Bad Wolves Release “Zombie” Cover, Proceeds Will Go to Kids of Late Cranberries Singer Dolores O’Riordan

As you may recall, the very day she died unexpectedly, The Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan was scheduled to record a cover of “Zombie” with Bad Wolves, the band featuring ex-God Forbid guitarist Doc Coyle, ex-DevilDriver drummer John Boecklin, and ex-Divine Heresy (etc.) vocalist Tommy Vext. Unfortunately, we’ll never know what the track might have sounded like with O’Riordan’s haunting vocals — Vext tells Rolling Stone even the band isn’t sure what she had planned — but we can at least imagine now, ’cause the band has released the O’Riordan-free recording of the song. Furthermore, they’re donating all the proceeds to O’Riordan’s children.

You can check out the track below; “Zombie” is timeless, an incredibly catchy, well-written hard rock song that easily lends itself to a heavier, more modern interpretation, and the band, unsurprisingly, nailed it, making it their own without making it unrecognizable. And, as Vext himself points out to Rolling Stone, the world is “still dealing with a lot of these issues” raised in O’Riordan’s lyrics. Appropriately, Vext even updated these lyrics at one point, changing “It’s the same old theme since 1916” (when Ireland’s Easter Rising rebellion took place) to “It’s the same old theme in 2018” (he also added a reference to drones).

Crank it: