Now this is something else! The Pink Floyd classic with a dance beat, three times faster and completely void of the comfortably numb dreamy atmosphere the original has. Loosely based on is the term here! Oh my god....I like it when the cover isn't a strict copy of the original, but this is a bit much. It's got more to do with the Beegees than with Pink Floyd.

No, give me Shadow Falls' version of Welcome to the Machine anytime. Also a Floyd cover done differently, but not one that gets lost on the way.

After a while of nothingness an idea has finally come up again!

The week in covers!

Bon Jovi - I Don't Like Mondays (Boomtown Rats)
Metallica - Tuesday's Gone (Lynyrd Skynyrd)
Matt Monro - Wednesday's Child (John Barry) I did have to search for that one!
Greater California - Jersey Thursday (Donovan) and another one I had to search for ;)
David Bowie - Friday On My Mind (Easybeats)
Flotsam & Jetsam - Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting (Elton John)
Electric Hellfire Club - Sunday Bloody Sunday (U2)

I for one am happy it's Friday today!

I'm currently listening to Kink FM's Outlaw 666, their alternative chart of the songs of the last ten years. At number 650 it's Metallica's St.Anger. Disgrace to the name Metallica if you ask me and I wonder whether anyone will cover that particular album. Must be pretty easy to cover it better than the original. There's actually some songs on there that are quite good once to manage to listen through the crappy production. Time for a bit of digging on allmusic.com...

Frantic and St.Anger are done on "Hip Hop Tribute to Metallica : The Ultimate Mash-up", another one like the Alice in Chains tribute : hardly any info to be found and critical reviews.

Pitchshifter take on St.Anger on "Blackest Album 4", which sounds like something that might be interesting. On the same album Substanz-T does Shoot Me Again, which I in fact cannot remember.

That's it! Two genuine covers and two on what appears to be a cheap cash in on the name Metallica. Even when you take into account that the album is just two years old, that's not a lot for a band that's been covered to death in the past.

As I wrote on the other side, there was a rumour yesterday that Pushead would be on campus. Rumour proved to be false, but it had me dig up a few Prong albums to listen to. He did the cover of Beg to Differ and designed the cover concept for Prove You Wrong. That last album has an excellent cover of the Stranglers' Get A Grip. It's completely different to the rest of the album. Was just browsing around allmusic.com for them and discovered that the final (live) track on Beg to Differ actually is a cover too! It's Third from the Sun, originally by Chrome. Can't say I've heard of Chrome. Having looked them up, it's not that strange. Industrial with the last real album in 1982 when I was ten. Don't think I'd heard of industrial by then :)

Listening to the Bleed for the Gods CD from German band Powergod. Mission for this album was to recreate the real metal like it was in the 80s through covers. They do an excellent job. From well known (Manowar - Kill with Power, Anthrax - Madhouse) to very obscure (Savage Grace - Bound to be Free, Hallows Eve - Metal Merchants) the bring classic metal with a modern day production. Highlights are Ruler of the Wasteland (Chastain) and the Manowar song mentioned above. Quite surprising how the vocals work out.

Speaking of the vocals, towards the end it appears as weakness. Not of the album, but of the music as such. Listening to all those songs from the mid eighties it becomes painfully obvious that there wasn't much differentiation in vocal styles back then.

I see the band even made their website in old school style :p

We're slowly drifting towards Christmas again, which obviously will bring out all those classic Christmas songs. Dug up the Rockin' Good Christmas CD, which has a bunch of way over the hill 80s British hardrock singers (most notably ex-Iron Maiden Paul di Anno and Girlschool's Kimi McAuliffe) doing rocking version of various classic Christmas songs. Winter Wonderland, White Christmas and even Silent Night get the treatment. What struck me that when you'd take the vocals from here and put them in the traditional musical environment, they'd sound traditional. The only real change is the addition of some guitars. It's not exactly the inspired work that Trans Siberian Orchestra performs or Stu Hamm's rendition of Sleigh Ride. Can't remember where I ran into that last one, but it's stuck with me as one of the most groovie performances of a Christmas song ever!