Metallica praise ‘Stranger Things’ for use of ‘Master of Puppets’
"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"
Metallica have praised Stranger Things for the use of their song ‘Master of Puppets’ in the latest season, describing it as “an incredible honour”.
In the season four, volume two finale of the hit Netflix show, ‘The Piggyback’, Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn) performs the 1986 song in The Upside Down to distract the demobats protecting Vecna’s (Jamie Campbell Bower) lair.
Per Variety, the Duffer Brothers wrote the song into the script during pre-production, after which music producer Nora Felder got clearance from the band to use the song in the episode, which is set the same year of the track’s release.
Posting to Instagram yesterday (July 5), the band spoke about the honour of being included in the show.
“The way The Duffer Brothers 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,” they wrote.
“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?”
It continued: “It’s an incredible honor to be such a big part of Eddie’s journey and to once again be keeping company with all of the other amazing artists featured in the show.”
Bassist Rob Trujillo’s son, Tye Trujillo, recorded guitar tracks for the scene. Posting a video of his son’s name in the episode credits, he wrote: “That’s my boy! Proud of ya Tye!”
Quinn recently revealed that he also really played guitar in the season finale. The British actor, who is the newest member to the Stranger Things gang, said that the Duffer Brothers texted him near the beginning of the pandemic asking if he could play.
“They texted me and they said, like, can you play the guitar?” he told Radio Times. “I said yes. That was about two months into the pandemic, maybe three months, and then a month later, they sent me the last script.
“I was like ‘Are you serious?’ They were like, ‘Yeah.’ And I thought ‘OK.’ So I went and bought a guitar and then practised manically for months until we ended up shooting the thing.”
He also confirmed that he received some extra help. “I was trying to be realistic with kind of what I could do,” he explained. “Like I’ve been playing [guitar] since I was a kid but I’m no virtuoso. So I had most of the song down, but for the solo, we had to fly someone, a black belt metal guitarist, in to help with that. The rest of it? I had a stab at it, yeah.
“It was so thrilling to do on the day – me and Gaten [Matarazzo] were on top of the caravan in the middle of the Upside Down playing Metallica. And it was great fun!”