivers a masterclass in downpicking rhythm guitar while he details the harsh truths about the dangers surrounding drug addiction. In this song, drugs take the form of the master pulling on the addict's puppet strings.

Across these 8 glorious minutes, Lars Ulrich keeps everything on 10 as he goes from strength to strength through frantic drum fills. The solos showcase both guitarists' skills from Hammett's shred-tastic mid-song freakout to Hetfield's melodic harmony solo which is practically a separate hook unto itself. Even Cliff Burton flies off the handle as he pulls off incredibly fast tempos using only finger-style bass techniques. Burton is also credited with composing the syncopated breakdown riff inspired by David Bowie's "Andy Warhol."

This may not have been the band's most successful single, but mainstream success is almost irrelevant when it comes to Metallica. For metalheads, this is the song that launched a thousand young bands to pick up a guitar and start thrashing their rooms to pieces. With this song and this album, Metallica became the new flagbearers of all things heavy metal.