This 11-Year-Old’s Drum Cover of Darkest Hour is Dynamite

We’re huge fans of Darkest Hour, and we absolutely love it when kids decide to start playing metal. So it’s our distinct pleasure to introduce you to Nikodem Hodur, an 11-year-old drummer from the UK who’s a huge fan of Darkest Hour and recently posted this badass drum cover of “With a Thousand Words to Say But One” off of 2005’s Undoing Ruin online.

Niko even shouted out Darkest Hour drummer Travis Orbin in the caption to his video, writing:

“I can’t wait to see Darkest Hour on a gig with my idol, Travis Orbin. The gig will be in the UK in March 2022, so I cant wait to see all the band play my favorite album undoing ruin. I tried to copy Travis the best I could from YouTube when he played Live ‘With A Thousand Words To Say But One’ but the original song was different, and it was quite tricky for me.”

The bad news is, the gig Niko’s excited for got canceled — but the good news is, he learned about it when Darkest Hour gave Niko’s video a shout-out on their Instagram:

“Metal music is eternal and seeing the love for drums, jamming, riffing, and our music makes our heart sing with joy!

“Unfortunately our show in March was canceled but you can’t stop the rock. We will be back and we will be giving this little dude a bunch of high fives when we do link up!

“Till then enjoy watching this little dude R.I.P. it up!!

“PS – Travis Orbin is our idol too!”

Man, the metal scene is often a slog of cynicism, politics, and promotional bullshit, but a young fan paying homage to a killer metalcore band is a beautiful thing. Kudos to Niko for making us knuckle a tear away from our eye and remember why we’re here in the first place.

Check out his full drum cover below: