Guitarist Leon del Muerte (Impaled, ex-Nails, ex-Exhumed) has gathered fellow musicians from Exhumed, Spirit Adrift, Ghoul, Intronaut, Pounder, Imperial Triumphant, Dreaming Dead and more to record a classic rock covers album with 100% of the proceeds going directly to artists impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
You can hear their generally faithful takes of Kansas, Guns N’ Roses, Kiss, ZZ Top, the Beatles, Blue Öyster Cult, Def Leppard and more. I’ll confess I went straight to “Photograph” because Pyromania is an all-time banger.
“A couple years ago I started working on a ‘solo’ (ugh) project,” del Muerte tells Decibel. “When I finished the principal tracking for that, I was still having fun recording, so I did ‘(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.’ I had talked about recording it somewhere around 20 years ago with [Matt] Harv[ey] and Ross [Sewage] when we were in Exhumed and always wanted to do it. After doing that, I did another cover and then kinda set it all aside while I was out with other bands. When the virus hit, I was fucking around with yet another cover and asked Tom [Draper], the live Carcass second guitarist if he’d throw down a solo on it. From there it just kinda snowballed into having tons of different friends guesting on it and deciding to donate all the money to those that are outta work from the whole thing.”
