10 Best Live Rock Albums

At the end of the 90's, Metallica had already attained status as titans of the metal industry with their 80's masterpieces. After the band branched out with their self-titled Black Album, the music world finally recognized the band's power, with the record eventually going Diamond. The band's time as rock gods had officially come.

Using their newfound success to experiment, the band came up with the idea of putting out a live release with the help of the San Francisco Symphony. As the band performs their thrash ragers, the orchestra adds an extra layer of grandeur that makes the songs go from great to gargantuan. While "Master of Puppets" was already a metal classic, the performance captured here is so emotionally poignant with the help of the classical accompaniment.

Even some of the more downplayed material in Metallica's catalog like the songs from Load and Reload are given an extra layer of kickass like the string descent in "Fuel" and the stomp of "Devil's Dance." The new experience went so well the band even wrote new songs specifically for the performance, which made for epic moments of metal greatness.

With just one fateful evening, Metallica took the dirtiness of metal and the sonic sheen of classical music and made a beautiful sonic blend that was pure musical bliss.