"When I listen to 'Master Of Puppets' now, I just sit there and go, 'What the f***? How do you do that?'", drummer Lars Ulrich tells Rolling Stone. "It's very gutsy music. It was a crazy time. We were really young, really fresh-faced. Everything was about music. We were living and breathing music 24/7 with no ulterior motives."

"There's a spark or spontaneity or impulsiveness that happens when you're in your twenties," reflects Ulrich. "We wrote 'Master Of Puppets' in probably eight weeks over that summer. Nowadays, it takes me eight weeks just to drive own to the studio. It's like, 'What did we do in the summer of '85 where we could just give birth to that from the first note to the last note in eight weeks?'

"(2008's) 'Death Magnetic' took us probably 18 months from when we started writing to when we started recording. On this current record, it probably took us about nine months. How do you write a record like 'Master Of Puppets' in eight weeks?"