As the Didact has observed, my tastes in metal run more toward symphonic. This is in large part because my musical background included several years of violin, and before that, a couple years of piano, a southern upbringing, and a northern European heritage steeped in both classical and folk music. That said, I’ve found it’s consistently easier for better metal bands to incorporate symphonic elements into their music, with many metal bands already doing more complex music than the pop norm, than anemic, washed out sounding attempts of classical and orchestral musicians to do rock.
So a couple years back I stumbled into a group dubbing itself “two cellos” that apparently became popularized after one of their renditions of a Michael Jackson song showed up on Glee.
Guys, they are two damn fine musicians, and consistently able to deliver the goods on rock and metal standards like “Thunderstruck”, other AC/DC tracks (they cover a lot of them), Guns N Roses, “Voodoo People” by The Prodigy, and so on. Is it perfect? No – good rock music is often made to suit the instruments, the sound of the instrument evokes the mood.
But it’s damned impressive, and not just in a “dog walks at all” sense.
The official live video for “Thunderstruck”:
Oh, and a complete concert:
