Metallica have marked the 35th anniversary of their seminal album ‘Master of Puppets’ with a furious performance of ‘Battery’ on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

Delivering the stand-out track from the thrash masterpiece, their performance was given a brief introduction which saw Colbert riffing on the album’s lasting legacy.

“Their album ‘Master of Puppets’ was released 35 years ago today, and had such an impact that it was added to the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress,” Colbert remarked.

Metallica’s latest appearance on Colbert’s show comes a month after they appeared on a Super Bowl special of the show to perform ‘Enter Sandman’.

The band are only making “glacial” progress on their new album, according to drummer Lars Ulrich. “These are the craziest of times and nothing is letting up,” he said.

Back in November Ulrich said that he and his bandmates were engaged in some “pretty serious writing” sessions for the album, with the drummer promising the following month that the forthcoming LP would be the best record that Metallica have ever made.

A recent Metallica live performance on Twitch for BlizzCon also took an unexpected turn after it was overlaid with cheesy music by Twitch in a bid to avoid copyright infringement.

The band were booked to play during this year’s virtual BlizzCon – an annual event held for fans of Blizzard Entertainment games (Diablo, Starcraft, World Of Warcraft, Hearthstone) – but they suffered an unfortunate censoring that made it look like they were rocking out to lift music.