Even if you’re not much of a food critic, you can still tell the difference between a burger that's delicious and one that tastes like a charbroiled hockey puck. Metal is kind of like hamburgers. You don’t have to be super well-versed in it to know when a metal band is the “bad kind” of metal. A surefire way to tell is if their logo uses the same font as the Monster Energy Drink logo. Another way to tell is if the band has any combination of the words “God” and “smack” in their name.Five Finger Death Punch fall into that charbroiled hockey puck side of metal. The LA band released an album this month called The Wrong Side of Heaven and the Righteous Side of Hell and somewhere in between songs called “Watch You Bleed” and “Diary of a Deadman,” they snuck in one of the most bizarre choices for a cover song ever: LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out.” This raises so many questions. Actually, it just raises one: WHY?Why would a metal band think that anyone in the world but the Kangol-wearing rap stuperstud, LL Cool J, could pull off the words, “Mama said knock you out?” It sounds like something a seven-year-old would say just before getting wedgied. In fact, why would any metal band ever think they could pull off a cover of any rap song? It’s a crossover that has failed over and over again. Sometimes the covers make a sincere effort at sounding cool and end up being unintentionally hilarious. Other times, they’re meant to be a joke and end up being tragically unfunny. Here are some of the worst offenders of the metal/rap cover disasters:“Baby Got Back” is the rap song for people who only know one rap song. It’s the rap song your dad knows, besides the one that starts with “My name is dad and I’m here to say…” The worst part about Throwdown’s cover of it is that it somehow accomplishes the unthinkable: It makes big butts seem unappealing.Brokencyde reside in the dark corner of the metal universe known as crunkcore, where metal, Southern hip hop, and screamo meet. Flo Rida’s “Low” resides where lyrics about Apple Bottom jeans and boots with the fur meet. Mix all of it together and you get this awful cover.Once again venturing into the metally abyss that is crunkcore is I Set My Friends On Fire doing a hilarious cover of Soulja Boy’s “Crank That.” Combine a song with no substance with a band with no talent and you get this musical trainwreck.Artas is an Austrian metal band from Vienna so maybe no one told them that “Gangsta’s Paradise” is not a cool rap song, but one written by Coolio for a 1995 Michelle Pfeiffer movie.In case you thought it was impossible to make the most obnoxious song ever recorded sound even worse, Goodnight Nurse would like to prove you wrong!Remember that Savage song “Swing” that was popular for all of five minutes eight years ago? Well, metalcore band Miss May I certainly do and they want to make sure you remember how repetitive and annoying it is…in metal form!If anyone truly indentifies with the lyrics of New Orleans rappers, Birdman and Mannie Fresh, it's a Christian metalcore band from Ohio.If you board a boat with a guy who thinks he’s “funny,” he will inevitably quote at least one of two things: The “king of the world!” scene from Titanic or the “I’m on a boat!” song from the Lonely Island’s SNL skit. Both are as predictable as they are obnoxious. Goatmill’s cover of the latter is the one exception to the rule that says metal covers can’t be good because there is something uncontrollably funny about seeing a dude with death metal makeup sing the words “flippy floppies.”
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