Metallica: “Enter Sandman” (with San Francisco Symphony)

It’s just one of those concerts I wish I saw: Metallica joining up with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. I try to imagine all those metal-heads filing into the symphony hall and I feel despair that I wasn’t there. Great double-album from that concert, with an enormous symphonic sound – the Metallica songs are truly arranged here. The strings and horns and all of that are not just hovering in the background – the songs have been re-thought and re-imagined so that the symphony is not just support-staff, but enormous and integral parts of what Metallica is doing. It’s thrilling.

Here is “Enter Sandman” from that concert, and it’s really the strings-section that stands out for me, although there’s a hell of a lot going on in that arrangement. And yet, our fearless boys are never lost in the shuffle. It’s a perfect balance.

And it’s what starts to happen at around the 4:40 mark – to around the 5:10 mark – that is truly goosebump-material, because there is nothing that sounds like that on the original, and it’s not hugely complex, it’s basically just a shivering of strings, repeating, with pauses in between, the tension building, etc. – but it takes a re-imagining of the song, introducing the possibility of giant orchestration – that can make something like that happen.

Love it. Love the call and response thing, too. How thrilling it must have been for those symphony musicians to suddenly be playing for that kind of crowd. The liner notes for the double-album are fantastic, and the conductor (responsible for the entire event – it was his brainchild) – mentions that the string section had to actually change their shirts at the break, they were as drenched in sweat as if they had run a marathon. They were all kind of blown away by that, like: Uhm, wow, I must go change my shirt. This is certainly a different kind of symphonic evening.

“Enter Sandman” below.


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2 Responses to Metallica: “Enter Sandman” (with San Francisco Symphony)

  1. De says:

    How very weird! Coincidentally, I pulled this album out just recently with the intentions of putting on my ipod (why it’s not on there now I have NO idea). Anyway..there is something so haunting about Metallica’s raging music paired with the mournful sound of the strings in the symphony.
    I especially love their version of Master of Puppets.

  2. Lou says:

    Some hard rock/heavy metal bands were meant for the symphonic treatment. Queensryche, who worked with the conductor, Michael Kamen (RIP) so much he was practically a member, is one.

    KISS . . . not so much.

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