Top 10 Best Songs by Metallica

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kV-2Q8QtCY4 Master of Puppets, the title track of Metallica's third album, is a long and versatile song with which the band showed an ambitious face. Patiently, the mood of the song shifts, as does the tempo and intensity. The cry "Master! Master!" became a real metal classic that also did well during concerts. It is not surprising that Master of Puppets is the most played song in the band's career (more than 1400 times now). Contrary to what the album cover suggests, Master of Puppets is not about war but about drug addiction.

For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ride The Lightning is a perfect metal song. Like many Metallica songs, it is a criticism of war. The title is borrowed from Ernest Hemingway's classic about the Spanish Civil War and the text refers to some scenes from the book. Contrary to popular belief, the introduction is played by Cliff Burton on bass. In For Whom The Bell Tolls, Metallica very effectively slows down the music and then continues playing immediately. They would further develop this way of playing on later albums in longer songs. Thanks to its menacing atmosphere, For Whom The Bell Tolls is a song that pitchers in the Major League like to use as an announcement.

After original bassist Cliff Burton died in a bus accident, the group had to regroup. With replacement Jason Newstead, ...And Justice For All was recorded, which took the complexity of Metallica's music to the extreme. The usual topics of alienation, fear, anger and war were also tackled on an even grander scale. War plays a central role in the album's power ballad. One is about a soldier who is so injured that he is completely isolated from his environment and really only wants to die. With One, Metallica managed to take the art of the power ballad to a higher level. The drums and riffs sound like machine guns and bombs, so form and content fit perfectly. To promote One, Metallica would make a music video for the first time, carefully preparing the breakthrough to a larger audience.

Fans of Metallica can happily debate which is the group's best album. The majority choose Master of Puppets from 1986. With this album the group perfected all its styles. Battery, the opening track shows the band at full speed after it starts with a lovely acoustic intro. The song also aggressively introduces the album's war theme.

Fade to Black is one of the highlights of Metallica's second album Ride The Lightning. It is their first attempt at a power ballad and it immediately turned out to be a direct hit. Songs about suicide were common in heavy metal, but Fade To Black was empathetic and not glorified. During this period, Metallica also began experimenting with intros played on acoustic guitars. Fade To Black therefore gets a beautiful build-up from soft to loud with Kirk Hammett playing one of the most popular guitar solos in the history of metal.

Typical for Metallica is the length of their songs, which is often longer than regular rock songs. Real Metallica hits take their time and go through different phases. Creeping Death is one of the first songs with which Metallica passes the six-minute mark. The song about a Biblical plague would also be given a permanent place in their concerts, often as an opener, because the middle section with the exclamation “Die!” lends itself well to singing together with the audience. Only Master of Puppets has been played live by the band more often.

From their second album onwards, Metallica began to refine their songs. They developed their own form of the power ballad in which quiet parts alternate with loud parts and many guitar solos. Welcome Home (Sanitarium) from the Master of Puppets album is one of their most beautiful ballads. The song is about life in an asylum and is often believed to be based on the book (or movie) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

The first single and opening track of the Black Album hit like a bomb in 1991. Metallica had never sounded so hit-sensitive without immediately losing its own identity. Thanks to the exciting structure and an unforgettable chorus, Enter Sandman became Metallica's first real hit in many countries. Later, the song would be given a second life and sounded as an introduction when pitcher Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees took the field.

Metallica made an immediate impression in 1983 with their raw debut album Kill 'Em All. This was a new kind of heavy metal, played faster and with an aggressive punk attitude. Seek & Destroy would quickly become a live favorite, with Hetfield being able to stretch out the chorus for a nice long time. This is often the song that ends concerts with.

With their fifth album, Metallica refined the sound, sometimes taking steps towards classic rock. The ballad Nothing Else Matters would mark the breakthrough to a larger audience. It is a daring song for a metal band in which singer Hetfield opens up and knows how to move.