AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DEATH OF GIANTS — “ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG”

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Aug 292024

Cover songs usually fall into one of two categories: Either they’re straightforward and faithful renditions of the original (though vocal variations inevitably introduce some differences), or they’re efforts to re-imagine and re-configure the originals, sometimes creating truly new originals.

The latter type of cover song is risky because listeners who are fans of the original may continue hearing it and thinking about it as they listen to the cover, which is a distraction, and at worst they may be annoyed at the changes. But when a cover song “works”, it’s far more interesting than a faithful repetition.

Death of Giants‘ cover of Iron Maiden‘s “Only the Good Die Young“, a video for which we’re premiering today, unmistakably falls into the second category — a striking reinterpretation of the original that turns it into a very different song, and one that works supremely well. It’s even more interesting and moving when you understand how the cover was inspired, though it would be powerfully moving even if you didn’t know.

The cover song appears on Death of Giants‘ 2023 debut album Ventesorg. It was principally the solo work of Norwegian multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Morten Søbyskogen. Our friend Comrade Aleks, who conducted an exceptionally good interview of Morten after the album’s release, rightly called it “one of most remarkable gothic death-doom albums of 2023”.

Morten made the album as a tribute to the memory of his wife Sandra, who passed away from brain cancer in 2018 at the age of 31, and it was also a way of trying to deal with his own grief. Her death was not sudden. As Morten explained to Aleks, Sandra‘s illness began in 2014:

I knew from 2014 that she would most probably die within 5 years, but we were of course hoping she would be one of the few lucky ones who just goes against the odds. I don’t know if I really have accepted what happened and come to peace with the life and future which was taken away from us, but I am still here and that is something.

The album’s name, Ventesorg, is a word for “anticipatory grief”, such as the feeling produced by the experience of a loved one in the grips of a long and likely fatal illness. And now it becomes more clear why Morten would cover a song named “Only the Good Die Young“. But there’s more to it, as he explained in that June 2023 interview with our Comrade Aleks:

Iron Maiden was the band that inspired me to start singing and writing music at the age of 14, so they have been with me most of my life and will always be “that” band for me. I actually saw them live in Bergen this week. It is incredible how they still deliver the goods, and hearing epics from both Somewhere in Time and from Senjutsu together was powerful. But I am digressing.

I have loved “Only The Good Die Young” since I first heard it at the end of SSOASS, and I always felt the song had some hidden melancholy inside it that was not prominent on the album. One day, pardon the Norwegian cliché, I was sitting in the forest contemplating about music and life, when my mind wandered to that song, and I started dissecting it and imagining how I could bring that melancholy out. And suddenly most of it fell into place in my mind, so I went home and recorded a demo of it.

Most of the final version is based on that initial idea. I didn’t get the middle part to invoke any emotion in me in the first versions, so I spent some time reworking it, and what made it work was actually bringing in an Easter egg from the song “Seventh Son of A Seventh Son”. I am very happy with how it turned out; it differs much from the original, but it still retains the “vibe” I would say….

Jack Roger Olsen (ex-Highland Glory) is also a fellow long-time Iron Maiden fan, so it was a no-brainer to ask him to play the solo on “Only The Good Die Young”.

(And we’ll add that drums on the song and the album were performed by Magnus Nødset.)

Photo by Anine Desire

As you’ll find out if you haven’t heard Death of Giants‘ cover, or as you’ll be reminded if you have already heard it, it is indeed in many ways a very somber and melancholic reinterpretation of the original. But that doesn’t mean it won’t get your heart pounding.

In place of the original song’s vibrant swing, melodic swirls, and hammering gallop, Death of Giants‘ cover is slower and more dreamlike, and brings into play both an expansive melodic drift in the high end, momentous booms in the bass register, and gleaming keys.

The guitar solo itself makes for a striking variation on the original, and while the music’s overarching mood is definitely melancholic, the rising guitars are also glorious, helping convert the original into an anthem.

In place of Bruce Dickinson‘s soaring wails and fierce snarls, Morten‘s vibrato voice is indeed more somber and meditative at times, but he also sends it high in spine-tingling fashion, drawing out the heartbreak in this musical re-imagining. He has a snarl too, and near the end he vents wrenching screams.

Morten Søbyskogen created the video you’re about to see. It interweaves evocative imagery from different sources with film of Morten and friends performing the song at a record release show in Oslo — an experience good enough that they will continue playing live shows.