S&M

As a long term fan of Metallica this album was an interesting way to revisit all of the songs that have been screaming out of my stereo over the past 20yrs. The best album they've put out since And Justice for All...

I love it. The orchestra adds a certain epic sound to the already great music of Metallica.

If you're on the fence about buying your first Metallica album, check out "S&M." It serves as the closest thing they've done to a greatest hits album, and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (conducted by the esteemed Michael Kamen) adds a very nice level of depth to the songs. This is also the only album where you can find the songs "- Human" and "No Leaf Clover." The band touches on all its previous albums with the exception of "Kill 'Em All," playing staples like "Enter Sandman" and "One" but also throwing in songs like "Bleeding Me" off of "Load" and "The Call of Ktulu" off of "Ride the Lightning."

For a typical fan, it's hard to take a good, hard look at the artistic failures of their favorite bands and acknowledge them. Even if the music's lousy, they'll probably rationalize it and come up with some pertinent excuse. I love Metallica and I love "classical" music. (Actually, the correct term is "erudite music"). But I don't particularly love this album.

So, rabid Metallica fans, carefully hear (or better, read) my entire 2-star review first and then judge if it was reasonable or not. What I want to point out is:

a) This is not a "classical meets Metallica" album.

Check out Michael Kamen's résumé, people. He's a score composer - "The Dead Zone", "Highlander", the "Die Hard" series, the first "X-Men" movie, etc. Although most of the great soundtrack composers of the last century (John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Eric Korngold, Miklós Rózsa) had a "classical" background, it's a completely different mindset. Scores are created to serve images and dialogues on the screen - they pull the emotional strings of the moviegoer, so to manipulate what he should feel at a certain scene. On the other hand, erudite music doesn't have the creative, financial & time constraints of score composition, which allows it more freedom to experiment. Plus, it doesn't serve anything but itself.

So S&M is actually closer to a "scores meet Metallica" album. No wonder this record starts with a soundtrack composition - Ennio Morricone's "The Ecstasy of Gold", from the Spagguetti Western classic "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" (1966).

b) This is not a "creative", "innovative" and "experimental" musical venture.

No, not really. For the most part, this is Metallica matching the studio versions of their songs note-for-note and the SFO is scrambling to play around Metallica's songs. They took the safest route. What? Safest? Yes, safest, because...

b.1) ...they get to play the songs exactly the way they are. Metallica are, notoriously, highly protective of their musical oeuvre. Check out the "Year and a Half" documentaries and you'll see the kind of temper tantrums producer Bob Rock had to deal with when he suggested changes to their songs. Whatever you do, don't tamper a Metallica song... ever! Nevertheless, I think the guys could have further downplayed their egos on this one. Have the orchestra musicians assume more active roles in Metallica's music - say, let the orchestra's lead violinist play one of the solos instead of Kirk... or something like that.

b.2) It also pleases their hardcore fanbase, which wants to hear nearly identical versions of their favorite songs. That always striked me as being odd - if you want to hear the songs always played exactly in the same manner, stick to their studio albums. I have always thought that a live record is a situation where you can add something fresh to the songs but, apart from SFO's inclusion in the proceedings, S&M sounds like the same old...

All in all, this record won't convert many metal fans to "classical" music. That is a shame, because Metallica have always borrowed from the erudite music cannon. Cliff Burton's "Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth)" bass solo, for example, heavily quotes from one of Bach's fugues. Another example is their Diamond Head cover "I Am Evil", which quotes ipsis literis the introduction of Gustav Holst's "Mars, the Bringer of War". There's other examples... I'll add them later, if I can.

I like Metallica - and that's why I won't give them a 1-star review. I can't give them a higher-rating review because I really feel duped. There's so much they could have done with SF's Orchestra, but they opted to play it safe... Is that middle-age sinking in? And they should have hired a proper "classical" maestro - that could have done so much for the music too. Claudio Abbado, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Lorin Maazel, Pierre Boulez, Valery Gergiev, and the list goes on...

