Update, 2/11/12, 12:22 pm: We’ve gotten some more info on the track. Guitarist Dean Herrera recorded all the guitar parts for these tracks during sessions for Digital Veil. Like that album, it was mixed and mastered by Will Putney. Internally, the band refers to the song as “Dean Shreds Beethoven.” My apologies for assuming it was a Minette joint! It wasn’t my intention to take anything away from Herrera, who is also a crazy talented guitar player that deserves his due.

Here’s something that’ll make you happy while we wait to see whether or not The Human Abstract have broken up.

Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” is one of those pieces of music that’s so famous, everyone in the entire world knows it, even if he or she doens’t know that he or she knows it. Seriously. It’s this thing, in case you’re one of those people who doesn’t know you know it:

See? You’ve heard that, like, a gajillion times before, right?

Well, it’s no secret that The Human Abstract guitarist A.J. Minette is a student of classical music — that’s clear just from reading the “Abstract Theory” columns he wrote for us, or this interview I did with him while the band was in the studio recording last year’s Digital Veil, or just from, y’know, listening to the band’s music for ten seconds — so it should be no surprise that at some point the band recorded a cover of “Moonlight Sonata.” It’s available now on iTunes, and it costs all of two bucks.

I’m listening to it now, and, naturally, the band metalled it up in some places, and, yes, it is frickin’ awesome. It also further illustrates a point we’ve been trying to make forever — that there’s a distinct and definite connection between classical music and metal.

So download the tracks and then play them for your snobby friend who thinks metal is just noise that takes no skill to play, or whatever other bullshit they’re slingin’. And tell ‘im The Human Abstract sent ya.

-AR