POP: LIVE: He ain't heavy, he's my Bruckner

BACK IN April, Metallica and the Juilliard-trained conductor Michael Kamen collaborated on a brace of uber-gigs for rock band and orchestra at San Francisco's Berkeley Community Theatre.

This, the band surmised, was further proof that Metallica "consistently dared to fail". They need not have worried. As their tackily-titled new album S&M documents, the concerts were a triumph of imagination over sonic logistics.

And so to Berlin and the Velodrom, a vast, underground venue in the east of the city where the stage is ringed by a cycling track. It seemed fitting that Metallica's only European performance this year should be here, where their leaden, minor-key riffs were the perfect compliment to all things Teutonic.

It was noticeable, too, that the local headbangers were an un-reconstructed breed. The guy next to me executed his air drum-fills with frightening precision, and there was no post-Beavis and Butt-head sense of irony in his devil-horn salutes.

Kamen took the stage before the band, leading the orchestra in Ennio Morricone's Spaghetti-Western theme "The Ecstasy Of Gold". It was a reminder of the period in which Metallica cropped their hair, grew designer stubble, and re-invented themselves as post-grunge bounty hunters. The fact that Kamen is now more hirsute than all of the band members, except guitarist Kirk Hammett, spoke volumes. He clearly likes his hard rock at least as much as Metallica like their Shostakovich.

Further in, frontman James Hetfield saw fit to change the title of "Of Wolf and Man" to "Of Wolfgang and Man", but most of us had already heard that gag on the S&M album. Perhaps such a large scale production didn't allow for spontaneity, but you got the feeling that even if the principal violinist had dropped his trousers to moon at the audience during "Devil Dance", Hetfield would not have deviated from his scripted introductions.

Set highlights included "Nothing Else Matters", epic enough to house Kamen's majestic arrangement, and "Sad, But True", with its huge riff that sweetly bludgeons the cranium. Powerful as it was, it's intricate orchestration seemed superfluous. It was a bit like icing a bratwurst.

After the two hour-plus set had concluded with the stunning triptych of "One", "Enter Sandman", and "Battery", there was a nice little tableau right at the death. As is the custom at such gigs, drummer Lars Ulrich threw his drumsticks out into the crowd, and spotting this, one of the orchestra members went to the lip of the stage and pretended he was about to do the same with his trombone. I'm pretty sure I saw the same guy chatting up a groupie at the after-show party.