So there are a lot of things that differentiate Frank Sinatra from most modern metal musicians, but I’d like to concentrate on two:

• He could actually sing.
• He was an honest-to-goodness, not-to-be-fucked-with badass.

And so it makes no sense to me that, according to Noisecreep, “members of Anthrax, Twisted Sister, Deep Purple, Queensryche, Warrant and other groups have recorded their own metallic versions of some of Sinatra’s standards and classics for an album called SIN-atra.”

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Punk is the domain of youth. Over the years its initial rebellious edge has been largely filed down to a nub with the palatable smoothness of an infant’s spoon, yet the fact remains that, even co-opted and corrupted by vapidity and consumerism, it remains young people’s music. Some choose to argue pointlessly and endlessly over the “authenticity” of the poppier strain that one might hear on the Vans Warped Tour, willfully blind to the cold reality: definition no longer matters when a sound becomes this diluted by culture. Outright intolerance of the current state of affairs feels appropriate, yet the alternatives for aging punk fans are tragic and few. Some shell out Ticketmaster-inflated fees to see the retroactively hailed nostalgia acts of their choosing lurch out onto massive stages to run through “the hits” much like the classic rock dinosaurs these very same revolutionaries once disdained. Others choose to support the obscure, forgotten 80s band playing miserable bars a few miles down the road from the middle of nowhere. Lastly, one can stay at home, venturing out only to collect even more irrelevant records for hoarding and occasional listening. To some half-smart kid from out there in America desperate for something to rebel against, it’s ideal. For a grown man like me, living the domestic life with all of its inherent pitfalls and pratfalls, punk is sentimental escapism. Nothing more.

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Last night I heard the “new” Vader album, XXV, for the first time. In case you’re not hip to this release, it’s the Polish death metal masters’ 25th anniversary album, and is basically a greatest hits compilation – except that all the songs have been re-recorded with the band’s current line-up. Which, naturally, means that late drummer Krzysztof “Doc” Raczkowski appears nowhere on the album (or, at least, not in the audio content – I still don’t have a copy of the DVD which will accompany the disc’s release).

Of course, Vader aren’t the first band to embark upon such an endeavor. Living Colour, Twisted Sister, and even The Sex Pistols have all re-recorded some of their old songs for purpose of being able to license them without having to share the wealth with their former record labels, which is a brutal, and brutally honest, reason to re-visit your old catalogue. Dave Mustaine re-recorded “A Tout Le Monde” as a duet with Cristina Scabbia just last year; Anthrax re-recorded a bunch of old Joey Belladonna tunes with John Bush for their Greater of Two Evils* collection; hell, Dimmu Borgir re-recorded their entire album Stormblast because they were so unhappy with the original, and as I understand it, it’s only by the grace of God that we don’t have Appetite for Destruction 2000, featuring Axl Rose’s “revamped” GN’R in place of the original (although a half of a re-recorded “Sweet Child O’Mine” does roll over the closing credits of the Adam Sandler vehicle Big Daddy).

What, one has to wonder, is the point of re-recording all the band’s old songs?

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