Metallica have re-recorded their crushing hit, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” with the San Francisco Symphony for their upcoming S & M2 release, coming out next Friday.
In the intro, Robert Trujillo plays the apocalyptic descent baseline of the track as the track section swells around it, while conductor Edwin Outwater jumps up and down with the rhythm. The string arrangement, which conductor Michael Kamen wrote in 1999 for the original S&M concerts, also adds a little sparkle to the long, drawn-out guitar chords as James Hetfield sings.
The group recorded the song in September last year alongside a list of career-spanning sets with the Symphony at the Chase Center in San Francisco. Metallica also released videos of their performances of ‘Nothing Else Matters’, ‘Moth Into Flame’, and ‘All Within My Hands’ at the event.
In other Metallica news, the band will be filming themselves performing a live concert that will be shown on August 29 in drive-in theaters in North America. The band also recently released footage of them playing some songs from the ‘Black Album’, on the album’s anniversary, at their Bay Area headquarters for Howard Stern. After “Wherever I can run,” Stern commented, “Good lord, I love it.”
