On March 3, 1986, Metallica released their third album Master of Puppets on Music For Nations in the UK and Europe, and on Elektra Records in the US. The album wasn't an immediate hit for the San Francisco-based quartet - debuting on the Billboard 200 chart at number 128, and peaking at number 41 in the UK charts - but it went on to become the first thrash metal album certified for one million US sales. It has also gone on to be acclaimed as one of the greatest metal albums of all time, and an inspiration for almost every metal band who has followed in Metallica's slipstream.
The making of the record, and its 40th anniversary, is celebrated in the new issue of Classic Rock magazine.
“I would like to say that there was something magical in the air in the summer we wrote Master Of Puppets, something that hasn’t been there before, and has never existed since,” Lars Ulrich told this writer in 2006. “But that would be a lie. I guess we just had the right attitude and the right openness to ideas. The whole band was getting more confident.”
