Monday Metal Madness – Unusual Covers

Last week, Einherjer took the votes for the Scandinavian black metal part II poll.  Good luck to them as this series narrows down to a black metal champion.

This week I am exploring some covers.  Not your outstanding tribute songs like Machine Head’s Hallowed be thy Name or Trivium’s Master of Puppets, but more the song that you might not expect a band to cover.  See the video clips below and see what these metal bands did to iconic pop songs.  Also, let us know what you think about cover tunes.   Furthermore, what you think about artists like Elton John being covered by a metal band?  Which one of the covers below do you think is best?

This first one is from Life of Agony.  They covered Simple Minds Don’t You (Forget About Me).  This song was featured in the 80’s teen classic The Breakfast Club.

This next song was probably one of the first covers I ever heard by a metal band covering something nonmetal.  Flotsam and Jetsam covered Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting) originally recorded by (Sir) Elton John in 1973…so, it’s as old as me.  Nickelback also covered this song.  Not that it matters, we’ll stick with Arizona’s Flotsam and Jetsam for this poll.

You may not have heard of The Bronx Casket Co., but this is Overkill bassist D.D. Verni’s project.  They are pretty good and worth checking out.  Of course, they are on this poll because they covered perhaps the most nonmetal artist on this list…Frank Sinatra.  Check out their version of My Way.

The last song to round out this week’s poll is from Coal Chamber.  Not only did they manage to take a Peter Gabriel song, Shock The Monkey and cover it, they brought along Ozzy to help out.  This song was originally released in 1982.

I hopefully achieved my goal of bringing you some classic nonmetal songs that were covered by metal bands.  Personally, I think all these covers were done quite well and it will be hard to vote myself.  What are your feelings about metal bands taking the lighter side of pop and injecting metal into it?

Oh, and before you mention Faith No More’s version of Easy, I didn’t include it here because they did the cover almost too well.  They didn’t inject any metal into it.  Though, it is one of the best covers of a pop song…if you ask me.