This is the debut “album” by autistic internet superhero Chris-chan and his fictitious backing band of hedgehogs.

The tracks are songs by Britney Spears and other artists Chris enjoys. His sole creative contribution is to sing over them with new lyrics more relevent to his lonesome, girlfriend-free life. “So Need a Cute Girl” involves Chris shouting “WHY DO ALL THE JERKS GET ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS?!” and describing himself as a “virgin with rage” to the sound of The Backstreet Boys’ “I Want it That Way.”

Speaking of Chris’s voice, it is an acquired taste. You can listen here. As an aside, Chris says his voice sounds like Frank Sinatra’s.

If you’re a JERK, or a DANG DIRTY TROLL, or just someone looking to play KICK THE AUTISTIC, there’s lots of classic Chris-isms to enjoy. “Yellow is a Mellow Colour” makes just as much sense as the name implies. “La Cocina en La Casa de Casanova” (based off some Ricky Martin song) features lyrics about Chris getting action in everyone’s favourite place for erotic liaisons: the kitchen.

Chris’s musical tastes are a bit limited. All of the album’s songs are either a) ubiquitous mainstream pop hits, b) featured on the OSTs to Pokemon and Sonic the Hedgehog games. Thank God that Guitar Hero would soon hit stores, and Chris would be introduced to a huge library of classic rock songs…well, the ones that were featured on Guitar Hero, at least.

Chris is obviously proud of this album. I find it entertaining too. Unfortunately, it’s only about 25 minutes long. I would recommend that you rip the mp3s and copy them twice over on to a blank CD, for double the Chris goodness, but I won’t. That would infringe Chris’s copyright.

The 80s were a time of great songs and inconsistent albums. Songs like “Nothin’ but a Good Time” and “Youth Gone Wild” are anthems of the age…of all the ages. But when I actually sit down and listen to a Poison or Skid Row album in its entirety, I go skip… listen… skip… skip… listen… skip… skip… skip… listen…

The good news: Dr Feelgood contains songs called “Dr Feelgood” and “Kickstart My Heart.” These two songs are loaded with energy, great riffs, and massive hooks. Crue does nothing but kill on both of these tracks.

The bad news: Dr Feelgood contains nine songs that aren’t “Dr Feelgood” and “Kickstart my Heart.” I can’t remember too much about them. I think “She Goes Down” sounded a little like Aerosmith. Motley Crue sounds completely out to lunch on these songs, they’re just not that memorable or interesting. They kind of sit there, like heavy metal elevator music.

There’s a few ballads, too. Someday you might find yourself answering the $500,000 question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire: What is the most pleasurable out of these experiences? A) a firehose enema. B) getting your nutsack caught in a particle accelerator. C) a rhinocerous-administered prostate exam. D) a Motley Crue ballad. That’s a tough one. You might run out of time. I’d suggest calling a friend.

Sadly, this was an all too typical scenario in the 80s, where rockstars would turn out one or two really good songs, fool around for forty minutes, and snort the rest of the album advance straight up their nose. Motley Crue compensated a little by making their good songs REALLY good (lots of bands ditched the “good” and went straight to “commercial”) but you still can see a neglect for the album format.

They did this on the album before this, too. “Wild Side” and “Girls Girls Girls” will stay with me forever. The rest of the album doesn’t even exist so far as I’m concerned.

Were they to blame? I don’t think so. They are a band that catered for a certain audience, and that audience likely didn’t listen to vinyl records front to back and memorise every note. I posit that the average Crue fan circa 1990 knew only the big MTV hits. It doesn’t help that glam was one of the most overtly image-focused styles of music ever to exist. It was curiously like rap in that regard. Nevermind the music, playa. Tell me about all the gunshot wounds you got and all the blow you muled.

Anyway, Dr Feelgood has two amazing Crue classics and nine pieces of filler so unambiguous that you could stuff them inside your walls and save money on your heating bills.

When I first heard Master of Puppets I thought it the greatest metal album I’d ever heard. Eight years later and I think so still. This album has not yet been topped.

The quality is fractal. How deep do you want to go? The songs are great. The riffs are great. The individual sound waves are great. There’s no filler, no stupid ideas, just an octet of songs that stand as templates on how to write heavy metal. From Pantera to Trivium to Five Finger Death Punch, everyone and their brother attempts to rip off this album. Nobody ever succeeds. If you want another Master of Puppets, you have no choice but to go to a record store and get a second copy.

The songwriting is dense and intricate, but catchy and memorable. After five listens you will remember Master of Puppets note for note. While it’s not as heavy as most thrash albums (even compared to Ride the Lightning, Metallica eases back on the trigger a bit), it features an unlikely savior: more clean sections. Five of the eight songs feature clean guitar (or unaccompanied bass) sections. While Metallica’s contemporaries mostly used clean guitar parts either as musical jokes (“Evil Never Dies” – Overkill) or as deceptive segments that sounded completely different to the rest of the song (“No Love” – Exodus), Metallica preferred to integrate them as cohesive parts of the song. James Hetfield realised that rather than participating in the “heavier heavier HEAVIER” arms race that leads invariably to self parody, heaviness can be obtained by another method: contrast. Light and shade. Loud and quiet. Punches, and periods to recover from the punches. Yes, it sounds obvious. No, very few bands get it right.

“Battery” and “Damage Inc” are quite fast, with Lars Ulrich making one hell of a racket behind the kit. “The Thing that Should Not Be” is a crushing homage to HP Lovecraft doesn’t move so much as…evolve. Section follows section like a fish sprouting legs. “Disposable Heroes” is long and harrowing. “Orion” is a very unboring progressive metal song with a set of amazing riffs.

Every song on Master is full of memorable ideas and exciting moments, but the title track towers above the rest. “Master of Puppets” is a completely amazing heavy metal classic that rivals “Iron Man” and “Kashmir”. Three classic hall-of-fame-worthy riffs in the intro alone. The song mostly listens like a merging of “Ride the Lightning” and “Creeping Death” but is far more elaborate, with an Iron Maiden-esque dual guitar section.

Flemming Rasmussen’s production is superb, trading in Ride’s muddy NWOBHM inspired sound for a pulverising metal attack so sharp and crisp that the tracks seem to arrive in your eardrums via vaccuum-sealed bags. The album finds all four members of their band at their peak as musicians, or close enough, an extremely tight and focused four-piece unit.

Ultimately though it’s the songs that make Master of Puppets (and Metallica) great. No matter how hard or often they fuck up, Metallica is still a great band thanks to this album. Remember Sir Edmund Percival Hillary? Does it matter that he could no longer climb Mt Everest at age eighty? No. You only need to do something great once. Metallica’s like that…no matter how many hipster art rock albums they release, they always have this in their back catalogue.

Still, though, guys…retirement. Think about it.