DREAM EVIL VERSUS QUIET RIOT
If I asked some dude what his favorite song of all time was and he said “Bang Your Head,” I would assume he meant this song:
Even if you hate this song – and if you hate this song, please go take a long walk off a short bridge – but even if you hate this song, there’s no denying its infamy. Everyone knows “Bang Your Head.”
And yet here come Dream Evil, with a new song called “Bang Your Head” – and, no, it’s not a cover.
The fucking nerve.
It’s not even a bad song. I mean, it’s Dream Evil. They do not seem to be any danger of pulling a Cryptopsy any time soon. You know what Dream Evil sounds like, and you either like them or you don’t.
Still, I just can’t wrap my, uh, brain around the idea of any other song ever being called “Bang Your Head.”
Think of it this way: The Godfather is pretty much the greatest mafia movie of all time, right? And, unless you count The Godfather Part II, it was pretty much unsurpassed for years and years and years. Other good mob movies came out, but nothing quite hit as hard The Godfather… until Goodfellas. Which, even if it’s not better than The Godfather, is an undeniably awesome movie.
But what if Martin Scorsese had decided to up and call the movie The Godfather? You’d walk out of the theater and go “Awesome movie, why the fucking fuck did they take the title of one of the most famous movies of all time?” It would be distracting.
It would be even more distracting if every five minutes Ray Liotta turned to the camera and yelled “THE GODFATHER!” The way that Dream Evil keep shouting “BANG YOUR HEAD!”
Let me put it another way, for those of you who won’t be able to see your past thinking Quiet Riot are a sucky hair metal band: would you be cool with a younger band writing a completely original song and calling it “For Whom the Bell Tolls?” I mean, Metallica most certainly didn’t make up that phrase, so it’s public domain, right? And that song is mad old, so who cares if someone else uses the title for a completely different song?
Just sayin’.
Dream Evil’s new album, which I’m sure will be good in spite of this silliness, is called In the Night (thank God they didn’t call it On Through the Night), and is being released by Century on January 25 in Europe and a day later in North America.
-AR
