Master of Puppets

Master of Puppets is the third studio album by Metallica, released in March 1986 on Elektra Records and produced by Flemming Rasmussen at Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen, widely regarded as the definitive thrash metal album and one of the most technically accomplished heavy metal records ever made. The album was the band's first on a major label and the last to feature Cliff Burton, who died in a tour bus accident in Sweden on September 27, 1986, six months after the album's release. Hetfield and Ulrich wrote the core of the material; the title track, an eight-and-a-half-minute examination of addiction and control, is considered the high-water mark of the Hetfield/Ulrich songwriting partnership and features one of the most studied and cited metal guitar arrangements of the decade. The album entered the Billboard 200 without any radio or MTV support at a time when those channels were essential to commercial visibility for major-label acts, reaching number 29 on the strength of word-of-mouth and touring alone, an unprecedented performance for metal in the 1986 marketplace. Master of Puppets has been certified six-times platinum in the United States, was added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2016, and is consistently ranked among the greatest albums ever made in critic and musician polls across genres.