Alphabet of the Arcane: The Letter L
In Alphabet of the Arcane, Justin Maudslien, aka Sub-Human’s Mr. M., explores weird and little known factoids and shares his skewed observations about the world of comics, cartoons and sequential art.
Surrender all free will for your Supreme Overlord, Mr. M, has arrived! Gather round my halflings and let me tell you a tale of hard riffs and clashing swords. This bi-weekly blog is brought to you by the number 8 and the letter L. This time L stands for Lord of the Rings and Lead singers of metal bands. These are a few of my favorite things!
Once I set foot back on the continent from my recent trip I felt overdosed on culture. I had to reintroduce myself to the American past time of getting fatter by sitting on the couch, and what better way than a movie trilogy marathon? It came to my attention that most of the characters in Lord of the Rings resemble heavy metal singers. It might be: the testosterone soaked beards; the manly grimaces; all that hair whipping around; or even the sweaty muscles holding axes, but any way you slice it with a battle axe it is clear there is nothing more metal than a medieval fantasy world like Middle Earth.
I looked a little more closely and found that many metal bands take their name directly from the famed books of yesteryear. For example the Viking Death Metal band Amon Amarth took their name from the elvish word for Mount Doom. Another band went so far to call themselves Gandalf, the main wizard of the story.
Gandalf the Band
Gandalf the Wizard
