Now listening: Metallica - S&M2
About a week ago, Metallica released the S&M2 album, a recording of their live performance with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra from September 2019 (and a follow-up on a similar collaboration from twenty years prior, April 1999). In my opinion, the first metal musician was Wagner, so Metallica recording with a symphony orchestra should make perfect sense, yet I was never very fond of the 99 edition. The new one, though, made a huge impression: I was listening to Spotify at work and had to take a short break to focus on the music.
As a sample, here’s the video for For Whom the Bell Tolls (arguably the best metal song ever inspired by the work of Ernest Hemingway, in the words of Axl Rosenberg from Metalsucks). One of the bonuses of the video is the chance to see Robert Trujillo in a shiny suit (carefully paired with sneakers). I haven’t listened to the full album (which clocks in at about 2,5 hours) from start to finish, but I took in most of the songs at a partially random order.
What did I like so much about S&M2? First and foremost, it is the mastering: the orchestra never gets drowned by the electric guitars, which must have required some serious craftsmanship (note: my memory of the 99 recording is that the orchestra mostly faded into the background; however I didn’t get this impression when re-listening to The Call of Ktulu on Spotify today, so maybe my perception of the first S&M can be blamed on the quality of the YouTube videos from several years ago - or maybe just my mood or concentration on the first listens). The sound does get a bit busy at times, but remains impressive throughout. On top of orchestra and the band, the live crowd was blended in just right, sometimes present and sometimes completly absent, transferring the concert atmosphere without obscuring the music.
Second, while the album is pretty much a greatest hits sellection, each song really gains its unique character in this rendition.
And finally, the album includes one piece performed entirely by the Orchestra, where gets to shine: the Scythian Suite, Op. 20 II: The Enemy God And The Dance Of The Dark Spirits by Sergei Prokofiev (1915), and it is pure metal (or, as Musical Director of the SF Symphony, Michael Tillson Thomas, says in the intro included in the album, this piece that we’re playing you now is one of those moments in which classical music and heavy metal sort of fused and combined). It is followed by The Iron Foundry by Alexander Mosolov (1926), re-interpreted by Metallica and the Orchestra, which absolutely slaps - very much like the entire album.