Master of Puppets

"Master of Puppets" is the third studio album by the American heavy metal band Metallica, released on March 3, 1986, by Elektra Records. It was recorded at Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark, with producer Flemming Rasmussen and is the band’s final album to feature bassist Cliff Burton, who died on September 27, 1986, when the group’s tour bus crashed near Dörarp, Sweden, during the album’s supporting tour. The cover artwork, designed by Metallica and Peter Mensch and painted by Don Brautigam, depicts a cemetery of white crosses controlled by unseen hands emerging from a red, clouded sky, illuminated by an orange horizon. The album is the band’s most recent studio release with a total runtime of under one hour. Instead of promoting the album through advance singles or videos, Metallica joined Ozzy Osbourne’s American tour as a supporting act for five months. The European leg of their own tour was cancelled following Burton’s death, after which the band returned to the United States to audition a replacement bassist. "Master of Puppets" peaked at number 29 on the Billboard 200 and received widespread critical acclaim for its technical precision, intricate compositions, and lyrical focus on themes such as power, control, and societal decay. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential metal albums ever made and is often cited as a defining work in the development of the American thrash metal movement. The album was certified eight times Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 2025 for sales of eight million copies in the United States, six times Platinum by Music Canada, and Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). In 2015, "Master of Puppets" became the first heavy metal recording to be selected by the Library of Congress for inclusion in the National Recording Registry for its "cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance." Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.