Best Metal Cover Songs of All Time

Top 15, Numbers 3 and 4

Best Metal Covers of All Time—Number 4: Hurt—Johnny Cash (original = Nine Inch Nails)

The Downward Spiral remains the best industrial metal album of all time, bar none. And the three latest songs are the best from that album, respectively “Reptile”, “The Downward Spiral”, and “Hurt”. A truly superb ending of a phenomenal album. Nobody can top that, right?

Well, “My Name is Nobody¹,” Johnny Cash must have thought, because he managed it when he covered “Hurt”. Actually, this is not how it happened as Cash thought Nine Inch Nails’s original was way too heavy and noisy. Lucky for us, wunderkind producer Rick Rubin managed to convince him otherwise, and an unforgettable cover song was made, some six months before Cash died.

Even Trent Reznor himself was impressed, negatively at first: “Hearing it was like someone kissing your girlfriend—it felt invasive.²” Reznor changed his mind when he saw the music video of the cover: “It really really made sense and I thought what a powerful piece of art.” Many agreed as Johnny Cash’s video of the song is widely acclaimed as one of the best music videos ever.

Johnny Cash turned “Hurt” (the song and video) into an intensely compelling memoir—a eulogy avant-la-lettre, or a hagiography for a sinner, if you will. Basically, Trent Reznor’s “Hurt” is about a young individual on the downward spiral to self-destruction. Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” is about a man at the end of his life, thinking back—especially about all the things he’s done wrong. Both are mostly autobiographical.

And essential listening.

🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘

Best Metal Covers of All Time, Number 3: Astronomy Dominé—Voivod (original = Pink Floyd)

Pink Floyd—before it became a progrock juggernaut—started off as one of the earliest British psychedelic bands in the sixties. Initially led by Syd Barret, the first two albums—The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (from which “Astronomy Dominé” originates) and A Saucerful of Secrets—embody a deep psychedelic sensitivity throughout³. Songs like “Interstellar Overdrive”, “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”, “A Saucerful of Secrets”, and, indeed, “Astronomy Dominé” employ science-fictional metaphors to mimic the psychedelic mindset of its creator. As such, the science-fiction imagery was a symbolic means to the psychedelic end⁴.

Conversely, with Voivod science fiction is part and parcel of what the band is: an idiosyncratic heavy metal band employing science fiction themes. As such, the psychedelic tones in their music are a means⁵ to the science-fictional end.

“Astronomy Dominé” is where the twain meet. Voivod’s cover is not just heavier, but also more intense: especially in the instrumental middle. The way the drums, bass and especially Piggy⁶’s guitars build up intense tension arcs, flowing from crescendo to diminuendo and back again, soaring and nose-diving twice while escalating the song’s sheer ferociousness is a tour de force of taut tension and maximising momentum⁷. This is Voivod at their best.

While “Astronomy Dominé” is one of the very best metal cover songs of all time, it’s not even the strongest song on the Nothingface album. Incredibly, almost all the songs on Nothingface are better than “Astronomy Dominé”, and especially “Missing Sequences” and “Into my Hypercube” are mind-bending little masterpieces.

So if you like this cover, do get the Nothingface album⁸. Voivod is one of the most underrated bands of all time. You won’t regret it, I guarantee!

🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘

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Author’s note: to quote Rick Beato, here in the top 4 the ranking becomes somewhat insignificant, meaning it might as well have been four number ones. Yet, on the other hand it’s also good to be forced to make a choice (if only to disagree with myself a year or so later).

The top 2 will be revealed between Christmas and New Year, so let me wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year—or Happy Holidays if you prefer—already⁹. Many thanks for reading, and here’s to hoping you’ll follow me in 2025!

1. Spaghetti western with Terence Hill and Henry Fonda;

2. According to other sources, it was more like: “but it felt like I was watching my girlfriend fuck somebody else”. Take your pick…;-)

3. On later albums it would increasingly become a gimmick, a mannerism, a vehicle for intense sarcasm, and eventually a distant echo of the past;

4. The psychedelica was deeply personal and intensely real, as the descent into madness of Syd Barrett amply—and unfortunately—demonstrated;

5. Amongst many others, as Voivod are often very hard to define;

6. Denis D’Amour—RIP;

7. There is an official video in which you can see the band perform, but it shortens the original 5 minuten 37 seconds to 4 minutes 27 seconds, where the 70 seconds that were cut are right in the middle, which is the best part;

8. It’s Voivod’s best IMHO, although Dimension Hatröss, Angel Rat, and The Outer Limits are also superb;

9. So I don’t forget it. Yes, I can be bad like that;