Have you ever watched Dawn of the Dead? If you did, remember the scene where they relaxed o n the supermarket roof, and shoots the zombies of their neighbors for fun? Sarcastically sick, right? It’s like if our dreaded enemy (i.e. boss, neighbor, in-laws) become a zombie, would we be humane in disposing them?
And to make things even more sarcastic, was the music. At first, I didn’t recognize the score, until it reaches the chorus. I’ve heard it before, but not in swing. But when it reaches chorus, it is unmistakable. It was Down With The Sickness by Disturbed.
You see how sarcastic that scene was? Survivors, enjoying themselves on a supermarket rooftop, making headshots with the zombies down there, while commenting on how bad that person have been when still alive, accompanied by a Alternative Metal song played in swing. (actually I was wrong. The shooting scene was NOT accompanied by this song, but both the scene and the song is there, nevertheless).
The swing version was performed by Mark Jonathan Davis aka Richard Cheese. This musical genius is comparable to Weird Al Yankovic, but instead of changing the lyrics like Weird Al did, he changed the mood and tempo to Jazz, Lounge or Swing.
The beauty of his songs, were in it’s unoriginality. It maintains the original song just enough to recognize the original one, but it is good enough to be played by a string quartet. In fact, his band, Lounge Against the Music is a lounge band, that if a 5 star hotel mistakenly asked them to perform in a dinner, they would survive the night until someone actually bothers to listen to the lyrics.
If you enjoy Rockestra, or acoustic versions of hard core songs, or pretty much every other fast tempo songs, you’d definitely enjoy his work. His songs include those from Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Papa Roach, Radiohead, Disturbed, Linkin Park, Weezer, Metallica, Nirvana, Blink 182, Rage Against The Machine, Led Zeppelin, Madonna and many more!
Click here to listen to several of his tracks via Radio Blog Club.
and here’s another video of one of my favorite Richard Cheese’s masterpiece: His rendition of Enter Sandman!