[youtube]http://youtu.be/eGuPViQChR0[/youtube]
The debut album from David Draiman’s new project Device will be released on April 9. The album features a cover of “Close My Eyes Forever,” the 1988 duet between Ozzy Osbourne and Lita Ford. This version features the Grammy-winning vocals of Halestorm frontwoman Lzzy Hale subbing for Lita Ford. We’re of two minds on this. It’s obvious that it’s going to be a huge radio hit somewhere along the way. The 25 year-old song is still memorable enough for Gen Xers and watchers of the original Headbanger’s Ball to have memorized, and Draiman’s bands and Halestorm rule active rock radio with an iron fist, for better or for worse. The other way to look at it is that they’re shitting all over the legacy of the song, over emoting on top of a song with industrial/electronic flourishes that the original song didn’t have. We’re somewhere in between. While the original was a good and memorable song, it’s not like it’s a stone cold classic, and anyone born after 1990 or so, like, let’s say most of Halestorm’s fans, might not be familiar with the original.
“It’s a song I’ve wanted to cover for many years, and I’m glad we were able to do it with this project, because it definitely took on its own unique identity and it’s own unique reformation of the song,” Draiman says of the cover. “Having Lzzy Hale be the guest female vocalist on the track is about as true to form as it could have been. There’s nobody better in the music field to be the modern day embodiment of Lita Ford. She has got riot grll in her and she is in my opinion one of the best voices if not the best female voice in modern rock. And I was very very honored to have her sing. I can only hope that Ozzy and Sharon are as happy with it and proud of it as I am. It’s definitely part of an homage to the greatness of who I consider to be one of, if not the, most seminal frontmen of all time, the godfather of heavy metal, and a guy I look up to so much, and to a family that’s done so much for me and for Disturbed over the years. I can only hope that it makes them proud.”
Check out the original song after the jump.[youtube]http://youtu.be/Zy3fJ8Nmzyw[/youtube]