...but well, nevermind.

This cd would appeal mostly to Metallica fans who want everything the band has ever done, or maybe fans of symphonies who like 'edgy' music. Sound quality on this recording is excellent (my favourite Metallica album, "Reload" has very poor sound, and I've heard very bad things about the sound on the band's new album "Death magnetic". It seems the sound quality on Metallica albums is very hit and miss. Here it's more 'hit'. Both the symphony and Metallica are clearly distinct on this cd, so one does not suffer in comparison to the other, prominence wise.

Of the songs selected for this double cd, I could have sworn I'd seen "Fade to black" on it when I looked at the track listing a while back. Maybe I was mistaken. That is arguable their best song and I think it would have worked really well on this cd. Some of my other favourite songs which missed an appearance on this cd were: "Welcome home", "Orion", "The unforgiven" and "The unforgiven II". There are probably lots of 'hardcore' Metallica fans who don't rate these songs that highly and rate more highly songs which did appear on this compilation. As I think the songs above are amongst the band's best, I'm disappointed that they didn't make it on to the album. The only other Metallica song which I consider an out and out classic, "Enter Sandman", does make the song line-up. "Memory remains" is a near classic and makes this cd as well. From their earlier albums, I don't mind songs like "The thing that should not be", "Master of puppets" and "Battery". All these songs are on this cd. Perhaps "Fight fire with fire" is in those songs' class too, and deserved to be on this album.

The only other point of comparison for this album that I have is a KISS symphony programme I saw on ABC TV in Australia (not sure how similar it is to the title that is available for purchase on dvd). My problem with some of the songs on that programme was that the orchestral arrangement actually detracted from some of the excellent KISS songs. In other words, the symphony didn't play to those songs' strengths. Perhaps that's an unfair comparison as I saw KISS on a portable tv and I heard S&M on a stereo with good headphones.

In this review's heading, I state that some of the band's original material comes out better on this than on the original album. Which is to say that songs on albums like "Load", which I really didn't find that interesting, sound more interesting with this arrangement. That includes songs such as: "No leaf clover", "Hero of the day", "Bleedin' me", "Outlaw torn" and "Sad but true".

If you're wondering if the symphonic treatment softens the sound of the band, "Battery" should dispel those fears. Of all Metallica's thrash songs, this one doesn't lose any of its accoustic brutality.

One possible gripe for this cd is that more use could have been made of the symphony. Personally, I would have liked to hear more isolated instruments carrying the melody of the song in the quieter parts. Especially if that instrument had a sound with character...I don't much about individual instruments in symphonies, but maybe something like an oboe, or a horn or something...maybe even a harp.

On one occasion, something approaching what I would have liked in that regard is achieved...in the intro for "Battery", for orchestra delivers a nice counter-balance to the thrash metal which comes after that. They provide a simple but effective arrangement for Metallica.

Since "Memory remains" is one of my picks as Metallica's best song, it's good to see that that is a hard song to stuff up...it works well symphonically too. You do get the crowd singing along the melody to that song, along with the symphony.

Which brings me to another gripe: crowd involvement would have been better on the recording if the microphones were nearer the audience or something. Iron Maiden's otherwise mediocre song "Fear of the dark" is turned into pretty much a classic by the crowd singing the melody in their "Rock in Rio" concert. That recording really captured the crowd's passion really well.

If you're after versions of songs which don't take liberties, then maybe this cd isn't for you. Hetfield occasionally stays silent so that the crowd can sing some of the lyrics of the song. Occasionally he adlibs or encourages the crowd, which may annoy some people who'd rather hear Hetfield keep to the script of the song.

Even though I'm not heavily into heavy metal, heavy metal albums which I highly recommend are:

Metallica: Reload (which is a great hard rock album); Master of puppets (their best early album) and The Black Album.

Coldseed: Completion makes the tragedy (a great debut album with lots of stylistic variation in the song list. Another two albums like that from them and I'd rate them as highly as Metallica!).