 Re: covers vs originals
Covers allow a band to show respect to the music they enjoy, or bands who highly influenced their sound (i.e Avathar's cover of Nightshade Forests by Summoning), and they can allow a new element to be added to the original song (with varying results in terms of quality, but it can be pulled off very well, just listen to Coroner covering "I want you (she's so heavy)" by the Beatles) I agree with some of the early posts that silly or quirky covers of pop songs etc can work great as bonus tracks on the end of the album...
I agree that selling it, by making a cover into a single, or having 2 or 3 on a single album... or just generally focusing a bands output on covers is pretty lame (especially those albums which are entirely covers of other bands using band "X"'s standard style for every covered song, Like garage inc and Helloween's Jukebox and that shitty Blind Guardian album... ugh), if they don't give credit to the original song then that's just ridiculously bad, and semi-stealing, but rare.
However, if you think about it, it's actually very rare for a band to get famous because they've done a cover of a big bands song, in fact no metal examples spring instantly to mind... Maybe a few garage bands think they'll get some streetcred for making a 4th rate cover of Metallicas Seek And Destroy but it just doesn't seem to happen... At the moment, if a band has a lazy mindset, gimmickry seems to work better than covering the big boys. Look at Alestorm... Having a cover or two isn't a sign of laziness if the other songs are good on their own merits, and for me there are no warning bells if I see that a band has done a cover, if anything it makes me curious.
 | 
Linear Mode
