Keep Metal!

I recently decided to review songs musically. Because I have uni going on, I will not be able to review more than one song per month (it takes a lot of time). To be honest, this is much inspired by morinn's Crush of the Month. Check her posts about these 2 songs, Army Of The Sun and Reflect The Storm. I always liked the way she expresses her thoughts about those songs.

As you may have guessed, I will be starting this with a metal song. :D So I've been searching and trying to find what song shall I start this? Well why not start with the beast? The song considered a masterpiece by most metal musicians........ Master of Puppets!!!



Above is a 1989 video of Metallica playing Master of Puppets. By watching the video we can quickly feel the energy and excitation of those metal masters. I just watched another live version of the same song done in 2006 and unfortunately the performance is not the same. Maybe its aging.. Or they just had a bad day...

Anyway back to the song. The song is played at 220 bpm which is very fast compared to other styles of music and it starts with an E5... So classic in thrash metal. The song then goes into a chromatic riff after which the drums stop and another riff starts. It sounds very static, but its circulating until it meets the initial note. The riff is played 2 times and then the drums kick in with the guitars doing a longer version of the same riff. The intro then ends with squeaky sounding notes.

Then comes the Verse. There is heavy downpicking of the low E string here. After 2 times, the vocal kicks in and the riff goes for 4 more times. Next the same riff is played 2 frets higher for 2 times and then the Prechorus kicks in. "Controlling faster" it says. This is a wicked riff here. Chords are changed and while changing the E string is played.

Then comes the Chorus. There are 2 E5 staccatos and 2 F5 staccatos. Then chords are played. Then back ti the staccatos and then chords (shorter this time) and then staccatos. Woow that sounds complicated. But this is the easiest part of the song to be played on guitar.

The Verse, Prechorus and Chorus are played once more. When the second Chorus is over, we hear a faraway voice calling "master, master, masteeeer". And then a gentle picking comes in. There are notes fading in over the picking. Once the picking is over, a wicked guitar harmony kicks in, which leads to the first Solo of the song (played by James). The Solo ends and the harmony continues. After the harmony, the picking is played again but this time it is distorted, and we can hear raging chords over it. The riff changes and we can hear shouts over it. The voice is commanding. After a while the drum announces the second Solo is about to start. James goes "FIIIIIIXXX MEEEE" and he does a slide while Kirk kicks in with the solo. How the fuck did they come up with that? James plays the verse riffs over the solo.

Once the solo ends, we hear a simpler version of the static riff. This goes on to a very nice riff that is played 4 times. The ending of the riff is played again, and the static riff kicks in again. The songs kicks back in and the Verse, Prechorus and Chorus is played. As the Chorus ends, the Verse riff is played over a feedback. The song ends after the verse riff is played 4 times. We can then hear a lot of noises which were made by playing Kirk's taped guitar recordings backwards. What an epic ending!! The ending is found only on the original version of the song.

Pheew that was one wicked review. Take care people. Keep metal!!!

Buy Metallica - Master of puppets material