Remaster of Puppets? Metallica to reissue seminal album ‘Master of Puppets’
Lars Ulrich has revealed that Metallica are working on a reissue of their third studio album ‘Master of Puppets’.
The heavy metal titans re-released their first two records - 1983’s ‘Kill ‘Em All’ and 1984’s ‘Ride The Lightning’ - in deluxe remastered formats back in April 2016 and Lars says that ‘Master of Puppets’ is their “next” project once current touring commitments have wrapped up.
"(The ‘Master of Puppets reissue) should be coming maybe later… We'll try to see if we can get it out at the end of this year. It's coming soon. We're working on it,” Lars told Canadian publication Voir.
“There's a lot of stuff associated with 'Master of Puppets'; that's a big project. And we've spent so much time looking forward, with 'Hardwired (… To Self-Destruct)' and so on, but 'Master of Puppets' is obviously next. It will be out hopefully late this year. If not, soon thereafter."
Spawning monumental anthems like the album title track and ‘Battery’, ‘Master of Puppets’ was released on Elektra Records in February 1986 and achieved Platinum status in the UK. It has also sold more than six million copies in Metallica’s native US.
In a countdown of the 100 greatest metal albums of all time published by Rolling Stone critics in June 2017, ‘Master of Puppets’ was named the second-best record behind Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’. You can see the full Top 100 here.
It was the last Metallica record to feature late-great bassist Cliff Burton (aside from the posthumous writing credit on ...And Justice for All’s ‘To Live Is to Die’), who died when Metallica’s tour bus crashed in Sweden in September 1986.
In tenuously related Metallica news, you can watch a brilliant newly premiered video of James Hetfield fanboying over Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris & Queen’s Brian May right here.