In anticipation of the release of the remastered deluxe box set edition of Metallica’s classic album, Master Of Puppets, Lars Ulrich and guitarist Kirk Hammett spoke with Rolling Stone about all the things they've documented with the reissue. Read a couple of excerpt from the chat below:

Rolling Stone: What are you most excited about in the box set?

Kirk Hammett: “I’m excited about the rehearsal tapes and the live stuff, because it's just cool. It's beyond the normal.”

Lars Ulrich: “I have always been a fan of the booklets and looking at every little nuance, every piece of paper, every lyric, every ticket and every little wakeup sheet when it comes to other big box sets. So hopefully the fans are going to appreciate this even more. And there's maybe additional emotional elements to this, since we're tackling Cliff's untimely passing. There's audio of his last show and potentially what may be the last picture that was ever taken of us together onstage. So with things like that, you pause for a second and think of all the craziness and ups and downs and how much we miss Cliff, but also how fortunate we are to still be out here doing it and that people still care.”

Rolling Stone: A lot of the recordings are pretty similar to what made the cut on the album. Do you remember experimenting much with the songs?

Ulrich: “No. At the time, we were so protective of anybody fucking with what we were doing that we didn't change much of it. If you changed it, that would be giving in. We never really sent any of it to the record company or to management. And I don't mean this disrespectfully, but we didn't really consider Flemming [Rasmussen] a producer in that sense. He was more like an engineer that was there to record and get the best sound and make it sound big. In our minds at the time a producer was somebody that would fuck with your stuff and try to make it more radio-friendly or tame it down. So it was like, "No producers." There was a very defiant mood in the band, so if you listen to the demos to the final album versions, there's not much in terms of different arrangements, though in the studio we embellished them. James especially loves tinkering with sounds in the studio and was very into some Queen stuff on the production side. But no producer was going to come in and tell us what to do.”

Rolling Stone: But weren't you trying to get Rush's Geddy Lee to produce the album at some point?

Ulrich: “Wow [pauses]. I believe he may have been on a very, very short list of people that we may have had a conversation with.”

Read the full interview at RollingStone.com.

Metallica are streaming rare video footage of the band performing “Master Of Puppets” at the Roskilde Festival in Roskilde, Denmark on July 6th, 1986, from the remastered deluxe box set of Master Of Puppets, available everywhere tomorrow, November 10th, via their own Blackened Recordings.

Master Of Puppets has been remastered for the most advanced sound quality and will be available in various digital and physical configurations. The reissue is available for pre-order at Metallica.com where fans can see the full package details and tracklisting.

Those who pre-order the standard album will receive an instant download of  “Disposable Heroes (Remastered)". Those who pre-order the expanded or deluxe editions will receive an instant download of "Disposable Heroes (Remastered)" and "The Thing That Should Not Be (Live at the Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, IL - May 25th, 1986)".

Master Of Puppets was originally released on March 3rd, 1986, on Elektra Records and went on to become the first Metallica album to be certified Platinum by the RIAA. The album has been certified 6x Platinum in the United States and has sold over 10 million copies worldwide.

In 2016, the album became the first metal album to be added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress, an honor granted to works deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".