“The inclusion of “folk” does not negate the metalness of anything.”

I know, there are plenty of ‘folk-metal’ bands out there, I listen to quite a few…I think I wasn’t clear enough, I objected more to the ‘polka’-ish influence…And even that might not be clear enough so let me just say that the only thing (other than his singing) that I had a slight problem with was the ‘Kazoo’ type ‘blow-horn’ instrument he was using (the one in his mouth) the sound it produced doesn’t seem to fit with Metal overall.

Don’t get me wrong, ‘Folk’ (particularly when it comes to the Guitar) seems to work quite well (as it is usually a variant of ‘Classical-Guitar’ which is quite common in Metal) so long as we don’t let it get too ’silly’.

This is another reason why I typically like to keep ‘blow-horn’ type instruments out of the picture (unless it’s the occasional saxophone or flute used to subtly accent a metal song during the more ‘quiet’ parts) when it comes to metal.

Bottom line, the original song Europe’s 1986 song “The Final Countdown” was a decent glam-metal meets hard-rock variant of the time…This was a more like a polka rendition of the same song. Imagine a bunch of rappers covering Metallica songs…I know it’s already happened but it’s sort of the same thing here, a ’sub-genre’ jump (although with rap, it’d be an entire genre jump).

I don’t know if that makes sense but I think you get the idea here. Cool, but I don’t see how this 3-minute video is “THE VERY DEFINITION OF METAL”. Stylistically I see a difference, but to go even further and define metal with this video is a bit of an exaggeration…NEVERTHELESS – I MUST ADMIT – IT’S PRETTY AMAZING! Okay?

Obviously, (d) is correct.

@ AWB The inclusion of “folk” does not negate the metalness of anything. Please see Amorphis’ “Elegy.”

It’s a guy doing what he thinks is awesome, which pretty much qualifies it as metal for me.

Still, a very unique instrument – but I’m not sure how you could say it’s Metal…I think it’s more in the folk-polkish class, again, no demerit points on his ability, still pretty good.

I definitely like the original (’Europe’s official album version) more but this is even better because he’s playing all of the necessary instruments at the same time.

So yeah, to reiterate what “Byron. W” said; I too think this guy deserves some kind of award. Not sure just how this is the ‘definition of metal though’.