The Australian power metal band Ilium, as you can tell from the name, are no strangers to classical mythology. Their 2007 album “Vespertilion” (a pun on the band’s name and a Latinate word for ‘relating to bats’) concludes with an 8-minute epic that relates the myth of the legendary founder twins raised by the she-wolf. […]
Day 4 of 7 Days of Roman Founders. Today let’s look at a French band’s take on the Roman foundation myth. Deos is another band who go all in with Roman themes, and their debut album, 2015’s Ghosts of the Empire, naturally begins at the beginning. This opening track (following an instrumental intro) takes its […]
Day 3 of 7 Days of Roman Founders. Today we showcase Ordo Inferus, an American/Swedish death metal syndicate featuring members of such major-league acts as Necrophobic, Funebrarum, and Disma. In 2014 they released their debut Invictus et Aeternus (unconquered and everlasting) devoted entirely to themes of Roman myth, history, and culture. “Rhea Ilia” is their […]
Day 2 of 7 Days of Roman Founders. Last time we provided an overview of the myth of Romulus & Remus, and Manilla Road’s reception thereof. Today we move into more extreme territory, to the folk-infused Italian death metal of Ade, natives of the city of Rome itself. The band’s entire concept is devoted to […]
Day 1 of 7 Days of Roman Founders. By the end of the Roman Republic and dawn of Augustus’ Empire, various accounts of national origins were approaching uniformity: the twin descendants of the Trojan hero and refugee Aeneas, Romulus and Remus, founded the city of Rome in (give or take a year) 753 BCE. While […]
Zeus holds his place at the pinnacle of the Greek pantheon for a number of reasons. First and foremost, he earned it by right of might, overthrowing his own titanic father, “crooked Cronus” after a war between the Titans and Cronus’ Olympian progeny. This victory was not without the help of Zeus’ mother Rhea. Hearing […]
The Canadian heavy metal band Gatekeeper‘s release of their first LP East of Sun via Cruz del Sur last year catapulted the band into the spotlight as the new wave of traditional heavy metal gains ever more steam. But as today’s festivities turn our minds back to Canada’s unification into a single Dominion in 1867, […]
On this day in 363 CE, the last Roman emperor not to take up the banner of Christ, the nephew of the very Constantine who was the first Christian emperor, was wounded by a spear to the abdomen on the battlefield against the Sassanid Persian Empire. Julian would succumb to his wound 3 days later, […]
When given the terms “megalomaniac” and “Roman emperor,” most people today can name Nero and Caligula, and perhaps Commodus thanks to “Gladiator.” But the Romans themselves in their later history often included one more in their canonical lists of exemplary tyrants. That was Titus Flavius Domitianus, known to us as Domitian. While not possessing the […]
Among the many perils braved by Jason and his crew of Argonauts as they sailed toward the enchanted East was what we can rightly call the archetypal heavy-weight boxing match. Apollonius of Rhodes relates the episode most famously as the opening scene of Book 2 of his Hellenistic epic “Argonautica.” Shortly before encountering the Harpies […]
Heavy Metal Classicist 