S&M (An Introduction to Metallica)

I had my first taste of Metallica at the age of 13. My ginger friend, Tim, sent me Enter Sandman over MSN and, well, I rather enjoyed it. Several other songs followed, including Master of Puppets and For Whom the Bell Tolls, and they were even better - I even wrote a (dreadful) parody version of the former song, changing the title to 'Master of Muppets'.

And yet, in spite of my fondness for those few tracks, I never bothered to buy a Metallica album. I'm not sure why - perhaps they were too expensive*, or perhaps my inner metalhead was content with the Iron Maiden CDs that I already owned. Whatever the reason, it took Metallica the best part of a decade to finally find a place on The Album Wall.

The album that finally broke my duck was S&M, a double-disc live document of Metallica's collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. It was given to me a couple of weeks ago by JR, another ginger friend of mine, who insisted that no collection was complete without it**.