Rock/Metal On Different Instruments

Over the last few years I have seen a lot of music videos that contains musicians playing Rock and Metal on different instruments that ain’t traditionally rock or metal. In some cases, you are thinking What The Hell.

The first video that I can remember watching with some fascination, was some bagpipers on the video to Mull of Kintyre  by Wings and that was back in the 70s, but I never thought about it until recently when I came across a lot of musicians on YouTube, covering a lot of Classic Rock and Metal songs.

Now the first real band that has done something like this was Apocalyptica back in the mid 90s when they broke out Cellos and started to play Metallica songs, and since then they have covered classical music to a metal theme, to writing their own music.

The most notable musician of the last few years, that I came across, was Rob Scallon. He has done a good few videos on Banjos, Ukulele, Harps and even a one string Shovel Guitar. Over the last few years, Rob has done a lot of Metallica covers on his YouTube Channel with his series May-tallica, where he has used Banjos and Ukuleles on such songs as Battery etc. This year he has done covers of Cannibal Corpse, Slayer, Rage Against The Machine just to name but a few. On two of the videos that he has done, he has used a Harp for Harp Metal (see below)

Also he has also done a couple of videos on a Shovel Guitar or Djent Stick. One of those videos was a cover of RATM, Killing In The Name Of. The video below is the first one that came out back in February. its called Shovel Metal.

Another band that uses Cellos, is a Balkan group group called 2Cellos. 2Cellos formed back in 2010, when they met at University in Zagreb. Now they shot to fame when they did a cover of Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal, and they appeared on the TV show Glee, doing the song. Like when Apocalyptica are famed in doing Metallica songs, 2Cellos are famed in doing AC/DC songs like Thunderstruck, Highway To Hell etc but they also done Guns N’ Roses Welcome to the Jungle, Iron Maiden’s Trooper (blending that song with William Tell’s Overture), and Rolling Stone’s Satisfaction, just to name some of the songs that they have covered.

This is where it gets interesting. Over the last few months I have discovered some musicians that have done some Rock songs that have been gathering some attention. First off is The Harp Twins, these twin sisters have covered Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black, Iron Maiden’s The Trooper and Fear Of The Dark, Led Zeppelin’ Stairway To Heaven and Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters.

Luna Lee is up next. I first found Luna a couple of months back when I was watching a couple of AC/DC songs, and in the recommendations I noticed her video of Back In Black, so I clicked onto it, just to see what it was and I was impressed by her. Luna plays a traditional instrument from Korea, called Gayageum. The only way I can describe the Gayageum is a cross between a Guitar, Piano and a Harp. Luna has covered songs like Layla, Stairway To Heaven, Back In Black, Enter Sandman, Sweet Child Of Mine, Psycho, La Grange, Smells Like Teen Spirit and many others.

This next band is what prompted me to write this article. Now I don’t know much about this pipe band, but what they have done is really good. In this 2 minute 30 second video they have covered 4 classic tracks from Kiss, Europe, AC/DC and Dire Straits. In the video you do see the members rocking out, and the crowd is loving every second of it (See below)

Well over the last few months and after seeing these musicians playing these classic rock and metal tracks, I wonder what will these guys will come up with next.

If you like this go check out the rest of their videos on their YouTube channels.

Project Metal Music