SPIDER ONE Explains How POWERMAN 5000 Goes About Choosing Which Songs To Cover

In a new interview with What's Under The Bed?, POWERMAN 5000 frontman Spider One was asked how he and his bandmates go about choosing which songs to cover, having previously released a covers album in 2011 called "Copies, Clones & Replicants", featuring electrified versions of DEVO's "Whip It", VAN HALEN's "Jump", David Bowie's "Space Oddity", T. Rex's "20th Century Boy" and INXS's "Devil Inside", among others. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "It's funny how we have done a bunch of cover tunes, and there's no real reason for it. I hear songs every day that I would be, like, 'Wow, that'd be great to cover that.' I think I generally go for stuff that had some effect on me as a child or young person, although there are modern stuff I'd love to give a go at. But sometimes the idea is just, 'Can I reasonably do this?' There are just some songs that would just be a disaster. Like, I'm not gonna attempt to [cover] Curtis Mayfield or something; that would be terrible. So I try to find something that I, with my limited vocal ability, can hopefully do some justice to.

"I think it's always most exciting when someone takes a song and kind of turns it on its head, takes a seemingly happy song and makes it sad or something that's really heavy and turns it into a ballad," he explained. "And people have done it. But I always thought that 'Girls Just Want To Have Fun', if you didn't hear the track, is a very sad song. And if you listen to the lyrics, or even VAN HALEN's 'Jump' seems to me to be a sad song. I don't know. So I think there's an interesting way to just maybe focus on the lyrics and then change the music into an entirely different mood."

POWERMAN 5000's latest studio album, "Abandon Ship", arrived in May via Cleopatra Records. The follow-up to 2020's "The Noble Rot" boasts 10 all-new original tracks produced by Matt McJunkins of A PERFECT CIRCLE and EAGLES OF DEATH METAL fame. The album's CD edition includes a bonus track — a revamped version of POWERMAN 5000's 2001 hit "Bombshell".

In May 2020, POWERMAN 5000 released its reimagining of the classic '80s new wave smash "We Got The Beat". "We Got The Beat" was originally made available in 1981 as part of THE GO-GO'S' multi-platinum debut album "Beauty And The Beat".

"Tonight The Stars Revolt!", POWERMAN 5000's second album, was released on July 20, 1999 by DreamWorks Records. It has sold over one million copies and achieved platinum status on the back of such hits as "Nobody's Real" and "When Worlds Collide". With cyberpunk imagery, catchy riffs, funky beats and rap rock vocals, POWERMAN 5000 bridged the gap between nu metal and industrial metal and packaged it up in a retro-science fiction B-movie aesthetic that separated them visually and musically from their peers.