CD Review of Metallica's S & M
by Bryan Beller
Written in September, 2000
Posted in January, 2002

With all the emotional bloodletting among Metallica's fans regarding the Uber-rockers' now infamous stand against Napster, at least two paradoxical truisms have been overlooked: One, for a mega-platinum band, Metallica cranks out an amazing amount of product (live and otherwise) geared specifically towards its hardcore fan base. Two, they have no problem releasing material that is sure to offend large segments of that very base.

S & M, a two-CD collaboration between Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Michael Kamen, is a living, breathing example of that paradox. Metallica's relationship with Kamen goes back to 1991, when Hetfield sought out a string arrangement for their first true ballad, "Nothing Else Matters." Longtime fans were apoplectic-Metallica with !%$#*@ violins?!-but those same fans had been treated to a taped orchestra piece as their live show opener since 1984 and never took issue with it. (Veteran thrashers will be amused both to hear it live and finally learn its name: "The Ecstasy of Gold", lifted from the soundtrack of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.)

So, musically, does it work? Kamen uses Metallica's riff-rock as a canvas and paints it with the cascading, Wagnerian texture you'd expect from a heavy-metal symphonic treatment. Think "The Rite Of Spring" in hell. Surely these classically trained musicians have never played so many flatted 5ths, harmonic minor and pentatonic scales in their lives-mostly in the key of concert E, of course.

The results vary. An underestimated aspect of Metallica's formula is space amidst the mayhem, and too often Kamen takes that space by force. "The Thing That Should Not Be" and "Master Of Puppets" stand out as cluttered and over-arranged, and the pedal-to-the-metal rocker "Fuel" probably should never have been treated at all (fast cars, fast women, and . . . fast woodwinds?).

But Metallica's music being partly symphonic in nature-as all heavy metal is-S & M hits the mark more than not. The orchestra shows remarkable dexterity in negotiating the tricky time signatures and accents of "Battery" and "Of Wolf And Man." During the end of "The Memory Remains" and the intro to "One," form and texture are neatly turned inside-out by means of an "orchestra breakdown." The brass-doubled bass line of "Devil's Dance" sounds like the scariest TV cop-show theme ever created. By the time a major tonality is finally introduced in "Hero Of The Day," the uplifting arrangement could put a smile on the face of even the most hardened metalhead.

Add in the two previously unreleased tracks ("No Leaf Clover" and "-Human") and you've got a justifiable purchase of a musically valid experiment. It must have cost a fortune to make this record, but Metallica has never had an issue with providing copious product to its fans-just as long as they're interested enough to pay top dollar for it.