russelcs asked: I was wondering if you covered what each of the weapon names in DemonSteele reference. I'm honestly more curious if the Maw of the Legion and Frosthammer of Cocytus reference anything even though they were designed in homage to people who helped with the mod.
General rule of thumb is that the angelic weapons refer to band names, while the demonic weapons refer to song names.
This goes back into the basic motivation for the eternal war.
As the humans were made in God’s image, the angels have a simple motivation to protect them and Earth. The demons, however, rebel against the “natural” order; they want to break free from the prison they were thrown into simply for opposing whom they refer to as the Tyrant. They are angry that this new, weak species gets preferential treatment for doing nothing, while they deserve to be free on Earth.
The angels are more interested in each other as a whole and are united together in their faith, which gives their weapons the names of groups. The demons are selfish and care about themselves and their own desires, which gives their weapons the names of individual songs and tweaks them a bit to suit their own purposes.
The angelic weapons:
The Omen is named after the 1980s power/speed metal band of the same name. They were especially prominent in the 80s and helped build up the unique sound that would define power metal—the wailing vocals, the emphasis on melody, referential lyrics.
The Testament is named after the 1980s thrash metal band of the same name. While they were formed in the 80s, they dominated the 90s, because their music was heavy and brutal. While they never achieved the same mainstream recognition as The Big Four, they’re a personal favorite of mine.
The Exodus is named after another 80s thrash metal band, one afflicted with terrible luck. Lots of numerous lineup changes, extended haituses, and deaths of band mates. Still, on the bright side, this lends them an extremely unique sound that practically changes from album to album.
The Sabbath is…come on, do I really need to spell this out? It’s Black Sabbath. Even non-metalheads know who Black Sabbath is.
The Iron Savior armor is reference to the 90s power metal band, which intentionally aimed for a retro Judas Priest/Iron Maiden style sound. Even in their modern songs, you can hear the old-fashioned sensibilities. Appropriately enough, it transforms Hae-Lin into the Iron Maiden, which is an obvious enough reference.
The demonic weapons:
The Kharon is named after the King Diamond song Charon, with a K on top because this is 90s as hell and Ks are Kool. Also Kharon is a legit spelling anyway. King Diamond’s appearance is iconic, and was the big inspiration for the typical black/death metal look of corpse paint—though he never dabbled in those genres himself, you gotta pay respect to the originator.
The Legion is named after Legion of the Lost, from the German speed metal band Grave Digger. Interestingly enough, after I posted the first webm of the Legion, some /vr/gins were asking about what in the world band this was a reference to, and another posted the album of Deicide’s Legion. Considering the subject matter of one of the album songs, this is a pretty funny coincidence that I’m happy to accept, even if they’re not the style I’m going for with DemonSteele.
The Frosthammer is named after High on Fire’s song Frost Hammer. Speaking of “style”, they were formed in the late, late, late 90s and so their sound is distinctly different from everything else DemonSteele aims for, more reminiscent of the screaming vocals and the dissonant melody that most people associate with modern metal. Still, it’s good to mix things up every now and then.
