Why METALLICA Sped Up Portions Of Master Of Puppets In The Studio

When Metallica unleashed Master of Puppets in 1986, the metal world effectively had its brains blown out. Master of Puppets was fast, technical, catchy, perfectly written, and fucking impossible to play.

Or at least what you’re hearing wasn’t captured completely live and 1:1 for what you’re hearing – which I should add before we get into this is commonplace, and none of this is a shot at the band. It’s just pretty interesting, given the album’s legendary status and high watermark for downpicking.

Producer Flemming Rasmussen, who worked closely with the band, recalled the technical hurdles in a 2021 interview after mentioning that James Hetfield achieved some of his higher harmonies with tape tricks: “Well, you know, it’s difficult to sing high especially if you’re a man. I don’t know whether we cheated by speeding the tape down.

“I know that some of the songs on Master of Puppets we actually recorded them lower and then varispeeded them up so that it got even tighter – that’s one of the tricks you can use in the studio. But yeah, I can’t remember that specific thing. It was just hard for him to do that and, of course, if you can skip it, you want to do it.”

Longtime metal producer Eyal Levi broke down exactly how it worked in a more recent video of his own, which I personally found pretty helpful in understanding the situation: “For Master of Puppets, they recorded some of the fast technical parts slowed down slightly and also tuned down a bit. Then they sped up the analog tape in playback. This did two things.

“First, it made the final performance sound impossibly tight and precise at almost inhuman speeds. Downpicking the song Master of Puppets is still brutally difficult. You should try it. Good luck. Second, speeding up the tape pitched the guitars up, giving them this unique brightness and attack.”

Levi emphasizes the intent behind the technique: “The reason Metallica did it is what’s important here. It wasn’t for a psychedelic effect. It was to achieve a level of precision and aggression that the speed of the music demanded. It’s actually the exact same reason why so many bands today will take incredibly technical sections and record them at, like, 95% or 90% speed and then later bump it up to 100. So if you think that recording slower to nail a part is a digital trick, you’re wrong.”

This combination of meticulous technique and studio wizardry is part of what has kept Master of Puppets a benchmark for metal musicians. The song’s velocity, precision, and brightness weren’t just the product of raw talent – they were carefully engineered, proving that even thrash metal can benefit from a bit of studio alchemy.

And clearly it worked! And clearly Metallica could play it just fine… if not even faster, given the below video. I guess all of this is to say don’t feel too bad if you’re downpicking isn’t as good as what you’re hearing on Master of Puppets.