Twenty years later, they're back. With one of the most daring projects of the band's career, Metallica returned to perform with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, which also accompanied the band on the first S&M in 1999. Last year they reunited to perform the second edition of the project, S&M2 , announced in April and recorded on September 6th and 8th, 2019, inaugurating a new event space in San Francisco, the Chase Center.
Classical music, rock, and metal have always been intertwined, ever since the Beatles began using symphonic instruments in their recordings. Led Zeppelin also did this in the studio on the track "Kashmir," but it was the Moody Blues who created the first entirely conceptual project performed by an orchestra, the 1967 Days of Future Passed. Deep Purple , at the behest of their keyboardist Jon Lord , recorded the first live album with an orchestra, Concerto For Band and Orchestra, recorded at the Royal Albert Hall in 1969, the first album with Ian Gillan and Roger Glover in the band.
In the 1970s, several bands released albums or performed with orchestras, mainly in progressive rock. Perhaps the most successful project of this period was Journey To The Centre of the Earth by Rik Wakeman , keyboardist of YES , based on the novel of the same name by Jules Verne.
In the 1980s, Jethro Tull released A Classic Case accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra. Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen , who since the 1980s has consistently blended classical music with heavy metal, released his album in 1998 playing guitar with the Japanese Philharmonic Orchestra.
Metallica's 1999 project was very commercially successful. James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich said at the time that the project was inspired by Cliff Burton's for classical music, especially Johann Sebastian Bach . As Lars has always been a Deep Purple fanatic, I believe that the English band also influenced this decision.
The project became a double album at the time, won a Grammy , and they even toured with an orchestra. The 1999 album featured arrangements and conducting by maestro and composer Michael Kamen , who passed away in 2003. In the 2019 recorded shows, Metallica once again decided to "play at home," in their city of San Francisco, and film the two performances without touring this time, which brought 40,000 people of 70 different nationalities to the Chase Center. The film was shown in over 3,000 cinemas worldwide last October, and the band decided to release a series of products ranging from making the album available on all streaming platforms to a very limited super deluxe box set with quadruple colored vinyl, double CD, Blu-ray, guitar picks, poster, and the sheet music used in the shows and autographed by the band members, available only on the band's official website and in a limited edition of only 500 units.
And what about S&M2 ? The album truly showcases an incredible sound, far superior to the first, which often sounds muddled in the faster and more energetic parts of some songs. In 20 years, without a doubt, there has been a technological evolution capable of making the sound even clearer and grander. Regarding the repertoire, of the 20 songs on the album, more than half had already been recorded on the previous album, a shame since the band could have included great songs from the excellent Death Magnetic, the EP Beyond Magnetic, and even others from St. Anger . Even so, the choices on Hardwired… to Self Destruct are quite interesting with the orchestra and show that the band still has a lot of energy and continues to release top-notch studio albums.
S&M2 was produced by Greg Fidelman , along with Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield. It featured arrangements by Michael Tilson Thomas and was conducted by Edwin Outwater . The film has been re-edited by Joe Hutching (who also edited the 2013 film Through the Never ), and both the audio and visuals have been elevated to another level, even compared to the version shown in theaters last year.
S&M2 worth it? Yes, absolutely. It's worth it for the incredible sound and visuals, for the orchestral arrangements, for the songs that had never been played with an orchestra before, such as "Confusion," "Moth Into Flame," and "Halo on Fire," for the beautiful version of "Unforgiven III," for unearthing the obscure "All Within My Hands," for the beautiful tribute to master Cliff Burton in "Anesthesia Pulling Teeth." It's worth it for the reinterpretations of "The Outlaw Torn," "No Leaf Clover," "Master of Puppets," "One," and "Wherever I May Roam." It's worth it for the traditional intro, The Ecstasy of Gold by the late Ennio Morricone , and for the very well-chosen symphonic works by two Russian composers, "The Iron Foundry" by Alexander Mosolov from 1927 and "Scythian Suite" by Sergei Prokofiev , composed in 1915.
S &M2 is worthwhile; it's worth seeing the greatest American metal band of all time in top form, almost 40 years after its formation. It's worth seeing its two main members constantly reinventing themselves and thinking of new ways to interact with their audience, with their extremely competent, charismatic, and creative "supporting" members playing for the band, the way it should be done. Metallica still has a lot of "FUEL" to burn, and that's a great and wonderful realization for anyone who loves heavy music.
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