Rock acts have been recording with symphony orchestras for decades.
The first such collaboration I ever acquired was Procol Harum Live: In Concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, recorded back in 1971.
Yngwie Malmsteen, Aerosmith, Kiss, The Scorpions and several other acts have also gone down that road at some point in their career.
Despite that, fans of Metallica were caught off guard when the band paired with the San Francisco Symphony for a concert at the Berkeley Community Theatre in 1999, a concert cleverly billed as S&M.
The record that came out of that concert was an overwhelming success, earning the popular metal act a Grammy Award.
They say you can’t argue with success so some 20 years down the road they decided to do it all over again for the grand opening of San Francisco’s Chase Center and release both a record and a film.
The actual concerts for S&M2 took place Sept. 6-7, 2019, and drew some 40,000 fans who traveled from 70 countries hoping they would recreate the magic of that first collaboration.
They got their money’s worth and then some.
S&M2 is a big, giant, sonic adventure in which expectations have been exceeded on virtually every level.
Those who ventured out to these shows were treated to the first-ever symphonic renditions of songs from such fan favourite albums as St. Anger, Death Magnetic, Hardwired ... to Self-Destruct and more.
The two-CD set I accessed featured killer live versions of St. Anger, All Within My Hands, The Day That Never Comes, The Unforgiven III, Moth Into Flame, Halo On Fire, Master of Puppets and several other tracks.
Produced by Greg Fidelman with James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, the S&M2 live album captures more than two-and-a-half hours of James, Lars, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo with the 80-member symphony, under the eye of legendary musical director Michael Tilson Thomas and conductor Edwin Outwater.
Fast facts:
- S&M2 will be available in a staggering array of formats.
- The concert will be available as a four-LP vinyl set as well as two-CD, DVD and Blu-ray versions.
- There’s a limited edition colour vinyl four-LP plus two-CD plus Blu-ray deluxe box featuring sheet music, guitar picks, poster and more.
- The big ticket is a super deluxe box, available only from the band’s website. Limited to 500 copies, the box features actual sheet music used by the symphony during the shows and hand-signed by all four band members, plus everything in the deluxe box.
- It’s also available digitally on all leading streaming outlets.
The concept of a metal act with strings, brass, woodwinds and orchestral percussion behind them may strike some as odd, but it works. It really does. It’s a case of adding layer after layer to a sound that traditionally is just bass, drums, guitar and, on occasion, keyboards. Every layer makes the end result bigger and better
Fans should be pleased.
The concert film included with some versions is a brand-new edit done by Joe Hutching, and both the audio and visuals have been taken to the next level from the October 2019 theatrical version that played in over 3,700 cinemas worldwide.
Rating: 3 3/4 stars out of 5.
Doug Gallant is a freelance writer and well-known connoisseur of a wide variety of music. His On Track column will appear in The Guardian every second Thursday. To comment on what he has to say or to offer suggestions for future reviews, email him at [email protected].