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.