Gary Numan. Everyone loves Gary Numan, myself included and if you don’t you’re wrong. Whether you come from the early adopters who fell in love with ‘Cars’ or someone late to the party like myself who was absolutely annihilated by the entirety of “Savage (Songs From A Broken World)”, there’s no denying Numan’s influence on electronic music. And industrial duo [melter] feels the same way, especially about the song ‘Metal’. What was a clandestine live performance single has officially been recorded for your listening pleasure complete with a live music video. You can stream it below.
Lots of credit to go out on this one including mixing and mastering by William Fait at 13 Studio in Chicago, IL; live footage from Rishi Productions at Liar’s Bar on October 30th, 2023 also in Chicago; and a video installation by Video Waste. Both founders of the project, Rob Hyman and Jax Allos, had a few things to say about their cover. Jax stated, “‘Metal’ was one of the first songs in our set when I first joined [melter] that set the tone for the [melter] sound – bass and synth heavy with the drums and vocals front and center. I have so much fun performing our version – it lets me channel my inner robot!”
While Rob said, “I discovered Gary Numan’s The Pleasure Principle album with the 30th Anniversary Edition in 2009. Since then, it has become one of my favorite albums of all time. It has some of the best synth sounds ever created on it. They are just clean and full yet powerful and epic. Just so simple and yet so good. ‘Vox Humana’ is perfection. The bass-and-drum groove is what drew me to ‘Metal’ – the way they lock in. The synths are very atmospheric. And the lyrics are perfect – a great juxtaposition for the human vs. machine conversation.”
[melter]’s cover is also available on Bandcamp for free download / pay what you want.
