The metal cover. It used to be pretty much a pre-requisite in the nu-metal days, and plenty of bands, from Anthrax to Between the Buried and Me, have released albums of nothing but their takes of songs by other bands. You can’t blame a band for wanting to pay tribute to their influences, and it’s a great way to get people that might not have heard a new band to listen to them. In short, the metal cover isn’t going anywhere any time soon, and in the past week, two different bands have mined the ’80s for a pair of covers.

First of all, the final track on the upcoming Allegaeon album, Proponent For Sentience, will be a take of Rush’s “Subdivisions.” The 1982 track is a rock radio staple, written about pressure to conform in suburbia. The Colorado death metal quintet play it pretty close to the original, and their technical skills match perfectly with the original.
 

 
Meanwhile, Cleveland metalcore act Affiance covered another ’80s gem, Toto’s “Africa.” The band were inspired when the song came on in a bar they were at shortly before they left for a 2014 tour to… South Africa. As a joke, vocalist Dnnis Tvrdik said they should do a cover of it, since they’d already covered Europe’s “The Final Countdown” and it would keep their continent streak intact. They decided to actually record it while in Africa, and the rest is history. It’s actually pretty well-done, and it certainly more metallic than the original, and the hearing “Kilmanjaro” and “serengeti” crammed into a song like they should rhyme never gets old. And the chorus is still anthemic as ever.
 

 

Allegaeon’s Proponent For Sentience will be out on September 23rd, and can be preordered here.

You can pick up the Affiance single on iTunes.