This orchestral piece was written by Ennio Morricone for the 1966 Clint Eastwood movie The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. The song is associated with a tense showdown.
Metallica uses this as an intro to its live shows. They recorded the song with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra for their S&M album.
Vocalist James Hetfield explained why he and his Metallica bandmates chose this as their intro music: "Originally we had a really dreadful tape as our intro. Just the sound of a heart with the beat getting faster. Rubbish. Then our manager at the time came up with the idea of replacing it with 'The Ecstasy Of Gold'. And from the first time we used it, something happened. It just set us up for the night, and got the fans excited."
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