Bluegrass Covers of Heavy Metal Songs

Same riffs, zero amplifiers, considerably more banjo.

Entries
12
Category
Music
Updated
  1. A large bronze bell hanging from a wooden farm gate frame, a fiddle bow resting across a fence rail beneath it.

    12. Hells Bells

    Hayseed Dixie (orig. AC/DC) · 2001

    Back in Black's opener is a funeral march for Bon Scott dressed up as a party. Played as a string-band stomp, it keeps both the funeral and the party, which is more or less the job description of a bluegrass wake.

  2. A rusted wrought-iron cemetery gate standing alone in a wheat field, a banjo hanging from one bar.

    11. Cemetery Gates

    Steve 'n' Seagulls (orig. Pantera) · 2015

    Pantera's power ballad hangs on Phil Anselmo's stratospheric scream. Acoustic, there is nowhere to hide that note. They go for it anyway on Farm Machine, and you have to respect a barn band that swings for the rafters.

  3. A lone acoustic guitar standing in an empty field of barbed wire under a grey sky.

    10. One

    Iron Horse (orig. Metallica) · 2003

    The song with the machine-gun breakdown has no business on a bluegrass record. Iron Horse plays it anyway, and the quiet first half, the part about being trapped, lands harder with nothing plugged in.

  4. An old diving helmet sitting on a hay bale next to an accordion, a farm pond glinting behind it.

    09. Holy Diver

    Steve 'n' Seagulls (orig. Dio) · 2014

    Nobody has ever fully explained what Dio's song is about. Sung in a Finnish barnyard with an accordion, it makes exactly as much sense as before, which is to say perfect sense.

  5. A single ace of spades playing card pinned to a barn door by a banjo tuning peg, a whiskey jug below.

    08. Ace of Spades

    Hayseed Dixie (orig. Motörhead) · 2004

    Lemmy's song was always a dare about speed. A five-string banjo, it turns out, also drives too fast. Collected on Let There Be Rockgrass, where it sits between The Darkness and KISS like a bar fight between two square dances.

  6. A small white country church at night, its steeple silhouetted against a blood-red moon, a banjo leaning on the steps.

    07. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

    Iron Horse (orig. Black Sabbath) · 2004

    From Black & Bluegrass, Iron Horse's Ozzy and Sabbath tribute. Picking the Sabbath song with both a gnarly riff and a soft, pretty middle was the smart move: bluegrass harmony eats that quiet section alive.

  7. Three piglets in toy army helmets standing in a muddy farmyard beside an upright bass.

    06. War Pigs

    Hayseed Dixie (orig. Black Sabbath) · 2005

    Sabbath's anti-war sermon is already a dirge with a hymn hidden inside it. Hayseed Dixie finds the hymn, plays it at hoedown tempo on A Hot Piece of Grass, and somehow the generals still come off badly.

  8. A mandolin on a patchwork quilt beside a flickering oil lamp, a child's bedroom window open to a full moon.

    05. Enter Sandman

    Iron Horse (orig. Metallica) · 2003

    The riff that sold the Black Album to everyone's cousin, recast as a mandolin lullaby. Which, to be fair, is what the lyrics were asking for all along.

  9. A banjo and a cavalry saber crossed on a hay bale, with a horse silhouette galloping across a distant field.

    04. The Trooper

    Steve 'n' Seagulls (orig. Iron Maiden) · 2014

    Maiden's galloping cavalry charge was always a horse song. On banjo, the gallop finally sounds like an actual horse. Posted in June 2014, it was the video that got the internet's attention before Thunderstruck took it.

  10. A dirt country road vanishing toward a glowing red horizon, a fiddle propped against a crooked mile-marker sign.

    03. Highway to Hell

    Hayseed Dixie (orig. AC/DC) · 2001

    Track one, album one, from a band whose name is an AC/DC pun. A Hillbilly Tribute to AC/DC sold over 250,000 copies in the U.S., proving the road to hell is shorter than you'd think and paved with fiddle.

  11. A mandolin resting on a porch rocking chair at dusk, the sky fading from orange to black over dark pines.

    02. Fade to Black

    Iron Horse (orig. Metallica) · 2003

    Metallica's first power ballad already had acoustic bones; Iron Horse just let them out into the yard. High lonesome harmonies make a song about despair sound like it has been sung at Alabama funerals for a hundred years.

  12. A banjo, an accordion and a pair of rubber boots leaning against a red wooden barn under a stormy sky with a single lightning bolt.

    01. Thunderstruck

    Steve 'n' Seagulls (orig. AC/DC) · 2014

    Finnish farmhands take the most electric riff in rock and pick it on a banjo in a field. The video blew past 100 million YouTube views, which is roughly 100 million people realizing the riff never needed electricity in the first place.

Honorable mentions

  • A banjo lying on a stone floor under a downpour of dark red rain.

    Raining Blood

    Rob Scallon (orig. Slayer) · 2014

    Not bluegrass, technically: one guy, one banjo, one Slayer song on YouTube. But it is the best evidence on record that the banjo can be the scariest instrument in the room.

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