Yeah, I’m just going to hit you with another Gates of Steel cover. This one is by sludge metal band Eyehategod. I really, really like this cover a lot.

There’s someone on YouTube who says they don’t like the half-time parts and that person is unbelievably wrong. The half-time parts destabilize the song in the best way. One second you’re grooving along and then suddenly you’re slowly head-banging; it’s like hitting the softest brick wall. I just love it. It feels so weird, and genuinely brings something new to the table, something all the other covers I’ve heard so far do not.

Apple Music came out with an AI-assisted prompt-based playlist creator, so I put in the first thing that came to my mind, "DEVO influenced metal," which I thought sounded kind of absurd. But little did I know, it made perfect sense. One of two genuinely good covers in the playlist (which only had 3 songs total, Apple Music AI giving it the ol' college try, I see) was this cover of Gates of Steel, by Surgical Meth Machine, which I did not know until this very moment is a Al Jourgensen side project, though this song is played at Ministry shows, so how much of a side project is this really, but whatever. I mean, okay, being fair, being as fair as I can be, this sounds like more like an Andrew W.K. song than a Ministry song.

While I was hunting this song down again, I was surprised to see five different covers of Gates of Steel, most of them metal / hard rock bands, but there's a really bitchin' ska version by Skankin' Pickle. I guess this shouldn't be a surprise, as Gates of Steel is right up there in the holy pantheon of great DEVO songs, if not all the way up at the very tippy top of the energy dome. What a great song. It doesn't matter how it's covered, those chords are emotive no matter what they sound like.

I think I was first introduced to this song back in 2006, and I fell in love with it. I think I listened to it so much that I grew sick of it and forgot about it for 20 years until last week, when I was shuffling a playlist titled "I Miss 90's Indie" on Apple Music.

When it started playing, I felt myself bolt upright in my seat. I've missed this feeling, this strange haunting song, the repetitive lyrics somewhere between a dirge and a prayer. There was a time I would have thought this song was about someone, but I think it really isn't. The song doesn't feel like it's longing for someone, more like it's hoping for something terrible to finally stop.

I’m posting the live version of this song not just because it is possibly better than the recorded version, but also because I was there. I was at this show. I was among the first people to hear this song played live at a Spoon show, and it was the same day this single was released. That’s pretty great.

I have a lot to say about the history of my Spoon fandom but this is not the time, place, or song to do it. So I’ll hit you back later when the time is right. (Uhh, you wrote about it back in 2024... - Ed)