“He sings like the Cookie Monster!” That’s how non-metal fans invariably respond when confronted with the pharynx-ripping brutality of death metal. But the link between fuzzy puppets and extreme “heaviosity” runs deeper than you think, as these clips demonstrate…

1. Cookie Monster growls his way through Six Feet Under’s guttural cover of AC/DC’s TNT.

2. The lovable, pink-schnozzed Snowths are best known for their turn on the immortal Mahna Mahna, but they seem far more at home belting out Pantera’s Fucking Hostile.

3. Beaker pulls off a convincing James Hetfield impersonation in this cover of Metallica’s Master Of Muppets - sorry, Puppets.

4. Beaker again, this time grinding out some truly ugly death metal. Animal kindly supplies the blastbeats.

5. “A-one and a-two and a-chicka booma chick!” Bert and Ernie cover a breezy ditty called A Divine Proclamation To End The Present Existence, originally by roly-poly funsters Last Days of Humanity.

6. OK, so this isn’t from The Muppets, but Spongebob Squarepants’s Atreyu cover is just too perfect to pass over.

So… that’s what happens when puppets do metal. But how about the other way round? What would a metal band sound like playing the Muppet theme? A little like this, as it happens.