What’s the work?
"Welcome Home (Sanitarium)"
is the fourth track from legendary Heavy Metal act Metallica's Master of Puppets album. It is about a man who was Mistaken for Insane slowly going from a Knight Templar to a Spree Killer in order to escape the asylum he's being held in.
Who is the narrator and what has he done?
Our Villain Protagonist is a man who is, as mentioned to above, taken to a Bedlam House after being Mistaken for Insane (or is just pretending to be sane either out of denial or sadism) after some unknown series of events. At first, he considers himself the Only Sane Man, until he realizes just how awful the asylum really is. Eventually, he goes completely mad and rallies up the other patients to murder their way to the outside world. The song refuses to mention the end-result of the mutiny, likely in order to invoke Nothing Is Scarier, but it's widely believed the narrator managed to escape, in order to find innocents to torture with his newly-found sadism.
Mitigating factors?
To be fair, this theory might be relying a bit too much on Fridge Horror and Fanon, but given just how damn horrifying this song is, I tried submitting it anyway. Plus, an earlier "Met" candidate got cut later on down the line (namely the Phantom Lord).
Final sayings?
A weak yes, as despite all this, the narrator manages to prove just how much of a Sadist he is compared to the actual serial killers/rapists/jaywalkers/what-have-you that are being locked up in the asylum.
