With all undeserved respect to
Pat Boone's short-lived metallic conversion on the frankly laughable
In a Metal Mood album, never has rock's most fearsome musical subgenre been coerced with such admirable ulterior motives as when Swedish "lounge metal" trio
Hellsongs took it upon themselves to deconstruct ten heavy metal standards for 2008's brilliant
Hymns in the Key of 666. Yes, there's a certain tongue-in-cheek element involved here, and the CD comes disarmingly packaged in colorful, hippie-dippy artwork (including the group's trademarked Volkswagen Kombi), but there's no doubting the serious deliberation and earnest respect -- not mockery -- with which the members of
Hellsongs approached these uniformly mellow reinterpretations. For the most part, the band uses minimalist piano and cello-led arrangements to make melancholy laments out of originally hostile fare like
Iron Maiden's galloping battle anthems "The Trooper" and "Run to the Hills,"
Slayer's hellish travel log "Seasons in the Abyss," and
Black Sabbath's desperate cry for help, "Paranoid" -- as well as less severe heavy rock classics like
Twisted Sister's anthemic "We're Not Gonna Take It,"
Saxon's oft-overlooked gem "Princess of the Night," and even
Europe's insufferable "Rock the Night" (must be the Swedish connection). In this regard,
Hymns in the Key of 666 recalls
Mark Kozelek's unrivaled,
Nick Drake-esque revisions of
Bon Scott-era
AC/DC (whose
Brian Johnson-period "Thunderstruck is given a similar treatment here), making it impossible to disregard its influence on this set. But
Hellsongs makes a small effort to challenge this conclusion by whipping up a pair of buoyant acoustic guitar strum-a-thons (oddly reminiscent of
Jane's Addiction's "Been Caught Stealin'") for
Megadeth's cynical political tirade "Symphony of Destruction" and
Metallica's bleak apocalyptic prophecy "Blackened." The only question is whether dream pop aficionados will find
Hymns in the Key of 666 as entertaining as good-humored metal heads, since it's ultimately the contradiction between vocalist Harriet Ohlsson's amiably innocent croon and the violent lyrics she recites that proves the highlight of this highly amusing experiment. Damnation never sounded so sweet.