Taylor Swift’s Bass Player Tackles Prog Metal Legends Dream Theater And Its Impressive As Hell

A couple of weeks ago, we talked about one of my favorite videos to hit the internet in quite some time, and that was when legendary rock and metal drummer Mike Portnoy from the band Dream Theater tried his hand at playing the Taylor Swift song, "Shake It Off.:

It was bizarre to hear Portnoy's ridiculous chops as part of one of Swift's tunes, but I remember finishing that piece (which was critically acclaimed, by the way), lacing my hands behind my head, leading back in my chair and saying to no one, "Welp, that's the last time I ever put the names "Dream Theater" and "Taylor Swift" in the same article."

Wrong.

So, the bass player in Taylor Swift's band is a fella named Amos Heller, and what I don't think people always realize is that it's not uncommon at all for pop artists to recruit ridiculously talented musicians to play in their backing bands.

Michael Jackson had some great guitarists in his band, while Rihanna has had axe-slinger Nuno Bettencourt from the band Extreme working for her in recent years.

Swift is no different, and Heller is not only an insanely talented bass player, he's also a metalhead.

According to Metal Injection, Heller partnered with guitar and bass manufacturer Dingwall to show off a D-ROC Custom bass with specs that will make anyone who is into guitars or basses drool all over themselves (speaking from experience).

And how better to show what a high-performance ax like that can do than by playing a bass part written by one of the best bass players on the planet, Dream Theater's bass player John Myung?

I don't know if it was inspired by Portnoy's viral cover of "Shake It Off" — a song Heller knows forward, backward, and inside-out — or not, but the man who holds down the low end for the biggest artist on the planet threw on a Dream Theater shirt featuring the artwork from the 1994 album Awake and a played a cut from that record, "Caught In A Web," to perfection.

Alright, someone needs to get Heller hooked up with Mike Portnoy because I think the world needs to see these two guys jam together. Like, for the good of humanity.