Metallica's 1986 album Master Of Puppets gets the super deluxe reissue treatment in November, with more demos, riff tapes, outtakes, rough mixes and live performances than you can chop on a mirror. Pick your poison: there's the expanded CD box set, remastered vinyl, a hardcover book with unseen photos and one that collects them all. It's the kind of fan service that understands just how obsessed we are with Puppets -- when Metallica, just barely in their 20s, elevated thrash to high art.
The album's title track, for me, remains a master class in heavy metal songwriting — its chaotic and righteous speed carries the main riff to the soaring chorus, where James Hetfield screams "Your life burns faster / Obey your master" with pained desperation. This newly released demo from late June 1985 offers an early version, not nearly as thick and grandiose as what would it become, as Hetfield yells in his upper register (before he discovered his belly howl), with guitar solos that hadn't quite found their purpose yet.
The remastered Master Of Puppets comes out Nov. 10 (pre-order).
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