Tremonti Cover Metallica’s “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” on Hello Kitty Guitars

Even if you’re over the whole “Band Covers Metal Track on Kids Instruments” thing by now for the silliness factor (which, I concede, has worn off since these videos first started surfacing years ago), the musician dorks amongst you can appreciate them on a whole other level. How does the limited range of these instruments force the musicians to tinker with the original song arrangements or inspire them to add embellishments of their own? That, I think, was always the coolest part of these anyway.

So: Mark Tremonti — whose fourth album under the Tremonti moniker, A Dying Machine, comes out this Friday, June 8th, via Napalm Records (pre-order it here) — recently visited Loudwire with his bandmate Eric Friedman to perform Metallica’s “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” on Hello Kitty guitars. Again, the fun is not so much “OMG LOL HELLO KITTY BUT METAL!!!” but in what these guys are playing; Friedman has a ukulele and Tremonti plays what looks to be a baritone uke or just a very small / children’s guitar (I’m not sure — it does have six strings, though), giving each player a different range. Don’t take this too seriously, of course — this ain’t a Tchaikovsky piece — but it’s a nice little distraction for your lunch hour.

When you’re done, don’t forget to watch the video we shot with Tremonti in which he critiqes fan YouTube covers of his music from Tremonti, Alter Bridge, and yup, even Creed, also embedded below.