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Skull and Bones
So the winner of our latest Facebook poll was a Hungarian band called Toth Kina Hegyfalu, but their website is some kind of spamware sinkhole that crashed both our computers when we were trying to research them. So fuck those guys. We’re giving this week’s poll to Skull and Bones, with thanks to our old pal Army of Gay Unicorns for turning us on to this bizarro band from Brazil. We love you, Army of Gay Unicorns! In a totally platonic, non-gay way. Don’t get any ideas, bro.
Skull and Bones is one of those “bands” that’s basically just the work of one guy, a Brazilian nut job named Carlos Spartacus. Spartacus’s two great loves in life are heavy metal and conspiracy theories…hence he writes metal songs about things like UFOs, fake moon landings and secret Nazi bases on Antarctica. If this dude hasn’t seen Iron Sky yet, he really should. It’s about a secret Nazi base on the moon! It’s fiction, but we’re sure there’s a conspiracy theory floating around somewhere that claims It’s All True.
As hilarious as Skull and Bones’s videos are, with their clunky animation and shots of Spartacus playing his axe with the grim determination of a third grader doing long division, the man behind them is dead serious about this stuff. His blog is actually more about conspiracy theories and “alternative history” than it is about the band, and he also claims to be a Freemason and a “Magus,” which is a pretentious way of saying he’s into casting spells and shit. Hope he doesn’t read this and put a hex on us for calling his videos “hilarious.” Although this Swedish metal website called Global Domination totally trashed one of his albums and he gave them an interview anyway. So he seems to take the kidding in stride.
Who knows? Maybe Spartacus realizes that he’s just so far ahead of the rest of us that he’ll probably die a misunderstood artist and his music won’t be appreciated until future generations can fully grasp the genius behind songs like “Admiral Byrd’s Expedition, ” which has a little bit of everything, at least in video form: Nazis! Explosions! UFOs! Drummers engulfed in flames! Pinched falsetto vocals! A seriously bored bass player! Actually, this might be the greatest thing coming out of Brazil right now, metal-wise. Compared to this, Sepultura videos suck balls.
P.S. Wanna help choose one of July’s Weird Bands of the Week? Go vote in our latest Facebook poll. Help us spread democracy to the fascist regime that is Facebook!
Links:
Back by no demand whatsoever: Weird Band of the Week Polls!
Back in olden days, when TWBITW was still a smooth young pup of a blog and not the craggy old coot you see before you, what’s now the Submit a Band page was called the Submit & Vote page (in fact, that’s still the URL, because Jake and I are too lazy to change it). Each month (ish) we posted a new band up there and asked you, our beloved readers, to vote on whether you thought they were weird or not. Thanks to your tireless button-clicking, such immortal acts as Army of Gay Unicorns, Dolchnakov Brigade and Extreme Turbo Smash were inducted onto The Weird List. But Jake and I are control freaks, and we weren’t too happy with the fact that other, not-so-weird acts like Social Climbers and The Atlantas also got voted in. So at the end of 2011, we pulled the plug on polls and returned TWBITW to its original state as a benevolent content dictatorship.
But over the past couple of months, we’ve encountered a problem we never expected to have: So many of you are now submitting bands to us that are varying degrees of weird, we have a kind of insane backlog of Weird Band of the Week candidates. So we decided to bring back the poll. This time, however, in a shameless attempt to get more of you people to like us on Facebook, we decided to post the poll over there in the Kingdom of Zuckerberg. Also, Facebook polls—or “Questions,” as they’re officially known—are way easier to update than polls here on WordPress. And did I mention that Jake and I are lazy?
So head on over to Facebook and vote for your favorite of four current nominees for a future Weird Band of the Week slot: Cogs, Skull and Bones, the Radioactive Chicken Heads and Vitamin Wig C. And keep those weird band suggestions coming!
