Finally a cover worth mentioning again!

Cradle of Filth have always made a good job of the songs they've covered and they've done quite a few by now.

1998 Hallowed Be Thy Name (Iron Maiden, Cruelty and the Beast, Tombstone special edition)
1998 Black Metal (Venom, Cruelty and the Beast, Tombstone special edition)
1998 Sodomy & Lust (Sodom, Cruelty and the Beast, Tombstone special edition)
1999 Death Comes Ripping (Misfits, From the Cradle to Enslave)
1999 Sleepless (Anathema, From the Cradle to Enslave)
1999 Dawn of Enternity (Massacre, From the Cradle to Enslave US release)
2001 No Time To Cry (Sisters of Mercy, on Bitter Suits To Succubi)
2005 Devil Woman (Cliff Richard, Nymphetamine, 2 CD digipack)
2005 Mr.Crowley (Ozzy Osbourne, Nymphetamine, 2 CD digipack)

And now on their latest album Thornography : Temptation, originally done by Heaven 17. As you can see from the list above, they're gradually moving out of their own metal realm with the covers they record. The band have also recorded the song Stay, originally by Shakespeare's Sister, for a release somewhere along the line.

Temptation is thus the first cover to be released on the "normal" version of a full length album, as From the Cradle to Enslave and Bitter Suits are both regarded as EPs.

With Dirty Harry (no, not Clint Eastwood) taking the female vocal duties on, it's become a very interesting cover indeed. She vaguely reminds me of Wendy O'Williams, but definitely is less of a screamer and actually controls her voice. Add to that Dani's growling vocals as per usual and the 80s new wave classic gets a completely new twist. Musically it's heavy as well and due to the song's repetitive nature gets a bit of an industrial/Marilyn Manson atmosphere. I say repetitive, but in this case that doesn't make it boring. Hell, it's one of the very few songs that I can have on track repeat for an hour. Been driving to work and back with this one song playing for most of the week.

A lot of bands can learn from Cradle's choice of cover and execution. It's just too easy to pick a metal song and stay as close to the original as possible. It's far more interesting to take something unexpected and make it your own. Might I suggest Dimmu Borgir do A-ha's Take On Me? ;)

Probably one of the most covered bands on the planet are the Beatles. Considering the influence the Liverpool quartet have had on the development of pop and rock music, it's not that strange. The thing is that Beatles covers almost always seem to fit into one of two categories. Either the songs are clearly intentionally deformed into something that bears most resemblence with a parody or they're done in such a devoted way that it's hardly distinguishable from the original. Only very rarely does an artist actually make a Beatles song their own.

There's two Beatles covers from my collection that I'd like to mention here. First the version of Eleanor Rigby by Pain. Pain is one of the inventions of workaholic Peter Tagtgren. Tagtgren's other bands include Bloodbath, Hypocrisy, Lock Up and The Abyss. Apart from that he has his own recording studio where he produces other bands. In short, this man has found a gap in the space-time continuum and actually manages to work 40 hours a day. But I digress. With Pain he makes an interesting type of industrial metal and on their 2002 album Nothing Remains the Same the band took on Eleanor Rigby. It's become an intriguing deconstruction. While you cannot possibly see it as a faithful representation of the original, it's industrialised with enough respect to stay well away from the parody level.

The second cover is my favourite Beatles cover of all time. Swiss thrash metal trio Coroner have made a very unusual choice by covering I Want You (She's So Heavy). Released on Abbey Road, this was the last song the Beatles recorded as a band. Coroner have never thread on the beaten path and they continue that with this cover. The cover is incredibly heavy and someone fits right into the rest of the Mental Vortex album, unlike their almost reggae version of Purple Haze two albums earlier. From the slow and heavy chorus into the fast mid part and back again, ending the same way the Beatles did : abruptly after a hypnotisingly repeated instrumental section : brilliant. Too bad this band was too unusual to appeal a large enough fanbase for record companies to support them.

No, I've not forgotten about this blog. Very sorry it's been such a long long time. Once again I haven't run into many covers at all and thus have been writing my other blog more and more. With a bit of graphic inspiration, I decided on a new layout. It's much the same as my other place as I currently like the look of that :)

One of the bands I listen to a lot at the moment is Cradle of Filth. For a band that's played such an important part in the extreme metal scene in the last ten years, you'd expect a ton of covers. Only problem is that they're too extreme for the mainstream and too mainstream for the extreme. Another stuck in the middle case. Additional problem is that Cradle like their songs on the long side with 5 minutes the norm and 8 certainly no exception.

There is the Covered in Filth tribute album, release by Cleopatra in 2003, which is the usual from that label : a dozen of unknowns doing their best to sound like the original. Just like a true underground tribute, the emphasis lies very strongly on the debut full length, The Principle of Evil Made Flesh.

Other than the tribute finding Cradle of Filth covers is like finding a needle in a haystack. I ran into Heaven Turn Asunder, done by Russian band Mind Eclipse on their first demo in 1999. There's probably a few more around on demos around the world, but apparently nothing that quite reached the limelight.

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