YouTube guitarist creates a pop-punk version of Slipknot's Sulfur and, surprisingly, it's not the worst thing ever

Slipknot pop punk YouTube video — (Image credit: Sugarpill Covers)

Someone has made a pop-punk version of Slipknot's Sulfur, and while pop-punk rehashes of legendary metal songs haven't previously gone down too well in the past (remember that version of Metallica's Master Of Puppets?), this restyling by Sugarpill Covers is surprisingly great.

For the cover, the musician replaces the instrumentation with light and poppy guitar and bouncing percussion, but retains frontman Corey Taylor's original vocals. While Taylor's racing and aggressive vocals sound somewhat strange against the peppiness of the verse, each element seems to fuse together more smoothly for the chorus, which packs some serious fist-pumping, pop-punk power.

In the description for the video, the YouTuber jokes that the song was actually made by Slipknot themselves, who in 2008, apparently got tired of their "metal shtick" and traded it in for something that sounds a lot closer to Sum 41. Meanwhile, they profess to some pop-punk clichés such as being misunderstood by elders and munching on pizza. Of course, this never happened, but it's a funny scenario.

It reads: "It was 2008, Slipknot had yet to begin work on their follow up to Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses). Corey turned to Clown and said, "Yo Joe, this metal shtick sucks. Let's eat some pizza and think about how we can change our sound.

"Corey then added, "Ya know, my parents just don't understand". Clown thought about this for awhile, and decided that he too, agreed - his parents didn't understand either.

"To cut a long story short, they worked on a pop punk album for the better part of 2 years, but eventually shelved it. This is the only remaining song from what was later dubbed as the 'before I forget (my stuffed crust) sessions."

Check it out below:

Recently, Corey Taylor weighed in on Clown's proposal of Slipknot sacking in full album releases for single projects.

Pitching his plan to NME, the percussionist said: “I always thought, ‘What would it be like if Slipknot was big enough that we weren’t held to albums?’ Let’s say Clown could convince you, ‘Hey, instead of waiting two years for 12 songs, I’m gonna give you one song every month.’ So in reality, I’m shaving a year off for the same thing".

When Taylor was asked for his opinion on the idea during his appearance at Monster-Mania Con earlier this month, he said: "It's kind of difficult to get nine people on the same page anymore, especially we're old and dicks. But the cool thing is that we all still get excited about good ideas. [Guitarists] Jim [Root] and Mick [Thomson] are so good at writing music.

"Me and Clown work really well coming up with stuff together, VMan [bassist Alessandro Venturella] is actually really good. So we've done so much in our career that at this point we could sit back and just do EPs.

"I mean, I've got a good idea for a double concept record with a whole storyline that goes along with it that I would love to do," he continues. "But the cool thing is that we've kind of established our history, so whatever comes next will naturally be something that we want to do.

"So whether it's go in and just blast out a couple psycho tunes and just have fun doing that or we go in and do a very elaborate plan, like a storyline or something, either way it'll be something that we're really into. I back the group, you know? At this point, we've released so much music and we're off our label now, so sky's our limit; we can kind of do whatever we want. So whatever we do next will be something that we are all on the same page for, which is something you can't always say."

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Liz manages Louder's social media channels and works on keeping the sites up to date with the latest news from the world of rock and metal. Prior to joining Louder as a full time staff writer, she completed a Diploma with the National Council for the Training of Journalists and received a First Class Honours Degree in Popular Music Journalism. She enjoys writing about anything from neo-glam rock to stoner, doom and progressive metal, and loves celebrating women in music.