Out today (August 28th) is Metallica & San Francisco Symphony: S&M2. The collection was culled from the band's September 2019 venue opening shows at San Francisco’s Chase Center.

S&M2 is newly re-edited by the band with remixed and remastered audio for a whole new look and sound from the original theatrical run in October 2019.

On Saturday (August 29th), Metallica is heading to the big screen and will be the first rock band featured in the “Encore Drive-In Nights” series. Metallica will perform a full concert set to be shown at hundreds of open-air drive-in theaters across North America.

GA tickets for “Encore Drive-In Nights” featuring Metallica run $115 per vehicle (up to six people). Every ticket purchase will include four digital downloads of Metallica's S&M2.

According to the press release for the event:

Shot especially for this one-night-only event, the band's first show of 2020 will go down as one of the most unique and memorable Metallica experiences of all time. The event will also include a special guest performance by Three Days Grace.

In a new, exclusive interview, bassist Robert Trujillo shed light on how Metallica played a full concert — to nobody: “The preparation was at HQ — at our rehearsal studio — and that led us to a location in Sonoma, (California). An outdoor area. And obviously, it's without a crowd, which was a bit strange. So, you're literally playing — Y'know, when they say, 'crickets'; you use the term, 'Oh man, we played to crickets' — y'know what I mean? 'Nobody showed up,' that's literally what it is. You're playing to crickets. You hear the crickets (laughs) in between songs. So, this was for the wildlife, y'know?”

Trujillo explained that the ongoing pandemic actually made Metallica a much tighter unit than ever before: This has brought us together, a bit closer, y'know, in the last few months. So, every week we check in with each other, we see how each other is doing. At the same time, we started being creative a few months back and the opportunity for the drive-in theater helped us to actually come together; but in doing that, there was a lot of preparation. Y'know, multiple COVID-19 tests for us and our skeleton crew, and creating a safe environment to where we could actually rehearse and perform.”

AUDIO: ROBERT TRUJILLO ON METALLICA CONNECTING DURING PANDEMIC
AUDIO: ROBERT TRUJILLO ON METALLICA PERFORMING PANDEMIC CONCERT