Welcome Home (Sanitarium) is a song in Metallica's third studio album, Master of Puppets as well as a single. It was Metallica's second ballad, after “Fade To Black”. Like “Fade To Black” and Metallica's following ballad, “One”, “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” starts out with a slow guitar, with the drums coming in, then James Hetfield's vocals kicking in. Like the other ballads, the chorus are distorted and heavy, and soon return back to the sad and slow guitar part. However, the ending part, like “Fade to Black” and “One”, is fast-paced and heavy, with Hetfield angrily yelling about his pain and then Kirk Hammett performing a solo. All of the vocals also have an eerie echo effect throughout the song (possibly to emulate being trapped).
The song is presumably about a man who is trapped in a "sanitarium", which in this song is described as a mental asylum. He dreams of breaking free, and later in the song, there seems to be a mutiny of some sort in which the people trapped in the sanitarium rebel against the officials of the sanitarium, and James says he has "got some death to do" and that it "seems the only way of breaking free", probably implying that he is likely to kill the officials and break free.
The time signature was 10/4 at the beginning, then 4/4, 10/8, then finally back to 4/4.
Lyrics
Welcome to where time stands still
No one leaves and no one will
Moon is full, never seems to change
Just labeled mentally deranged
Dream the same thing every night
I see our freedom in my sight
No locked doors, no windows barred
No things to make my brain seem scarred
Sleep my friend and you will see
That dream is my reality
They keep me locked up in this cage
Can't they see it's why my brain says "rage"
Sanitarium, leave me be
Sanitarium, just leave me alone
Build my fear of what's out there
Cannot breathe the open air
Whisper things into my brain
Assuring me that I'm insane
They think our heads are in their hands
But violent use brings violent plans
Keep him tied, it makes him well
He's getting better, can't you tell?
No more can they keep us in
Listen, damn it, we will win
They see it right, they see it well
But they think this saves us from our hell
Sanitarium, leave me be
Sanitarium, just leave me alone
Sanitarium, just leave me alone
Fear of living on
Natives getting restless now
Mutiny in the air
Got some death to do
Mirror stares back hard
Kill, it's such a friendly word
Seems the only way
For reaching out again
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