<\/p>\n
In 1998, the same year that the pioneering death-metal band Death released their final album, The Sound of Perseverance, Madonna released her ethereal trip-hop pop single, \u201cFrozen.\u201d At some point between Madge\u2019s VH1 dominance and Schuldiner\u2019s cancer-related death in 2001, the death-metal firebrand recorded his own version of the song \u2014 unreleased until now.<\/p>\n
The track, an instrumental, features Schuldiner playing the song\u2019s Middle Eastern\u2013influenced music and vocal lines on his guitar to a drum machine. It sounds plaintive, understated, and unlike any other music for which Schuldiner is famous.<\/p>\n
More from Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n The recording surfaced when Schuldiner\u2019s nephew, Chris Steele, discovered a CD-R of the song and played it in his car stereo, as seen in an Instagram reel. \u201cFound this today going through some things,\u201d Steele wrote. \u201cChuck recorded this in the early stages of his battle with cancer, I remember it well. Chuck sitting in his bedroom with his [B.C. Rich Stealth guitar] and a drum machine. I\u2019m not sure how many people outside of the family and a few friends have heard this but it\u2019s all yours: Chuck\u2019s version of Madonna\u2019s 1998 single \u2018Frozen.\u2019 \ud83e\udd18\ud83c\udffb\u201d<\/p>\n Schuldiner formed his first band, Mantas, in 1983 \u2013 the same year Madonna\u2019s self-titled debut was burning up the charts. He and his bandmates drew inspiration from the same New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands that influenced Metallica to invent thrash metal and took the sound a step further with Schuldiner\u2019s demonic, guttural growling. Death\u2019s 1987 debut, Scream Bloody Gore, was a death-metal landmark. Schuldiner and his bandmates fine-tuned and tightened the sound on subsequent albums, hitting a high water mark on 1991\u2019s Human, which landed at Number 70 on Rolling Stone\u2019s list<\/a> of the 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time.<\/p>\n The artist, who also recorded with the groups Voodoocult and Control Denied, was diagnosed with brain cancer in 1999. He died of complications from the disease at age 34 in 2001. A new authorized biography of the artist, Born Human: The Life and Music of Death\u2019s Chuck Schuldiner<\/a>, by David E. Gehlke will come out this month.<\/p>\n Best of Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 1998, the same year that the pioneering death-metal band Death released their final album, The Sound of Perseverance, Madonna released her ethereal trip-hop pop single, \u201cFrozen.\u201d At some point between Madge\u2019s VH1 dominance and Schuldiner\u2019s cancer-related death in 2001, the death-metal firebrand recorded his own version of the song \u2014 unreleased until now. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2151831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[411722,21963,314737,411721],"class_list":["post-2151830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-chris-steele","tag-madonna","tag-rolling-stone","tag-schuldiner"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Hear-Death-Metal-Pioneers-Surprising-Long-Lost-Madonna-Cover.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2151830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2151830"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2151830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2151832,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2151830\/revisions\/2151832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2151831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2151830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2151830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2151830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}