Best Metal Cover Songs of All Time
Honourable Mentions of the Foreshadowing Kind, Part 2
The second part, giving some sly hints to which songs may very well be in the Top 15 (which will be published before New Year’s Eve, promised)!
Diamonds and Rust—Judas Priest (original = Joan Baez)
This one is a prime example that turning things up to 11 sometimes works. Nothing wrong with Joan Baez’s original, a poignant, bare bones love song written about Bob Dylan (whose covers also invaded this “Best Metal Covers” list1). Beautiful, yet fragile in its own right.
While Judas Priest originally put this cover on their “Sin after Sin” album, I’m using the live version of their legendary “Unleashed in the East” album, which I highly prefer2. This is the metal version, displaying—as it goes—all metal’s strengths without its flaws. Great guitar work and superb vocals from Rob Halford. Even Joan Baez herself loved it3:
“I love that! I was so stunned when I first heard it. I thought it was wonderful.”
Nile Song—Voivod (original = Pink Floyd)
There are about five kazillion stoner bands in the world, but none can quite integrate the psychedelica of the early Pink Floyd into their idiosyncratic metal sound like Voivod4. This is a direct example—hey, it’s a cover—but Voivod at their peak (arguably “Dimension Hatröss”, “Nothingface”, “Angel Rat”, and “The Outer Limits”) mixed psychedelica, pulp, science fiction, surrealism, horror, new age, new weird, and dog-knows-what-more into an utterly unique sound. There is no other band quite like Voivod.
This cover gives a good taste, with the caveat that most of Voivod’s original songs are superior to this. If you didn’t know Voivod, this is your phase 1 gateway drug. The next phase . . . [SPOILER ALERT]
Gonna Get Close to You—Queensryche (original = Dalbello)
Dalbello’s fourth album “Whomanfoursays5” may well be one of those comeback albums6 (where the artist re-invents herself) with the most potential—a potential that didn’t really pan out. Some phenomenal song ideas whose execution left something to be desired, in part—most probably—due to a rather flat production in combination with a bit too much experimentation and erratic mood swings7. An album filled with unpolished diamonds that still got her noticed, gathering four Juno nominations.
Queensryche took one of these ‘diamonds-in-the-rough’ and polished it to a very high degree. So much that it easily fits into the sensibility and atmosphere of their “Rage for Order” album, turning it into a Queensryche song. Great stuff. Actually, they could have made it perfect by replacing the actress in the video by Lisa Dalbello herself8.
Dalbello went on to make a very well-produced fifth album called “She9” that, while delivering two Canadian chart hits, didn’t quite have the commercial success it so richly deserved. Her sixth and last album—“Whore”—is her most artistic (even more so than “Whomafoursays”), as at that point she probably didn’t care anymore about sales.
With a bit more luck, she might have been up there with Kate Bush and Tori Amos. Oh well.
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Author’s note: I’m posting this a bit later than intended, due to an unexpected, quick trip to Spain (it’s the nature of the day job). Can’t really complain, as the weather was really nice.
And so the circle is round and the Worm Uroburos eats its own tail;
Alright, and also as that’s where I came across it first;
As quoted in the Wikipedia article of the song;
They played Roadburn twice, and the show where they played “Dimension Hatröss” in its entirety was superb;
A homophone for “Human Forces”;
There was a four year break after the—probably wrongly titled) previous album (“Drastic Measures”);
Or it was too much ahead of its time;
Both as a homage and a role reversal;
My favourite Dalbello abum;