Master of Puppets

A lyric video was made for "Master of Puppets".

The album's central themes are dishonesty and deception.

As a reaction to the PMRC language warning labels, Metallica put a sticker in the shape of a stop sign on early pressings of this album that read: "The only track you probably won't want to play is 'Damage, Inc.' due to the multiple uses of the infamous 'F' word. Otherwise, there aren't any 'shits', 'fucks', 'pisses', 'cunts', 'motherfuckers', or 'cocksuckers' anywhere on this record."

"The Thing That Should Not Be" draws on H.P. Lovecraft's mythology. Its title is a line from the novella "At the mountains of madness".

The swelling bass intro to "Damage, Inc." is based on a Johann Sebastian Bach piece, titled "Come, Sweet Death". Cliff Burton studied Bach as a teenager.

Selected in 2015 by the Library of Congress to be preserved in the National Recording Registry for being 'culturally, historically or aesthetically significant' - the first metal album to be bestowed this.

Recording information:

Recorded from September to December, 1985 at Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Mixed at Amigo Studios in North Hollywood, California.
Mastered at Sterling Sound.

Identifiers:

Barcode: 0 7559-60439-1
Matrix / Runout (Side A Variant 1): STE-60439-A-DMM-1, B-22841, Sterling Sound - Dmm-1, Δ 11835 0-, ED M1 SF1 SM4
Matrix / Runout (Side B Variant 1): STE-60439-B-DMM-1, Δ 11835-X 0-, Sterling Sound-Dmm-1, ED M1 SF1 SM4, B-22842
Matrix / Runout (Side A Variant 2): 212183 60439-1
Matrix / Runout (Side B Variant 2): 212184 60439-1