10 of the best: metal meets classical

It is, of course, one of the most honourable cross-connections in contemporary musical culture, the virtuosity and emotional extremity that bind classical and metal together. So in honour of All Hallows’ Eve, we’re journeying to the dark side of the musical universe, with variously metallised versions of classical masterpieces. Enjoy. If you dare.

Hope Lies Within: Der Erlkönig – yes, Schubert’s song, sung – in German – in a version that simultaneously thrashes the living daylights out of Schubert’s figuration, but which respects the song’s structure, and honours and amplifies its dark poetry, both in the arrangement and the visuals that accompany it. Properly dark magic.

Another utterly jaw-dropping realisation of a classical original: Mussorgsky’s Night on the Bare Mountain, from Mekong Delta. Turn it up to 12, and experience a staggering sonic spectacle. Both a terrifying and awe-inspiring display of technique.

As is this: more Mussorgsky, and more Mekong Delta – Baba Yaga, from Pictures at an Exhibition. Even Ravel’s vision of this mythical beast from Russian legend pales in comparison next to the visceral nightmare of Mekong Delta’s version.

And you don’t need a whole band, either: Dr Viossy here shreds the semiquavers off the finale of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, in a bravura performance of such technical sophistication that you feel like contemporary audiences did about Paganini: that he must be possessed by something diabolically supernatural. If you’re inured to the prestidigitation of so many run-of-the-mill pianists’ interpretations of this piece, prepare to hear the hell-for-leather desperation in Beethoven’s music as never before.

Talking of Paganini, here’s what happened when The Commander-in-Chief, seven-string electric supremo, met the classical mastery of Craig Ogden in Paganini’s 24^th Caprice, one of the staples of metal’s classical obsessions. They both win, I reckon.

Another major test for metal guitarists is besting violinists in Vivaldi. The Children of Bodom here beat Summer from the Four Seasons into a frenzied, pulsating pulp of thrash virtuosity.

And bringing four of the cornerstones of the classical-metal canon together in a magnificent performance of unbridled energy and fiendish, uncanny precision: Pergamum here create a black-hearted suite from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, the Moonlight Sonata, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Vivaldi’s Summer.

But look, it can’t always go right: here’s Heavenly’s scarily super-kitsch horror-show of a version of the Ode to Joy … What is Beethoven doing with that guitar?

And you may think something similar about Yngwie Malmsteen’s Concerto Suite for axe and orchestra in E flat minor. Malmsteen is one of the original doyens of metal-classicism, and his chops are on frighteningly good form in this clip. It’s just that the music is pretty frightening too: the sound of what happens when post-Vivaldi arpeggios meet glam-guitar showing off, and take each other all too seriously. And there’s a choir, too! Terrifying.

But I’ve saved the best and most genuinely intimidating until last: Nargaroth’s awesomely dark implosion of Schubert’s Der Leiermann. Schubert’s original, the final number of his song-cycle Die Winterreise, is already one of the bleakest moments in western music; here, the hell of loneliness, isolation and desolation that the protagonist finds him- or herself in at the end of the cycle is turned into a petrified, and petrifying, scream. Happy Halloween.