What would Master of Puppets sound like if it was written by Slipknot? This TikTok user has the answer

Metallica’s Master of Puppets has received a spike in interest lately after its feature in the finale of the latest season of Stranger Things. And sure, in our timeline, it was written by James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Cliff Burton and Lars Ulrich, but what if the creative spark never occurred during those 1985 songwriting sessions?

Would its iconic riff have been conceived by another artist further down the line? And if so, what would it sound like? These are exactly the questions TikTok user Devin Taylor attempts to answer in his latest short clip.

And for this hypothetical scenario, Taylor pretends it was, in fact, Slipknot who came up with Master of Puppets. “If Slipknot wrote Master of Puppets it’d be better than this, but here’s my take!” he writes in the video’s accompanying caption.

For his reimagining, Taylor transforms the chromatic-flavored thrash metal classic, drop tuning his guitar and adding some thicker distortion, and swapping Ulrich’s already-rapid drum beat for some more Joey Jordison/Jay Weinberg-esque stickwork. Check it out below.

@fountane

♬ original sound - Devin Taylor

At the time of writing, the Devin Taylor’s Master of Puppets reimagining boasts 1.2M views and nearly 175K likes.

And it looks like we might be in for some more Slipknot-inspired goodness from this TikToker; in response to a comment on his video which reads: “Just missing some record scratching and beer keg hits”, Taylor replies: “Bought an empty keg and baseball bat yesterday for the next one… And I promise to sample/put in scratching.”

“Imagine how sick it would be if Metallica and Slipknot made a collab,” another user writes below the video.

The two metal juggernauts were scheduled to take part in a tour together commencing late 2019. However, the trek was cancelled after Metallica leader James Hetfield was admitted to rehab. 

The closest we came to a Metallica/Slipknot collaboration arrived at 2004's Download Festival, at Donington, England, where the late Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison sat in for Lars Ulrich, who had taken ill. Slayer's Dave Lombardo also helped Metallica complete their headlining set.

Slipknot are currently gearing up to release their highly anticipated seventh album The End, So Far next month. Three singles have been released thus far: The Chapeltown Rag, The Dying Song (Time to Sing) and Yen.