The viral video of the moment features Mary Poppins and Bert, singing and dancing among an animated cast as they would during the original film...except death-growling bloody murder rather than singing the actual lyrics to "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase "something quite atrocious."
This isn't the first death-metal-dub video we've seen, but we expect to see plenty more due to the popularity of this Mary Poppins spoof. Here's a brief ranking of six flicks on YouTube that feature unusually brutal vocals and blastbeats dubbed over otherwise innocuous material.
06) "Devil Sponge!"
Indeed, there seem to be few better options for death metal dubbing than Spongebob Squarepants: You could either have one of the more innocent characters (Spongebob or Patrick) breaking character, or you could feature the more beleaguered Squidward or Plankton finally flipping their musical lids. The editors behind this video decided to opt for Squidward handling vocals during a typical freak-out episode...but the final product seems to be more of an advertisement for DevilDriver (they use the groove metal band's "End of The Line" as the backing track) but the attempt is rather lazy. There's no effort to sync up Squidward's mouth with Dez Fafara's so it looks sloppy. The editor also just places the song on top of one long stream of animation, whereas some clever cuts to more explosive imagery in the show's oeuvre might have done some good.
05) "Ernie and Bert Go Brutal"
There's positives and negatives to this clip. Negatives first: The video basically just slides between 10 frames for the majority of the clip and there was no attempt to sync vocals with Ernie, Bert, or any other Sesame Street character. We're willing to let it slide however. Obviously the editor saw a clip of Bert hammering a bass drum and Ernie hammering on everything else, and they had to make do with what footage they have. Ultimately they picked the perfect track for watching two Muppets slam on drums for three minutes: "A Divine Proclamation for Finishing The Present Existence" by Last Days of Humanity is practically one huge percussive assault on the senses, with some garbled vocals and guitar thrown in for good measure. Leaving the cutesy intro and outro from the original segment was a nice touch as well.
04) "Heavy Metal Cats"
"Heavy Metal Cats" gets bonus points for two reasons: A) The editor actually synced up the vocals of the song in play ("Life of Fear" by Lorna Shore) and more importantly, they used cats to do it! Using the batting of a kitty paw to correlate with blastbeats was a nice touch, and we especially enjoyed the "lead singer" with its wide eyes and maw. It would have been nice to see more footage of other bereaved cats however. This is 2015. If you can't find plenty of footage of cats on the internet, you've probably never used the internet. If Run The Jewels can remake its entire album using nothing but cat noises, you could have worked a few more cat clips in. One more major complaint from your correspondent, a finicky metal fan: Does this sound anything like Iron Maiden or Black Sabbath? Call it what it is..."Deathcore Cats."
03) "Fresh Prince of Black Metal"
We should qualify that this video doesn't feature any attempt to sync the lip movements of Will Smith up to its source, the appropriately-titled "Insane TV Madness" by Kraptor. The real show isn't on the mic at all but rather behind the drum kit, where DJ Jazzy Jeff proves that he makes both beats and blastbeats, and not just on a turntable. Things start out simply enough, with Jazz making his entrance to the Banks household, wandering around dazed and then sitting down behind a drum set. What we get, instead of a funky loop, is a blistering black metal assault. No need to ask where the guitar's coming from during the scene—we're sure Uncle Phil is in full corpse paint in the hallway with his axe—just keep your eyes on Will getting jiggy with it to the least jiggy music possible. We end on a comic note again when Jazz quits playing, and the show's typical hip-hop theme sets in.
02) "Death Metal Friday"
We only have one complaint regarding this video so we might as well get it out of the way: Why on Earth would you title this "Death Metal Friday"? It's a song by Rebecca Black...call it "Rebecca Black Metal Friday." That whining from us aside, this is a classic clip. Part of the hilarious appeal was Black's awkward body language throughout the music video, and now that same adorable face is producing unearthly shrieks. Those behind the video get obvious points for creating their own recording of the cult classic, complete with both the death growls/shrieks of a Suicide Silence cover. The recording hits its high point during the "kick it in the front seat/kick it in the backseat" breakdown segment. The only part of the video that doesn't sync well is Patrice "Pato" Wilson (the rapper making a guest appearance late). His vocal stylings, as in the actual shapings of his mouth, are simply too smooth to properly scream like that.
01) Mary Poppins Sings Death Metal
It may be the song that got us started on this trend, and thus far it's also the best. The video clip the creators chose to start with sets them up for success by taking the better parts of many of the previous clips. For one, there's a band playing in the background (and one that doesn't distract from the vocalists) and for two, the dance numbers also play into the overall absurdity of the clip (especially when they tap in sync to the outgoing guitar solo). Most of the credit belongs to the performers (of the song...not Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke) for doing things right: Bert is voiced by a death-growling male while Mary is handled, rightfully, by an intense female vocalist (unlike in the Rebecca Black cover, where both vocalists were clearly male). We had to go back and check, but it turned out the backing band always had those studs on their costumes...we figured it might have been an outside editing job. Kudos all around!
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