11-year-old metal guitarist Maya Neelakantan made her way back to television last night (August 28th) to rip into Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” for the America’s Got Talent quarterfinals. Going by the judges’ reactions, she was pulling their strings, too.
The performance was broadcast live, and followed Neelakantan’s spring appearance on the program, during which she covered Papa Roach’s “Last Resort.” This time around, she reached back to the classic thrash era by shredding through ‘Tallica’s “Master of Puppets” on a silver Flying V, a recent gift from Gibson Guitars.
While mostly, scorchingly faithful to Kirk Hammett and Papa Het’s original rhythms, Neelakantan also injected a raga-like breakdown into the song, adding ahead of the stylistic swerve: “AGT, are you ready?” Before the performance, she’d perhaps alluded to that switch-up in an Instagram post, where she wrote she had a “big surprise” for audiences.
Judge Howie Mandel quipped that the young guitar phenom was like “Eddie Van Halen, reincarnated,” while Simon Cowell, after thanking Metallica for ok’ing the cover for the show, added that Neelakantan is “just one of these people with a God-given talent.”
You can watch Neelakantan master her instrument of choice up above.
As previously reported, before Neelakantan made it to AGT, the young Indian guitarist had been uploading TOOL covers to Instagram. In recent months, the electric player has made friends within the metal community, including Exodus/Slayer’s Gary Holt.