About

Death Metal Rooster is a viral video showing a rooster putting on an impressive display of crowing to a death metal soundtrack.

Origin

The original video of a rooster crowing for over 30 seconds was uploaded to YouTube on February 25th, 2009 by a user in Germany, orhanx5577.

Almost a year later on January 6th, 2010, musician Ewan Parry of the band Talanas found the video and created a unique Death Metal track to be placed in the background.

Within two weeks of posting, it had garnered over 1 million hits. It's popularity spread due to appearing everywhere from Digg to Yahoo! Music, Los Angeles radio station KROQ and Paste Magazine in addition to hundreds of thousands of views coming from Facebook. On January 12th, 2010, it appeared in the Around the Net section of G4's "Attack of the Show" podcast

Discovery News posted the video "Animals: Death Metal Rooster Explained" on January 19, 2010, in which an associate professor of Animal and Avian Sciences from the University of Maryland explains how the animal could produce the sound that long.

Video Derivatives

The popularity of the video was immediate, and like many viral videos, a number of derivative works were created by others hoping for piggyback views. However, most of the remixes and responses have under 5,000 views a piece.

Search

Searches for Death Metal Rooster peaked sharply, and fell back into equilibrium.

Aftermath

Nine months after the video first appeared, there are still people reuploading the original. The rationale behind this behavior is unclear. The original videos are still available, meaning that it is likely not an attempt to preserve the meme. The meme's viral stage has passed long ago, making it too late to attempt to piggyback on the attention of the meme.