It was the song that announced the arrival of heavy metal. That menacing tritone chiming out across the musical landscape like bells of doom. There's no way that this song could get any darker, spookier or more evil, right?
Enter Type O Negative, and their even more oppressive take on the song.
There are a couple of reasons I shouldn’t like this song.
First, it’s a cover of my favorite U2 number, and while I’m not a huge U2 fan, covers of my favorite songs by other bands generally don’t work for me – with a few notable exceptions, this being one.
Second, I’m not a big fan of the more hardcore-oriented Derrick Green version of Sepultura that arose after the departure of Max Cavalera.
There’s only so much cheesy awesomeness that you can pack into a single video and song, and Northern Kings get every bit of it crammed into this cover of Tina Turner’s theme for the third Mad Max movie.
For those not familiar with Northern Kings, it’s a side project featuring four of the top singers in symphonic Finnish power metal. It includes Tony Kakko (Sonata Arctica), Marco Hietala (Nightwish, Tarot), Jarkko Ahola (Terasbetoni, Dreamtale) and Juha-Pekka Leppaluoto (Charon). Up to this point, the project has been largely for fun, with the band releasing two albums of symphonic metal covers of mostly 1980s pop tunes.
If you're going to cover a song by the mighty Ronnie James Dio, you'd better bring it. If you're going to cover one of my favorite songs by Dio, you'd better blow me away. Much to my surprise, Angel Dust did just that with this version of Rainbow's "Temple of the King."
Editor's note:Today, I launch a new feature here on Hall of the Mountain King called Something Borrowed. Each Wednesday, I'll take a look at a cover song that I like (or maybe one that I hate, I haven't decided if I'm going there yet) and say why I think it stacks up against the original. Enjoy.
No one can deny that Metallica is one hell of a cover band. Before this series reaches its end, I'm sure they'll have several entries in it. If I had to choose just one Metallica cover, though, this would be it.
