Back on November 3rd, 2018, Metallica threw the All Within My Hands Foundation Helping Hands Concert & Auction at The Masonic in San Francisco, California, which raised money and awareness for the band’s charitable organization All Within My Hands, which tackles the issues of hunger and workforce education with the aim of creating sustainable communities. The event raised $1.3 million, which has and will be used to work with Metallica’s partners at Feeding America and the American Association of Community Colleges. It was headlined by the band themselves, who played a very special acoustic set, which — rather than being stripped down, like many other artists’ acoustic performances are — actually saw James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Robert Trujillo and Lars Ulrich joined by an array of backing musicians on unusual instruments, at least for heavy-metal music. The band’s standout rendition of Black Album classic “The Unforgiven” featured Avi Vinocur on mandolin and background vocals, David Phillips on pedal-steel, Henry Salvia on keyboards and Cody Rhodes on percussion, adding a unique countrified twang to the 1991 power ballad. In the honor of Metallica’s second-ever annual Day of Service (May 22nd) — on which the group invited fans across the U.S. to volunteer at local food banks — the thrash OGs released official, pro-shot footage of the performance. See it below. More than 50 food banks participated in this year’sAll Within My Hands Day of Service — more than twice as many as in 2018 — and each registered volunteer received a special All Within My Hands T-shirt commemorating the event. Also below, you can check out photos of Metallica’s members and fans chipping in with a helping hand yesterday.
