In 1999, Metallica released a live album that saw them performing twenty tracks spanning their musical career, accompanied by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. The idea of mixing hard, heavy metal anthems with soft, orchestral overtures had not been attempted often, and deservedly awarded the band an amount of media interest. S&M is a very interesting album that deserves a number of listens, and manages to recreate some great Metallica songs with great success, and some poor ones with little success. GENESIS The band?s former bass player Cliff Burton, who ...  Read the complete review

That this concert is going to be different from anything else Metallica have ever offered before becomes immediately apparent - as the 'Ecstasy of Gold' (the theme tune from 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' that has accompanied a great many Metallica concerts since the 1980s) is played live by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Call of the Ktulu follows, and one can only imagine just how tremendous the performance would have been to experience live, judging from the CD. However, it is not only the instrumental and 'lighter' songs, such as Hero of the Day and Bleeding Me, that work well with the orchestra - classics such as Master of Puppets and Battery - ...  Read the complete review

When you first think of Metallica, an orchestra is not the sort of thing that springs straight into mind, so, when the biggest metal band of all time combined with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (a mouthful in itself would you agree) to conduct this concert in 1999, there were a few heads turned as they made their attempt at changing the music industry's whole snobbishness towards classical music attitude. In fairness, that was not the idea behind the concert; the idea was to experiment and to push the boundaries even further still of metal as we know it. I have to say, I know very few people who see the album as anything less than a roaring success, ...  Read the complete review

My musical tastes could best be described as "eclectic". Nestling alongside Stereophonics, you'll find The Spice Girls, and Sibelius. Next to Meatloaf you'll see Megadeth, Mahler, and Miles Davis. Having been a fan of Metallica for many years, I was intrigued to learn they were due to release an album with an orchestra. Sorry? AN ORCHESTRA?! This double disc features orchestral arangements by Michael Kamen (the one that does the film soundtracks that John Williams doesn't!), and 20 Metallica "classics", which vary from the early to the more recent, from the very heavy, to the... um... slightly less heavy. I have ...  Read the complete review

Metallica, the metal mainstay had decided to have a little bit of a concert one night. And just for a laugh, they decided to ask the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra to join in with them. S&M is the live recording of the awesome event that was a combination of Metallica and the Symphony Orchestra. There's the old favourites 'Enter Sandman' and 'Human', but they've been performed on a huge scale which, as hard as it may seem, improves these classics. The added effects from the Orchestra, conducted by the superb Michael Kamen enhance some of these metal classics greatly, but they don't do some of them justice. 'Fuel' and ...  Read the complete review