Here are Some Metal Covers of Die Antwoord, ‘Cause Why Not?

This past weekend, the South African rap-rave group Die Antwoord made their cinematic debut as co-stars of the movie Chappie. I didn’t see it (and apparently neither did most people), but I did read some reviews, which got me thinking about Die Antwoord, which got me checking out some Die Antwoord videos on YouTube, which, duh, led to YouTube recommending a bunch of metal covers of Die Antwoord. And now I’m going to share some of them with you! YAY!!!

Kind of amazingly, none of the recommended covers feature re-recorded death metal or metalcore vocals; all of the cover artists just swapped out the original music for something more metal. I actually think this speaks to the fact that Die Antwoord come across, first and foremost, as strong personalities (especially Yolandi Visser, who often appears to be some kind of alien white trash pedo fantasy). Unfortunately, it often leads to results which sound really “off,” for lack of a better term — especially if you know the originals.

http://youtu.be/N7cAegbWcxo

Interestingly enough, these metallicized versions of “Dis iz Why I’m Hot” and “Fatty Boom Boom” do work… which is not to say that they’re good. But they do authentically sounds like some nu-rap-deathcore drek.

Still, there is one of these covers that I basically have nothing negative about which to say — the below version of “Baby’s On Fire.” I think it’s because they really changed nothing from the original — they just used some semi-heavy guitars to play the melody. So, yeah, it sounds like a silly remix from the 90s, but it’s tolerable, which is more than I can say for any of the other covers.

Given that Gojira’s Joe and Mario Duplantier, Cattle Decapitation’s Travis Ryan, and Dehuman’s Mathias Boulougouris are all self-professed Die Antwoord fans, maybe we can get some cooler metal covers of the group’s material soon. Or not. I’d actually be fine with not.