Here’s Tool’s “Schism” Played by a 40-Piece Orchestra

Metal = classical music. Classical music = metal. They’re both highly sophisticated forms of music based on complex orchestration. Or so goes the argument I’ve been laying out for years to my parents and their friends who think it’s all just a bunch of noise.

It’s always nice when proof arrives in the form of a literal interpretation, of course, which today comes via Metamorphestra, a Los Angeles orchestra that covers popular music of all kinds. Their cover of Tool’s unlikely 2001 radio smash “Schism” (unlikely in that it’s probably the most popular song ever written in 5/4 time) hits all the right spots: it’s both gorgeous in that way that only bowed instruments and woodwinds can be, it still manages to be uncompromisingly dark and heavy, and the group’s interpretation takes plenty of creative liberties that make the tune better suited to a 40-piece orchestra instead of just playing it exactly as originally written.

Check it out below via Loudwire.