Beatallica - A Garage Dayz Nite and Beatallica
In 1997 I was a 12-year-old preacher’s kid brought up on the safe, derivative, contemporary Christian music of Carman, DC Talk, Audio Adrenaline, The Newsboys and their ilk. Then a friend played Metallica’s Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets for me at his house. I was instantly taken by the crushing riffs, aggressive vocals, blistering solos, and creative structures. Good grief, I thought, what have I been missing? I quickly expanded my musical horizons in search of more “secular” music as exciting and passionate as Metallica and found Dream Theater, Queen, Pink Floyd, Radiohead and others.
Eventually I discovered that there was more to The Beatles than their charming pop hits featured on so many soundtracks. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road gave me an entirely different perception of the band as rock’s most important innovators (an opinion since reversed by Piero Scaruffi’s persuasive arguments). Metallica and The Beatles remain two of my all-time favorite bands, and Master of Puppets my all-time favorite album. So what could be better than The Beatles done Metallica-style? Besides Michael Gordon done Radiohead-style, I mean.
Beatallica mash up Beatles songs and Metallica riffage with a convincing James Hetfield impression by the lead vocalist. The result is… well, buckets of fun. The lyrics and even the track titles (”Leper Madonna”, etc.) spoof the original material. A Garage Dayz Nite and Beatallica (or “The Grey Album”, a mix of Metallica’s “Black Album” and The Beatles’ “White Album”) elicited a strong response from fans and, unfortunately, Sony Records. Sony tried to sue Beatallica out of existence, but with the help of fans and Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, the parody band survived and is once again playing shows and working on new material.
Both albums are available for download in 192kbps MP3, including “radio edit” versions of the second album’s tracks. There is also a torrent available for each album in lossless FLAC format.
No Longer Available
Piero Scaruffi’s arguments are at best poorly-reasoned opinion, and at worst an uneducated diatribe. Dismissing the Beatles influence because of their affluence is ignorant and utterly ridiculous.
Comment by pakk99 — March 28, 2008 @ 4:12 am
Scaruffi makes a half-decent argument, but ultimately he really gets stuck on the early beatles material, which stood out from other bands because Paul and John realized early on that a good middle eight could make or break a song, and they were right. Thousands of gigs at the Star Club in Hamburg (only outdone by black sabbath), and countless treks across england in shit conditions later, the beatles took their deserved spot in history.
Comment by matt — June 30, 2008 @ 1:24 am