Since the genre’s inception, heavy metal has been a musical art form that’s regularly sung out of key by its drunker fans. If Beavis and Butthead taught us anything, it’s that any band who writes a catchy riff has almost certainly guaranteed that someone will growl said riff loudly while pounding on their steering wheel on Route 80. Now, one YouTuber has made an art form out of this tradition by posting several covers of classic Metallica songs — which are just him singing every part.
It’s easy to see the novelty of kjl3080’s Metallica covers, which consist primarily of him singing a lot of wheedlys and dunna-nuns to recreate tracks like “One” and “Enter Sandman.” But more importantly, one must acknowledge the slavish attention to detail that went into these creations. Most YouTubers would do this for the first verse and chorus of a song, to show they can; this dude even goes so far as to recreate the battle sounds at the opening of “One.” This guarantees that listeners who show up for the weird hilarity of it all will then take the time to either listen through or skip around as they ask themselves, “Wait, so, how does he do the rapid-fire chugs there?” At the very least, we can all respect the time and effort this guy put into something so ridiculous.
Check out kjl3080’s covers of “Enter Sandman,” “One,” and “Master of Puppets” below:
Super duper. One can only hope that these performances land kjl3080 a massive record deal in which he covers rock and metal classics using only his voice, though if we’re being perfectly honest, nah, son. Nah.
Meanwhile, for those of you who consider these covers sacrilege and want only to hear the real thing, check out Metallica’s recent rendition of “Enter Sandman” performed for their post-Super Bowl appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert:
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Words by Chris Krovatin
