CREED and ALTER BRIDGE guitarist Mark Tremonti recently spoke to Adam Whalley of Primordial Radio about his love of METALLICA, particularly the latter band’s classic third album, 1986’s “Master Of Puppets”. Tremonti said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “[‘Master Of Puppets’ is] the album that made me a music fanatic in life. Before that, I was just like everybody else listening to whatever was on the radio at the time. I think BEASTIE BOYS’ ‘Licensed To Ill’ was the big record that everybody was listening to. And then one night I couldn’t fall asleep and my brother Dan was always listening to metal upstairs and I could hear it in his room upstairs. I said, ‘Hey man, what’s that song about the sanitarium?’ So he gave me the tape, the ‘Master Of Puppets’ tape with ‘Welcome Home (Sanitarium)’ on it, and I just fell in love with the album. And it’s probably the most important record to me for my history of making me wanna do what I do.”Regarding what it was about METALLICA’s music that immediately grabbed him, Mark said: “It’s atmospheric, it’s epic, it’s beautiful, it’s mean, it’s angry — it’s all the things you want it to be… To me, like I was saying, it’s beautifully written. You could have a song like ‘Battery’ that has just this intro that draws you right in with how nicely it’s composed, and then all of a sudden it hits you over the head with something that — it did everything I wanted it to do with music when I was listening to it when I was a kid and it made me wanna pick up the guitar and [made me wanna] practice my down strokes like James Hetfield was doing. And I think James’s voice, especially on that record, was just one of the greatest rock voices. It’s just my thing, man. I think it was my thing and millions and millions of other people’s thing, for some reason.”Back in November 2020, Mark told Hakos Pervanidis of Greece’s “TV War” that “Master Of Puppets” was his “favorite record of all time. I’ve listened to it thousands of times,” he said. “That’s the record that turned me into a music fanatic. Before I heard that record, I was listening to the BEASTIE BOYS, I was listening to the J. GEILS BAND and whatever was popular on the radio, and I came across that record and from that point on, I’ve been a metalhead, looking for the heaviest thing that I could find. And I think METALLICA ‘Master Of Puppets’ is METALLICA at their best. Every single song on that record is a 10 out of 10.”Mark’s comments echoed those he made in 2012 when he told Noisecreep that “Master Of Puppets” was the record that helped shape him musically. “From there, I searched for the heaviest, darkest, meanest sounding stuff I could find,” he said. “I grew up in Detroit and my friends listened to SLAYER and TESTAMENT — I got into punk, too, like BLACK FLAG and MINISTRY. And I got really into black metal. I got into CELTIC FROST, KING DIAMOND and MERCYFUL FATE. I loved that stuff. I’d have to control the volume though so I’d turn it down when they said ‘praise Satan’ or whatever to keep my parents from taking my records away. [Laughs]”When asked if there were there specific metal guitarists that influenced him and his riffs, Mark told Noisecreep: “[METALLICA’s] James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett, for sure. That down stroke thing they do is one of my core sounds — my rhythm playing is very rooted in the METALLICA-based style. And SLAYER’s approach, too. Some of my favorite riffs of all time are on SLAYER’s song ‘Raining Blood’ and that really inspired me to write man of the menacing metal riffs that I have over the years. That’s really what turned me on when I was younger, that kind of music.”[embedded content]