Remember 'ATQ' ?

In past I wrote lengthy about the "non metal tracked music" (see here) I created from mid1990s into early 2000s. Most active years were 1996-1997 when piles of these so called "non metal" experiments were born. First the artist name for these creations was Quetzalcoatl, then it was renamed using same letters into Aztec Toll Qua and in the end when I was making remix collections of the songs years later Aztec Toll Qua turned into abbreviation ATQ.

Well, I revisited one ATQ remix tune titled "Hover like a leaf". Originally to be precise this was titled "Hovering like a leaf". The title of the song came from the music itself directly, and the music was created around this main idea of UFO hovering in the dark woods during winter and it's snowing and the snowing turn into blizzard as two kids stumble across this UFO "hovering like a leaf" (like they used to describe the movement of claimed UFOs back in 1940s and 1950s especially) and the kids stumble across it because they hear this strange music coming from forest ... it comes from the spacecraft where grey aliens are playing the music (which is of course the music I tracked). Original song had some two minutes long (too long) intro part (this remix version has none of it, remix version begins directly from "meeting the UFO" section) which depicted the two kids happily playing in forest when it's not late yet, there's daylight well left. Then the music changes (intro section ends) as they hear the strange slow music emitting from the forest - and they start going toward the music, until ... they get there and witness aliens playing alien music. And while they are watching this one tune only, time passes with several hours (like in the old UFO tales/cases) and suddenly it's dark woods around them, and the spacecraft shoots off to the sky / space as the hypnotic song ends, seemingly lasting for hours.

I've even written into tracker file's comment section ages ago like this, direct screen shot captured from the tune via OpenMPT (if needed, click to see it bigger) :

So, ... fast forward almost 30 freakin' years forward and here we are. Suddenly it's possible to make that idea for music video into some kind of reality, with help of AI. Funnily it was easier to get the UFO / alien videoclips matching how I envisioned it back in the day, than getting AI doing fitting enough video clips of two kids adventuring in dark forest. It took few weeks to get fitting enough video clips crafted all in all. The end result is entertaining at least to myself, because it's pretty much the kind of vision I had tens of years ago for the video "if it was possible to make such a video". 

As a bonus, you can also see the tracker view of the song faintly rolling in the video.

Check out the video in <Youtube> or check it out embedded below.

Incantation cover

Back to Incantation ... in 2003 I made this Incantation coversong with Unbird, it was 3rd Incantation cover tune that I made and 1st one which sounded really enjoyable (instead of being extremely rough or detuned or sloppy otherwise) from start to finish. I was really happy with how this coversong turned out back then, the way it jumps straight to face and even the guitar solos came out rather nicely. It sounds rather thin kind of, but I didn't feel it was any problem then - and even these days some 22-23 years later I don't mind it. And as usual, while I was improving with the tracked metal music creations (read: music), Unbird was improving as vocalist and his vocals here in this track work pretty damn good, too.

So, here you go, check out the coversong in <Youtube> or check it out below - and enjoy, I still do! :)

Napalm Death cover

Next up is Napalm Death cover from 2002, with me handling the music as usual in my tracked metalscene releases and someone else, in this case Impious, handling the vocals. Considering that it's not easy task to in any way replicate (I don't mean exact replica, more about the mood) early Napalm Death atmospherically speaking, back in the day I was actually quite happy in how this short blaster tune from Scum's B-side turned out.

Without further babbling, you can check out the cover as usual in <Youtube> or by watching it below.

Incantation and Repulsion cover

 This time it's Incantation. The song is one of their most doomy songs, from their sophomore album "Mortal throne of nazarene". I covered the song back in 2004 with Unbird, who as usual handled the vocals while I handled the music. I remember I was very satisfied with how this cover turned out. Both how I got the song covered and at least as much impressed with Unbird performing his lowest / sickest growling ever. So very fitting for this nasty tune and for paying homage to Incantation. If you know your Incantation, you know what I mean.

Sign of things to come or not, but it was actually one of the very last tracked metal songs I did in tracked metalscene - this was around October 2004 based on quick research. It wasn't about "me thinking the scene is dying" but it was more about the real life stuff taking way more time; I started my university studies in January 2005 and I got to know about being selected for the studies around October/November 2024 from what I remember.

You can check out the cover in <Youtube> or right below. Enjoy!

EDIT: Oh! I also released Repulsion cover (dating back to 2002) recently. Check it out at <Youtube> or as usual, right below. And prepare for some over the top drums in this case! ^_^

D.R.I. cover

The next cover tune I turned into video using the real life band's ancient bootleg footage is D.R.I. (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles). In reality I wasn't so much impressed with D.R.I.'s crossover thrash metal in the late 1980s (even that it was pretty good, though) but I was more impressed with early D.R.I.'s manic, grindcore'ish extremity. But there is no denying that D.R.I. wouldn't had done lots of good'n'great stuff, like this song I covered back in 2004 with Barfington (he handled vocals while I handled music). This is a true attitude song which happens to be so very fitting in these crazy times in 2020s with certain leaders of certain countries. Just check out the lyrics (they roll graphically in the video) and you'll know what I mean.

Check out the video at <Youtube> or check it out below in embedded form.

Enjoy! Back in the day when we finished this covertune, I was really proud of this one. Simple but effective song, covered in faster tempo than original making it even more crazy sounding shit!

Celtic Frost cover

Background bytes: I've done big pile of tribute videos for bands, where I've used studio track of the song and then selected a fitting bootleg video for the project - then syncing and finetuning the bootleg / gig video of that selected tune so, that it runs smoothly (or in some cases smoothly enough) with the studio track. Sometimes it's been a lot of work, sometimes surprisingly easy. But I wouldn't had been doing all that, if it wasn't fun thing to do. I enjoy the result and I get kicks of it. In some cases I've got extra kicks when member of band I've done tribute for, have commented something in brief to the video, or just posted something like \m/ ... of course it feels awesome. Even more so as naturally I tend to do tributes for bands / music that I've liked a lot, in many cases for tens of years already, since 1980s or so.

Recently I got an idea for crafting bit different kind of tribute / fan art video. Different how?

Well, I've personally covered big bunch of bands / tunes back in the early 2000s especially, when "tracked metalscene" was at its' most active era (the most active era was let's say 2000-2004). Tracked metalscene didn't last as a real scene for more than roughly 10 years, depending where you count it's birth and death. But anyway, I was really active metal tracker in the scene with nick "Aeuk" (whadda surprise) and while I tracked lots of crappy stuff (I mean truly lofi and rough and cruel as hell sounding shit - not in a good way) I also personally "peaked" around let's say 2002-2004 with tracked metal mods. I also crafted big bunch of metal cover songs that I still like and am even a bit proud of in some ways. So, ... the idea was following:

1. Let's take a good tracked metal cover I've done as Aeuk
2. Let's seek ancient bootleg video of the band which I covered
3. Let's throw both coversong and bootleg video into video editor
4. Let's edit them so, that bootleg video is synced with coversong
5. Let's throw lyrics into the video edit to make it even more fun

The first cover tune that I thought for this was for the band I've followed since a kid in 1986 ... Celtic Frost. CF, especially with their magical lineup of Tom/Martin/Reed. I covered CF's "Visions of mortality" back in 2003 and another tracked metalscene guy nicknamed Nightrealm took care of vocals.

Without further babbling, here's the end result (and I've already got something more lined up). You can check out it at <Youtube> or directly below if you for some reason don't wanna go to Youtube.

Enjoy!