Have you ever listened to Metallica and thought, “This is good, but what about when I want to relax?” Admittedly, thrash metal isn’t the genre I usually listen to when I want to relax, but that might be about to change. I just heard YouTuber Benji Ellerbee cover the Ride the Lightning classic “Fade To Black” with steel thumping drums.
Through his YouTube page, Ellerby has used his drumming skills to create some very impressive and unique percussion compositions, experimenting with a combination of traditional drums and handpan/tumpan drums.
One notable video sees him combine both approaches to produce what’s being called “new age prog metal” which, to be fair, sounds a lot like what Tool would aspire to, while another sees him set a traditional metal drum track to the theme of a classic Sega Mega Drive/Genesis game.
Ellerbee’s latest video sees her singing her first thrash ballad, “Fade To Black,” against the tropical backdrop of Chukwani Beach on the island of Zanzibar in Tanzania. Set against steel tongue drums, the cover is frustratingly familiar, the kind of music you might hear playing in a massage parlour or restaurant, yet soothing and unobtrusive when you’re relaxing.
Admittedly, this song isn’t going to please hardcore thrash fans – they weren’t too pleased when Metallica unveiled acoustic guitars in 1984 – so it’s not hard to imagine how they might feel if this song was performed fully percussively with steel tongue pan drums – but it’s a very neat way to reinterpret a metal classic.
But it begs the question: what would something like Raining Blood be like? It makes my head spin…
