As if playing Dracula over 10 times, portraying iconic screen villains Professor Moriarity, Count Dooku and the wizard Saruman, acting in 3 Tim Burton films, and his extensive knowledge of England’s public executioners dating back to the 15th century weren’t enough to qualify him, now Christopher Lee’s cementing his title as England’s Classiest Goth (Senior Division) by recording a metal concept album about the life of Charlemagne.
It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise; long a fan of D&D metal band Rhapsody, Lee recorded vocals for their album Symphony of Enchanted Lands II and starred as The Wizard King in several videos. Seriously.
(their lead singer sort of looks like Weird Al, no?)
He’s also related to King Charlemagne on his mother’s side through Italian nobility, and has long been interested in bringing his ancestor’s story to life. Lucky for us it’s through the magic of song and arpeggios. You can preview the album using the widget below; it’s less ‘metal’ and more ‘Jesus Christ Superstar meets Les Miserables’ (specifically anything sung by Jean Valjean).
I never thought I’d see the day Christopher Lee had a street team.
I came across this handspun yarn, entitled ‘Vitreous Humour’, on of all places a Dethklok knitting board. Yes, the internet has shown us no matter how random or disturbing your interests, someone out there shares them (see: Newsies/Lost Boys/Jim Morrison fanfiction).
Anyway, behold the gory glory that is this yarn:
If you feel you must immediately knit a Doom-themed scarf from this you can purchase it here.
If it isn’t already a genre (and it must be), Rhapsody are the reigning kings of Dungeons and Dragons Metal. They’ve all the charms of overly earnest foriegn nerds (they’re from Italy, a country too sunny to produce many metal outfits), and the blind spot to their own ridiculousness that comes with it. The extended story at the end of ‘Heros of the Lost Valleys’ is a dead ringer for the ‘no one knows who they were, or…what they were doing there’ speech in the middle ofSpinal Tap’s ‘Stonehenge’, but Rhapsody are deadly serious, and have 5 more songs continuing the epic.
Due to legal issues, they recently changed their name to ‘Rhapsody of Fire’, but if the site for their new album’s any indication, it’s only spurred them deeper into Arthurian mythology and Elfin conquest. A review on AllMusic.com suggested (of their album ‘Power of the Dragon Flame’) ‘perhaps this gets a bit overblown at times’; give this man the award for understatement. I recommend starting off with the full-out ‘Agony’ and ‘Emerald Sword’, both replete with operatic choruses, declarations of vengeance, and multilayered orchestrations, then perhaps moving on to slower ballads like ‘The Magic of The Wizard’s Dream’. Sweet mercy, they even have Christopher Lee starring in their epic video for ‘Unholy Warcry’!!!
Black-robed figures, check. Castle ruins, check. Negative effect, check. Skulls, flames, check. It’s no ‘Holy Diver’, but few things can top Dio’s ample sword-swinging.
Ah, I forgot Europe’s laxity concerning toplessness. This one definitely makes up for the latter’s lack of wild sword-waving and bad CGI. Please watch halfway in for the keyboardist in glowing-orb combat with the demon chick. Demon chick wins and then goes on to kill the lead guitarist’s sleeping bride. He’s understandably upset and therefore very motivated to fight the giant glowing electric gash in the woods.
Power of the Dragon Flame. It’s really hard to date foriegn videos and metal videos since both have a tendancy to use effects about 5 years out of date, Italy’s taste veers wildly towards tacky, and metal imagery’s been stuck in a rut since the late 80′s. This could have been made any time between 1981 and now.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go slay some trolls.
Over on Beware of the Blog they’ve uncovered the earliest found example of a bleeped F-word, in a rather raunchy court transcript dating from 1698. Seems Capt. Edward Rigby was indending to commit ‘the Abominable SIN of SODOMY’ on another fellow, and all the gritty details are typed out for you and the court to peruse. Somehow the old-tymie spelling makes sentences like “Then Rigby ki?t Minton ?everal times, putting his Tongue in his Mouth, and taking Mintonin his arms, wi?ht he might lye with him all night, and that his Lu?t was provoked to that degree…” all the more hilarious. The entire recorded conversation sounds like it was lifted from a B-grade bodice-ripper.
Now, plenty of earlier court transcripts had been found with the F-word fully intact; somewhere in the late 1600′s the trend towards blocking it out began. Whether this was due to new standards of decency or just a typographical fad is unknown.
This is the sort of stuff that should be covered in history classes; it’s like COPS: 17th Century. Nothing grabs kids’ attention like sex and violence, something most schools try strenuously to avoid. Perhaps I shouldn’t rag on History class so much; it’s very difficult to try and cram knowledge into kids’ heads as it is. Teaching high schoolers is that much more difficult, what with their ability to sass back and raging hormones, and the entire concept of whittling down centuries of events and culture into a 40 minute lesson leaves you with spare footnotes, if even that.
On a different note, proving once again that reality trumps fiction in the random department, here’s a trailer for a documentary about a Finnish metal band whose lead singer was murdered in one of the more gruesome cases Scandinavia had ever seen. After reading ‘Lords of Chaos’, I’m convinced all of Scandanavia’s violent crimes are metal-related. Below is another Scandanavian metal band, Lordi, who won a contest that’s basically the Pop-Music Olympics. Abba was a frequent winner.
Okay, that’s actually Iron Maiden. But along with a slew of cheesy horror movie and metal album releases, and every Hot Topic couple in the world getting married, June 6th, 2006, is also National Listen To Slayer Day. The important thing is not just for you to listen to it at earsplitting levels, but to make everyone within a one-mile radius to hear killer riffs all day. Forced participation is the only proper way to celebrate an American National Holiday. The site offers helpful tips for participating, as well as a full discography and history of Slayer. I presume everyone had that handful of kids in their school who managed to wear a Slayer shirt to school everyday, but I realize I’m from Jersey and was a stone’s throw away from Sayreville, nicknamed Slayerville for its metalhead population.
I’ve posted random stuff online for several years and am happy to provide a pleasant visual forum for visitors to oggle. I hope this site offers tidbits of interest to the curious reader, and useful information for the crafty.
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