Somewhere in 1858, Jacques Offenbach wrote a tune so gleefully rowdy that Parisian dancers kicked their legs to it until the police got involved. Fast-forward to now: I gave that exact melody a distortion pedal, some blast-adjacent drums, and told it to sit still. Reader, it did not sit still.
This 57-second clip is the Can Can — properly the "Galop Infernal" from Orpheus in the Underworld — reborn as a metal guitar cover. Same shameless energy, more gain, and drums I borrowed in spirit from El Estepario Siberiano (who would absolutely destroy this with one hand and one foot, but let a man dream).
How turning the Can Can into metal actually works
The magic is that Offenbach already did the hard part. The Galop Infernal lives on relentless eighth-note motion in a bright major key — usually written around D major — and metal runs on exactly that same engine: fast, even subdivisions with a rhythm section hammering the pulse. So you don't reharmonise anything. You keep the melody note-for-note, drop it onto a driven, palm-muted guitar tone, and let the drums do the reframing. The ear hears "aggressive" before it hears "wrong."
The one real trick is palm muting the low answering notes so the melody stays clear on top while the bottom end chugs. Concrete takeaway: take any perky classical melody in a major key, keep the pitches, but articulate the off-beats with a muted, picked attack instead of a legato singing tone — instant genre transplant, zero theory homework. It's the same trick behind every pop-tune-gone-metal cover I do.
If you want the actual tab and the backing track so your neighbours can share in the 1858 dance-hall chaos, they're waiting on my Patreon — where the can-can legs are optional but strongly encouraged.