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Hellsongs Play Lounge Metal at Canadian Music Fest

Posted on Mar 12th 2010 6:05PM by Liisa Ladouceur

According to Sweden's Hellsongs, Iron Maiden's 'Running Free' is a feminist anthem. The female-fronted trio, who cover heavy metal classics in an acoustic pop style under the banner "lounge metal," performed the song at Canadian Music Week / Canadian Music Fest in Toronto last night, explaining that by switching "I" to "she" in the lyrics, the tale of a 16-year-old runaway from Maiden's 1980 debut becomes a girl power number.

The small, early-evening crowd at Sneaky Dee's seemed to buy into it, raising the devil horns throughout the half-hour set for spirited loungemetal versions of Metallica's 'Seek and Destroy' and Twisted Sister's 'We're Not Gonna Take It,' amongst others.

Sparkle-clad singer Siri Bergnéhr may have worn her black studded gloves for the occasion but she was far from brutal, turning the tunes into shiny, happy pop gems that few listeners recognized before the choruses kicked in. Her partner Kalle Karlsson eschewed shredding on his acoustic guitar for cliché heavy metal poses.

Pulling stadium-sized audience participation tricks on a club crowd certainly brought more to the Hellsongs experiment than what's exhibited on the band's record, 'Songs in the Key of 666' -- a somewhat limp affair. Live, however, Hellsongs' shtick is a testament to the power of heavy metal storytelling.

The band's North American tour includes two more CMF shows this weekend and stops in Hamilton and London before they jet home to Gothenburg to work on a new record -- which is scheduled to include their first stab at originals.