Looking on the music site Noisecreep, I saw a very disturbing headline: “Heavy Metal Karaoke, Serious or Not?” In this news story, Blasko, bassist for Ozzy, talked about a gig he’s doing in Hollywood and Vegas where he and friends like Tommy Victor from Prong will perform metal classics, and anyone who wants to can come up and sing to them.

Now please understand, Blasko’s a cool guy in my book. Underground metal and hardcore fans may remember he was the bassist in the speedcore group Cryptic Slaughter under his real name, Rob Nicholson, and obviously this story was not meant to be totally serious, but there are some things you should just not joke about.

Metal karaoke brings to mind Tommy Lee rapping, E.T. the video game, Van Halen with Gary Cherrone, and Hudson Hawk. In other words, very bad ideas that were doomed from the start, and should have been strangled in the crib. Because after all, karaoke can often be painful, but metal karaoke is very painful, and usually about as listenable as Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music.

Usually some chucklehead will come up to the mic, and just shout and yell a song like “Enter Sandman,” understanding nothing about dynamics, or what makes great metal vocals (certainly anyone attempting to sing like Rob Halford really needs some semblance of singing ability, or it’s really gonna be painful).

Still, karaoke is a lot like stepping into Guitar Center. Usually you’re bombarded by unlistenable attempts at performing something cool, but every once in a while you’ll hear real talent. In fact, one of the best karaoke songs you’ll hear is a metal tune, Lita Ford and Ozzy’s duet, “Close My Eyes Forever.” I’ve heard this one many times on karaoke night, and it’s a fairly easy tune that can turn out nicely if you’re a decent singer.

Otherwise, without even a shred of singing talent, metal will sound like anything else that goes through the karaoke meat-grinder: awful. The metal genre has certainly taken a lot of hits in its lifetime, including a deadly dry-spell in the ‘90’s, but metal karaoke will probably have the same effect as Pat Boone’s metal album: Faintly amusing, and hopefully won’t cause any long-term damage.