Apocalyptica: The Strings That Should Not Be
June 1996, and four musicians from Helsinki release their debut album, Plays Metallica by Four Cellos. Within three years, not only had the band they were paying homage to chosen them as their supports in the native Finland, but had done their own classical collaboration; you might have heard of it, it’s called S&M. As Eicca Toppinen, one of the founding members of APOCALYPTICA explains, that first record was the final piece of METALLICA’s eventual symphonic adventure.
“I don’t know if it’s fully true, but I understood that our versions were the last kick they needed to agree to work with Michael Camen and the San Francisco Orchestra,” he says. “We were told that by someone in the immediate family because METALLICA invited us to the S&M shows in the States two to three weeks before they happened, and we were flown out there because they wanted us to see it.”
Nearly three decades on from Plays Metallica… and APOCALYPTICA, despite their extensive back catalogue of original material, have never lost sight of why and how they broke through; there’s always a few METALLICA renditions scattered among their regular setlists. Indeed, plans for a follow up album were always in mind, but it wasn’t until they toured Plays Metallica… for the 25th anniversary that it came together.
“We’d always been talking about doing one, but until now it had never felt exciting enough – in fact, we thought it would have been lame to do the same thing again,” Eicca reveals. “But this time around, it did feel fresh and exciting for us and that we wouldn’t be just doing the same as we did before.”
But how do you ensure that you’re not just putting out a poor man’s version of an album that, as Eicca says, is ‘revolutionary’? “We were basically trying to reinvent the wheel – we can’t do the same again, so how do we reinvent both METALLICA AND APOCALYPTICA’s music? So we gave ourselves the time to treat the music more freely and bring about a new perspective, to present METALLICA’s music in a new way, but is still very respectful to the original.”
And so, Plays Metallica, Vol. 2 was born, nine new compositions that span METALLICA’s career from the very beginning through to 2003’s much maligned St. Anger. Of course, not every song in the back catalogue is going to translate well into cello, especially not when you want to do more than just a simple cover. “A lot of the magic of the songs comes from METALLICA’s performance of it,” explains Eicca, “and when we take that out, there really wasn’t enough to work with. We had to do a deep dive into songs to find their core magic, the begin building them into great APOCALYPTICA songs.”
This time around, APOCALYPTICA brought in a couple of guests to help them out – SLAYER’s Dave Lombardo pops up on drums for their version of Blackened, whilst METALLICA’s own Rob Trujilo guests on both The Four Horseman and closing track One, which also features James Hetfield. However, there’s another guest star, one that isn’t credited and comes from beyond the grave – the late Cliff Burton’s original bass recording can be heard in The Call of Ktulu.
“I realised that a lot of what I loved about some of METALLICA’s older songs was the bass track, and I wondered if we could use the original track on our version, and I also knew I was stupid enough to ask!” laughs Eicca. “And Lars Ulrich said ‘Wow, that’s a different idea but I love it, it’s really outside of the box. So we got to know the Burton family, figured out the legal logistics and, yeah, there he is on the track!”
With nine songs making the album, having being whittled down from twenty it seems plausible that a Plays Metallica, Vol. 3 could be in APOCALYPTICA’s future at some point, but Eicca is quick to maintain that it won’t happen unless the excitement is there again. “We will make decisions as we always have, on what excites us at the time. However, playing these songs live will give us a better idea of that, because it’s always a totally different ball game: the experience of sharing that energy you have playing with the audience and all other things bouncing around those venues…you never know where that starts to lead us.”
Said live shows begin in Dubai in September, with six dates across the UK and Ireland occurring at the end of that month and into October. Given APOCALYPTICA played eighteen METALLICA songs recently at a show in Finland, they’re not short of setlist choices, however one thing’s for certain – these shows are going to be the biggest love letter to the world’s biggest metal band from arguably their biggest fans.
Plays Metallica Vol. 2 is set for release on June 7th via Throwdown Entertainment.
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