Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer and all round great dude Chad Smith has absolutely crushed Thirty Seconds To Mars’ ‘The Kill’ on drums, after never hearing the song before.
Smith recently appeared on the YouTube channel Drumeo, where as part of their 'Hearing Songs For The First Time' series, they issue drummers the challenge of covering songs they don't know.
After hearing the first verse, which had no drum track, Smith launches into the chorus - and farking nails it. Like, pretty much perfectly recreates the track, after hearing only 30 seconds of it. No pun intended.
“What the fuck was that?” Smith asks once he finishes. “Is that, like, My Chemical Romance or something? … I don’t know what the fuck it is.”
Even though it’s somewhat hard to believe that Smith had never heard the track before, he explained that songs like 'The Kill' are “not my normal wheelhouse,” and has a genuine reaction to finding out what the song was.
“Ahhh! Jared’s band. Jared Leto. His brother is the drummer,” Chad says when he finds out the tune he just played on.
Pretty much everyone in the comments is bloody impressed by the performance, with many hailing it as the best in the series so far.
One person commented, “This is honestly probably one of the most impressive musical performances of all time and I wish more people knew about it. The way he just improvised and adapted to everything and played it near perfectly is just astonishing.”
While another commented, “I love how usually drumeo highlights the importance of 'active listening' as drummers hear the song for the first time and then go for a first pass, but Chad Smith being an absolute Chad goes 30 seconds in and practically nails the song, even anticipating the drop!”
Have a watch of the video up top - it’s pretty bloody impressive.
