Cliff's Best Album

[nick g.]

Aye. Just as the title implies. On which of Cliff's three albums with Metallica do you think he shined the most?

Personally, I'll say Master of Puppets. His diversity really shows when going from Sanitarium to Disposable Heroes - a simplistic 'groove', if you will to blinding fast riffage. And, of course, Orion - Cliff's greatest achievement as a musician. IMO.

And a quick little question - who wrote The Call of Ktulu? I've heard Cliff a lot, and once in a while Dave.

[Tash]

I think his best work was actually on Ride the Lightning. Puppets is great, but he was more straightforward. On lightning he's all over the place, plus he used his distinctive wah+overdrive tone through nearly the whole record (puppets is more clean and thumpy). This gives the bass a weird "lurking" feeling through Lightning that I love.

IIRC Mustaine wrote Call of Ktulu with some help from James and Cliff named it.

PS: Orion is Cliff's greatest acheivement? One solo? Sorry, I have to disagree. Besides being a pretty narrow view of his accomplishments its not that great a bass solo. His solos on Call of Ktulu and his fill/lead work on teh rest of the album are much better.

[nick g.]

I'm not referring to the solo - the whole song was written by Cliff. That song in its entirety beats pretty much everthing else he's written, and another favorite of mine that he wrote - To Live is to Die.

[Kink Rimson]

Originally Posted by Tash

PS: Orion is Cliff's greatest acheivement? One solo? Sorry, I have to disagree. Besides being a pretty narrow view of his accomplishments its not that great a bass solo. His solos on Call of Ktulu and his fill/lead work on teh rest of the album are much better.

The bass solo on Orion is astonishing. By solo, I'm not referring to the slow groovy melodic bit, but the roaring widdle fest after the guitar solos.

Ktulu's great but the bass is CRIMINALLY low.

[MikeyFingers]

^YES. I have the book for Puppets, when I first started playing that song I was like "***? Where did all this come from!?". To this day I CANNOT hear ANY of that solo in the beginning. But still, if I'm playing it right, then it's awesome anyway.
I think Cliff's best album was Puppets. He had more of an impact on the album. He did some nice stuff on Lightning too, but his presence was much stronger in Puppets.

[Audiophage]

I generally like "Master of Puppets" the most. While all of Metallica's albums with Cliff are great, "Master" just seems the most evolved. Cliff didn't just do the solo in "Orion", he wrote the whole middle section.