Metallica’s Master Of Puppets is a rite of passage for any young player building up their chops in metal guitar, and it is a punishing, unforgiving hellscape of down-picking that’ll fill your forearm full of lactic acid should there be any inefficiency in your technique.
Of course, don’t let that put you off. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions players have made it through the other side and lived to tell the tale. The pop-cultural high of its Stranger Things moment, when the bravura epic title track from Metallica’s imperious 1986 studio album was anywhere, everywhere all at once, has surely spread its appeal far and wide – dramatically increasing the number of players who can play it nose-to-tail, inside and out.
