If you're a fan of heavy metal, you might be excited to know that there's a national Metallica competition between high school marching bands and our very own Reed High School band is competing.
Reed High has chosen to perform one of Metallica's more popular songs. "Fade to Black," but according to the director they decided to put their own little spin on it.
"Our marching band show this year was called 'Fantasmas y Tumbas' which means 'Ghosts and Graves,'" said Ron Eichstedt, Director of Bands for Reed High. "It's our version of Dia de los Muertos show, and so we closed it with Fade to Black, which is a very popular Metallica song, and it featured one of our guitarists Leland. It was cool because every time we played it the stadiums got really excited, the kids got excited and it's a different thing than anyone else is doing in the competition."
Eichstadt says that they play the song verbatim during the intro, then start to add some Latin flare throughout the song.
They then transition back into the original version during the guitar solo. Students say they're proud of their performance.
"It feels exciting," said drum major Braydon Langum. "I always like to listen to heavy metal or rock bands and that kind of thing. I've just listened to them since I was a child and I think it was pretty exciting that we're able to play one in our show."
And the winning prize is a big one too: $15,000 to be exact.
One student tells us what the band plans to do if they were to win the prize money.
"Everything helps. It would help us fund our band, get new instruments, allow us to travel in the future, just lots of things," said drum major Jayla Hill.
Reed is only one of the two schools in the state of Nevada competing in this competition. The other school is Clark High School in Las Vegas. One student tells us he's proud to be representing northern Nevada.
"With only two schools with Nevada in general, us representing all of like northern Nevada was pretty cool, and I know I'm excited," said guitarist Leland Kirk. "Especially if we win that would be pretty cool for the state and or northern Nevada bands entirely."
To watch their full performance and vote for Reed High School you can click here.
