Tool riffs on a hurdy gurdy: watch the video

The hurdy gurdy is a strange instrument. On paper it's an unlikely mix of coffee grinder and collapsed lung, but in the right hands it becomes a purveyor of epic, cinematic sounds.

Michalina Malisz has the right hands. The hurdy gurdy player with Swiss metal band Eluveitie, she's already carved herself out a niche as one of YouTube's leading hurdy gurdy hustlers, delighting listeners the web over with a series of sturdy hurdy gurdy covers.

There's her hurdy gurdy cover of System Of A Down's Toxicity. There's her hurdy gurdy take on a series of Slipknot songs. There's her hurdy gurdy tribute to Children Of Bodom frontman Alexi Laiho. And there's the time she delved into Tony Iommi's bottomless pit of demonic riffing to create a hurdy hurdy selection of Black Sabbath songs.

Now Michalina has upped the stakes once again, setting the hurdy gurdy world alight with her hurdy gurdy tribute to Tool. She's taken the riffs for Schizm, Lateralus, The Pot, Forty Six & 2 and Descending and hurdy gurdey'd them all, in the process somehow making them even more epic.

It's the kind of music that might soundtrack a great medieval battle. The kind of music that might run through your head as you plunge your broadsword through the tattered, bloody armour of a stricken foe. The kind of music to accompany slow-motion footage of mighty steeds racing through an enemy encampment as tents are set alight and the vanquished slain. You get the idea.

Visit Michalina's '5 Riffs' page for more hurdy gurdy heroics.

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 40 years in music industry, online for 27. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.