Master of Puppets is the third studio album by the American heavy metal band Metallica, released on March 3, 1986, by Elektra Records. Recorded in Copenhagen, Denmark, at Sweet Silence Studios with producer Flemming Rasmussen, it is the band's final album to feature bassist Cliff Burton. While touring in support of Master of Puppets, he died on September 27, 1986, after the band's tour bus was involved in an accident in Dörarp, Sweden. The album's artwork, designed by Metallica and Peter Mensch and painted by Don Brautigam, depicts a cemetery field of white crosses tethered to strings, manipulated by a pair of hands in a clouded, blood-red sky, with a fiery orange glow on the horizon. The album is the band's most recent to date to feature a runtime of under an hour. Instead of releasing a single or video in advance of the album's release, Metallica embarked on a five-month American tour in support of Ozzy Osbourne. The European leg was canceled after Burton's death in September 1986, and the band returned home to audition a new bassist. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)