(Rated this album with 4 out of 10) Reviewed by
perryink2
from castle rock
Monolithic thundergods of pummelling Uzi beats, methamphetamine guitar chords and malnourished coyote howling from the crumbling abyss of the apocalypse, Metallica pair up with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra for two discs of live revisions of their greatest hits (Master of Puppets, For Whom the Bell Tolls, One, Enter Sandman). No doubt it was a noble thought; you know, transform the staid and ultra-serious multi-member orchestra in to a Satanic philharmonic backup band for speed metal's ruling agitators and have a go at the gruesome repetoire. 'Word to critics - we're musical visionaries, not cow-brained macho metal gits.' Unfortunately, the result is the opposite: Metallica's rumbling menace has been dumbed down to cadaver stiff scope, as if the boys had been tucked in to tight tuxedos and chained to the music stands of their orchestral counterparts for good measure. The orchestra fare no better. With sheer volume against them, the only tangible element of the symphony discernible beneath the blitzkreig of crunching - if uncomfortably brassbound - mammoth metal of Hetfield et al. are brief and elementary flashes of desperate string accompaniment that at best sound cursory and at worst utterably ridiculous sewn to the leathery fabric of the infidel chaos up front. The Thing That Should Not Be indeed.
