36 years on, Metallica have released a video for Master Of Puppets

Screenshot from Master Of Puppets animated video
(Image credit: Blackened Recordings)

With Netflix hit Stranger Things providing the title track of Metallica's 1986 album Master Of Puppets with an unexpected boost, the band have seized the opportunity to give the song something it never had: a video.

The new animated lyric video was made by UK design agency ILoveDust, who also worked with Ozzy Osbourne on the artwork for his upcoming studio album Patient Number 9, and with Foo Fighters on promotional activity for their Studio 666 movie. 

Master Of Puppets' renewed popularity is down to a now-iconic scene in the season 4 finale of Stranger Things, in which metalhead character Eddie Munsun – played by actor Joseph Quinn – shreds his way through Master Of Puppets in a bid to help defeat a particularly nasty demon named Vecna. 

The scene set social media alight, with everyone from diehard Metallica fans to those just discovering the band excited by the song's inclusion. Metallica themselves released a video that showed them playing along with the action

Master Of Puppets' appearance in Stranger Things proved so popular that the track entered the UK and US charts for the first time, less than a month after Kate Bush scored a UK No.1 with the 37-year-old Running Up That Hill on the back of its appearance in the series.

Metallica have commented on the song's success, taking to Instagram to say, "The way The Duffer Brothers [the show's directors] have incorporated music into Stranger Things has always been next level, so we were beyond psyched for them to not only include Master Of Puppets in the show, but to have such a pivotal scene built around it.

"We were all stoked to see the final result and when we did we were totally blown away... it’s so extremely well done, so much so, that some folks were able to guess the song just by seeing a few seconds of Joseph Quinn’s hands in the trailer! How crazy cool is that?"

Watch the new video below.

Fraser Lewry

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 38 years in music industry, online for 25. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.