One works by totally separating the soft and heavy parts while making a story.
MOP? NO. they made a rocking thrashy metal song and totally fucking blew it by throwing in some random, retarded acoustic passage thing in the middle. stupid move. same thing with battery, fight fire, damage inc.
dipshit intros. DO NOT WANT.
There was nothing random about that mid-section -- it created a melodic and tragic contrast to the two outer portions of the song -- such a three-part structure is not unusual, at least in classical -- and they transitioned into this section with the utmost fluidity; instead of many bands nowadays, like Iced Earth, who abruptly shift into some lame acoustic passage which has almost nothing, harmonically, to do with the previous material; the mid-section to Master of Puppets retains all the main instruments (except vocals), and rearranges them for expressive and dynamic contrast. There are still distorted guitars, bass, and drums, just all very carefully arranged. Most bands will suddenly drop everything and rely on a sole acoustic guitar, which Metallica didn't even use in this case. Even so -- even though the sonorities of this section are very different -- it still retains a musical unity with the outer sections, through its continued use of E harmonic minor, and through its retained chord progression, played distorted and palm-muted over some heavy E power chords later.
I love Metallica solely for the high quality of the music they wrote, not their influence. Nothing, before or since, has been as harmonically, melodically, and structurally fluid or ambitious. Other bands have much more technical musicians, but the music is never as clearly composed, in which every bit of material has a clear connection to the rest -- nothing arbitrary. They wrote the most complete melodies -- melodies which explore the many tensions of the scale, which pay attention to the chordal implications, and even play with them. That mid-section you condemn has a clean guitar passage more carefully worked through, more chordally ambitious than anything else in the genre. James created a seemless fusion of 5 arpeggiated chords, all which move carefully up to the dominant, then effortlessly right back to the tonic -- at which point, the twin guitar harmony begins, on the anticipated tonic, perfectly introduced. Most bands now might arpeggiate one or two chords, and usually these have absolutely nothing to do with the harmonic implications of the material before or after -- just chucked in there for cheap effect -- without any attention paid to the various tensions of the scale and key. Such a band is Trivium. There are exceptions, but none of them places these progressions so carefully and tastefully in the middle of an even more elaborate structure. Other bands may even use many more chords, Jazz fusion bands, but none of these progressions has that same fluidity and melodicism -- they seem like exercises to practice over.
I haven't heard any other band with the same meticulousness of detail, the same structural approach. Perhaps Iron Maiden, but they always felt very impersonal and cartoony. But I won't exclude them -- they may have the same degree of craft.
As for influence, I would say Slayer are the greatest influence on underground metal, whereas Metallica most influenced the more popular strains of metal/hardrock (System of a Down, creed, Trivium, Shadows Fall). And if you refuse them this, they at least made certain techniques very popular, which they had adopted and brought to highest perfection.
Rust in Peace also has the same sort of clever and fluid song-writing, but the overall structures are not nearly as dynamic, if they even exist at all. His riffing style is much less imitated than James Hetfield's in my opinion.
If there are bands out there which you believe share these qualities I have outlined, then please recommend them. I am desperate for carefully constructed metal.
