Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Metallica

Exit light, enter night. The heavy metal sounds of Metallica's best-known anthems have been turned into shimmering lullabies for your little metalhead pride and joy. We have traded the guitars and drums for chimes and harop, turned down the volume from an eleven to a two and made the bed ourselves. Say your prayers little one. Tonight the sandman will be gently rocking you to sleep.

It's a funny thing with Rockabye Baby's Lullaby Renditions of Metallica--the disc is both all about the music and it's not. Consider it: on the one hand, here is a righteous, fully recognizable assortment of vintage Metallica tunes, including "Master of Puppets," "Enter Sandman," and "Nothing Else Matters." On the other, what's to stop a suburban massage parlor from passing it off as another generic, therapeutically new-age soundtrack to release tension by? Not a lot. The point being that this is a strangely versatile disc, but one no Metallica-loving new parent should be without. Starting, appropriately enough, at "One," producer and performer Michael Armstrong reduces Kirk Hammett's once rib-crushing riffs to xylophone and toy piano; "Fade to Black" becomes powder-puff pink, "(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth" becomes more like "(Band-Aid) Kissing a Boo-Boo." Somewhat miraculously, what once was suitable listening for leather-wearers only becomes music to fasten Pampers by. Enjoyably. Upping the gift-appeal factor is Metallica's inarguably cool liner notes: scissors, string, tape, and a hole punch turns them into a heavy-metal mobile to hang over baby's bed. --Tammy La Gorce