Customer Reviews

Official Bootleg: Master of Puppets

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Dream Theater, arguably the world's premiere progressive metal band, started a tradition a few years ago of covering classic albums during certain tour stops. The band would play a set of their own material, take a break, and then cover one of their favorite albums in its entirety. So far the band has covered Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast, Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, and Metallica's Master of Puppets.

Master of Puppets is an extremely important metal album, and while it isn't always evident amidst all of Dream Theater's sprawling progressive rock songs, it was definitely a major influence to the band when they were starting out (and later on, if Train of Thought is any indicator). I think Dream Theater does the album justice with this performance. The whole thing is a bit of a stretch for vocalist James LaBrie. His vocal style has little in common with James Hetfield's, so this isn't one of his better performances. Poor Jordan Rudess must have felt like the odd man out, as Master of Puppets is a keyboard-free album. Still, he managed to put his stamp on some of the songs, which made for some interesting interpretations of these classic songs.

Dream Theater's version of Master of Puppets is a must-have for die hard Dream Theater fans, and should prove interesting to most Metallica fans as well. It's a live performance, but the sound quality is quite good. It's probably not up to the standard of Dream Theater's traditional live releases, but it's definitely a cut above the typical bootleg recording.

NOTE: These albums were issued as part of the Ytsejam Records Official Bootleg series, and were produced by Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy. A few are out of print, but most are still readily available from the label.

This is a classic metal album and the band does it justice - except for the vocals. When Metallica originally did it, it was well before Hetfield decided to take any vocal lessons and his raspy, earth tone really went well with the overall sound. However, James Lebrie has a great deal more style, character, and range which, unfortunately for this album, doesn't really go too well. Don't get me wrong, I am an absolute die hard fan of Dream Theater and I've seen them close to a dozen times so far. I've also been a huge fan of Metallica for years, with this album probably being my favorite. The two just don't go together that well.

A got this one out of pure curiosity, yes I like Dream Theater and the old Metallica but this was one release I was not expecting. Is a true bootleg, the paper insert is a color photo copy and the disc says "TDK" on the back!!! The music qualityu is quite good but man, James Labrie needs to now when to stop trying to imitate somebody's else singing style. Hetfield's style of barking is unique in the metal world, and Labrie sounds like he has a fistful of sand in its throat. Other than that is really nice.

this is a pretty awesome cover album!labrie's voice gets a bit off at times but the musicianship is spot-on!it is what it is!

not being a dream theater at all but this complete covering of metallica's master of puppets cd is very well done and very creatively crafted considering DT's band format no 2nd guitaristbut a keyboard player.