Metallica - Master of Puppets (w/ guest Doug Robertson)

The Great Albums

Bill Lambusta

Albums, Music Commentary, Criticism, Billlambusta, Brianerickson, Music

4.3 • 749 Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2016

⏱️ 135 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bill and Brian are joined by educator and author Doug Robertson (aka the Weird Teacher, @theweirdteacher) to talk about what makes Metallica's Master of Puppets (1986, Elektra) great. Metallica, forebears of thrash metal and icons within the metal genre, spent a few years in the underground building a rabid fanbase before finally breaking through with their major label debut (which did so without the help of radio airplay or any music videos). Doug shares how listening to Metallica for the first time forced his body to experience puberty within a matter of seconds as a high school freshman. He then became a ravenous fan, taking in their back catalog and falling in love with each album in turn. Brian, Bill, and Doug discuss Nu metal, growing with fast and loud music, Metallica's musicality, Winger, Lars Ulrich's drumming skills (and maybe lack thereof), how Hetfield's lyrics are smarter than you may think, a whole bunch of really cool guitar things, Dave Mustaine, which song on the album is actually a sonata, a bunch about Cliff Burton's life (and death), and much more as we make our way through the album track by track!

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The Hello and welcome to the great albums podcast. My name is Bill. And I'm Brian. What we just
0:39.7	listening to right there, Brian. That was Master of Puppets by Metallica off the 1986 album of the same name.
0:49.2	Because what we do here every week on the podcast is talk about an album and what makes it great.
0:53.4	We're going to do a deep dive
0:55.0	into the music and what we love about it, and we're going to culminate that with a track-by-track
1:00.0	review. And we're not going to do it alone, Brian. No, no, we're not. Not this week, at least.
1:06.3	Through the magical tubes of the internet and Skype, We pull a guest through the ether into our,
1:14.2	you know, spare bedroom where we record this. That's great. Yeah. And so that's, that's, that's,
1:21.8	that's, that's, that's Mr. Doug Robertson. Yeah, aka the weird teacher. Yeah, he is, he's going to come on in a little bit and talk about what he does and what makes him cool, but he is definitely a cool guy.
1:34.2	And he is going to talk a little bit about what makes him great. Yeah, and he talks about being a weird guy and teaching and his love of Metallica. So that's going to be a lot of fun.
1:45.2	So before we get into that conversation,
1:47.7	just to give everybody kind of a context
1:49.8	for what we're going to be talking about,
1:51.9	Brian, I toss it to you to kind of give us a little bit of synopsis,
1:55.2	a background on the band and what led up to the making of this album.
1:58.9	Sure.
1:59.6	Well, Metallica was formed in Los Angeles in 1981.
2:05.6	Primarily by Lars Ulrich, their drummer, and James Hetfield, their singer and primary lyricist
2:13.8	and rhythm guitar player.
2:15.7	Lars placed a local newspaper ad, kind of looking to start a band, and Het guitar player, Lars placed a local newspaper ad kind of looking to start a band,
2:20.6	and Hetfield was the first one to respond. And kind of an early lineup of the band featured
	...

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