The YouTube All-Star Cover Band
If you use YouTube for the same reasons I do – shamelessly watching and listening to music videos for songs you don’t feel like actually buying – You’ll end up seeing a lot of covers by random YouTube users. A lot of them are, well… awful. However, there are an elite few absolutely amazing musicians who have made a significant name for themselves simply through their YouTube covers. I’ve decided to go through the best of them and put together a YouTube “Dream” cover band in the tradition of every kid who watches sports and wishes that Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin played on the same team, or Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant and (why the fuck not) Michael Jordan played together. Here we go, we’ll start from the bottom and work our way up. Since I’m a metal head, of course this band is going to focus around metal, and will include covers of some of my favorite songs.
DRUMS: KrimhKerim
Kerim “Krimh” Lechner is a drummer from Austria who focuses on Black Metal and Progressive. His covers typically show off his high degree of technicality. He plays in the progressive group Tone Intimacy and Black Metal venture, Thorns of Ivy. I’ve included here his immaculate cover of Dimmu Borgir‘s Progenies of the Great Apocalypse. Krimh cover’s Nicholas Barker’s incredible Double Kick masterfully and captures the real brutality of the song.
BASS: TonyDickinsonBG
Bassists in metal have traditionally been relegated to pocketing on the root of the chord, or in most cases, doubling main guitar riff. It takes extraordinary bassists to break this mold and produce an independent and interesting line of their own. YouTube is not devoid of these musicians.
If you search for bass covers for Symphony X or Dream Theater, this man has some EXCELLENT covers. Only 19 years old, Tony, nicknamed (by himself) the “Prince of Darkness”, hails from Colorado and hopes to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston, the top contemporary music school in the country. I’ve included his cover of Symphony X’s Domination. For Bonus points, check out his cover of Dream Theater’s Panic Attack.
KEYBOARDS: Henckques (Ronald Jenkees, Honorary)
The keyboardist must be a jack of all trades. A keyboardist in a typical metal band needs to keep rhythm, be a master of the different arcane settings of their instrument, and able to produce a facemelting lead at the drop of a hat. Good keyboardists change bands for the better.
I wasn’t able to glean much from the channel description, but apparently the man on the keyboard is named Matt, and, well, he’s incredible. I picked out this mystery man’s highly viewed and oft-imitated cover of the keyboard solo from Dream Theater’s Epic, Octavarium. Not only is his technique mind-boggling, but his lead sound is dead on, in one of the best all around covers on the web.
As an honorary mention, only for the fact that he doesn’t do covers, I have to include Ronald Jenkees. Ronald is one of my favorite musicians in the world today, and one of the best on YouTubes. He plays Hip Hop Improvs on his Korg Triton and enjoys every last second of it. His videos are incredibly involving and interesting to watch, and his laughter, accent, and eccentricities are contagious. Do yourself a favor – spend an hour just looking through this guy’s YouTubes videos. Your life will be better for it. I’ve included his beat “Disorganized Fun.” For an extra treat, stick around until the end of the video to hear him talk, it’s absolutely infectious (and for the sake of all that is holy, Buy His CD)
RHYTHM GUITAR: schehf
A rhythm guitarist has a complicated job. He needs to be able to keep a good low end presence, but still able to harmonize or take a lead when he needs to. It’s most important to find a rhythm guitarist who is incredibly musical with a good balance of technical ability.
Schehf is a very well known cover artist in the YouTube metal community for both the high quality of his In Flames covers and his willingness to respond to the massive amounts of comments that he receives each day. He hails from Germany and plays in the In Flames cover band, Claymen. He enters tracks into a program called EZ Drummer and typically records Bass and Guitar Tracks himself, filming himself playing each track. This unique view is a staple of his YouTube videos, and help to make him one of the most popular cover artists on YouTube. Here, I’ve posted his cover of In Flames’ “Disconnected” – to be fair though, any of his In Flames covers are phenomenal, and are all worth watching.
LEAD GUITARS: ArtRG
The lead guitarist of any band needs to have it all – presence, personality, and a ridiculous amount of technical ability. Art Rodriguez, the lead guitarist for the Spanish Power metal group Anima Sola, has all of this – especially the technical ability. He is also a prolific YouTube cover artist. I’ve featured his cover of the facemelting Liquid Tension Experiment masterpiece, “Acid Rain.”
VOCALS: UnflexableGrace
Now, I may be a little biased, but it’s my belief that the vocalist ties the band together. The singer is the person that people focus on, the person who conveys the ideas behind the music, and who is expected to have a personality that draws people in. In this little All-Star venture, the singer would be of utmost importance.
Will Shaw is the vocalist for New Jersey Progressive Metal band, Athem. Among his listed influences are Russell Allen, James LaBrie, Bruce Dickinson, and many more of the best metal singers of all time… he does not disappoint. Shaw’s vocals encompass LaBrie’s high range, Allen’s effortlessness, and Dickinson’s raw power while he adds some of his own flare.
If this band got together, I can imagine the entirety of the music industry coming to a grinding halt as the internet sensations took the real world by storm. They would instantly top charts with their massive online followings all intrigued by the sheer amount of talent in one supergroup. They would shatter all sales records, produce the most facemelting, ear splitting music of all time, and eventually take over the world.
If they started to struggle, well… We could always throw this bona fide YouTubes Celebrity into the mix…
