10 Perfect Albums That No One Saw Coming

Metal has carried with it a nasty reputation of not being that particularly evolved as a genre of music. Even when you look to earlier subgenres like thrash metal, you still had concerned parents that were complaining that it was all about making loud noises, without any musical merit behind it. The clean and the dirty sides of music can co mingle when they want to though, and it made for something beautiful on Metallica's S&M.

After Metallica had already worked with arranger Michael Kamen on the orchestral sounds of Nothing Else Matters, Kamen can practically be considered the unofficial 5th member of the band on this album, fleshing out each song to create something much more bombastic. Although there are only 2 original songs on this project, listening to the orchestral versions of a song like Master of Puppets is like night and day compared to the studio version, taking the basic riffs and having the orchestra add an extra layer of drama.

Even the songs from more maligned albums like Load and Reload sound fairly decent here, with Devil's Dance getting the kind of teeth that it needs. There are even different arrangement choices that you didn't even think would work, like having the entire orchestra follow the bass guitar on For Whom the Bell Tolls or adding just another layer of drama to the song One with those sweeping string arrangements. Whether you're a classical snob or a metal neanderthal, you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't see what this album has to offer.