Odds are, if you like heavy metal (proper heavy metal, not that godawful angstbuckety nonsense with rappers and whining), you're a geek. Because metal attracts geeks. Though the reasons for such are best left to another node. So, without further ado, here are the ten geekiest metal songs of all time, in reverse order.
Though this song is about NES games and sneakily segues into the Tetris theme tune near the end, it only just gets on this list because old-school Nintendo has been, annoyingly, adopted as "geek chic" by some no-account marketrons who want to sell ports of such games for mobile phones. Needless to say, though, any song with the line "To save my daughter and eat the hams is the order of the hour" in it is at least mildly geeky...
Blind Guardian's original entry on this list was "the Soulforged" which is about DragonLance but I think this is geekier by far. Not only is it about an RPG, specifically "Sacred 2 - Fallen Angel", but it's actually in the game as a sort of easter egg. The band appear in 3D-rendered glory to play it to a hall full of orcs. Alarmingly, this was how the song was released - and yes, it's a fixture at their live shows. I love it.
Bal-Sagoth get two entries in this list, but that's because they're massive geeks. And this song proves it. It's about Galactus and the Silver Surfer and name-drops the man appointed as "protector" of the world. The song also features the very geeky amd truly winful lines, "I was ancient when your ancestors were naught but protoplasmic slime!" and "I shall crush the Tellurian sphere, and all the flaccid lickspittles who purport to guard it!" I can just imagine a horde of fatbeards approving of this as they leaf through the latest issue of Infinite Crisis.
Before they landed a record deal, veteran thrashers Sabbat's finest hour was this song that, for some inexplicable reason, they're a bit embarrassed by and don't talk about much. Which is a pity, because it really, seriously, rules. It was distributed on a flexi disc in an issue of White Dwarf in 1987 and is pretty damn rare, even on the Internet (although helpfully someone's uploaded the song to YouTube). As can be gleaned from the title, it's about Warhammer. And yes, the chorus line is what the title suggest, and yes, it is very cool. SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!! and all that.
There's so much to pick from Rhapsody's works that would fit in here, but I'm sticking with probably their best known song, because it's one of their geekiest. It appeals to D&D players, LARPers, shredheads, and people who flounce round Italy in a big shirt trying to get laid. It opens with a needles sweep-picking guitar part, has lyrics about going on a quest for truth, justice, and swiving elf-maidens, and a brilliant singalong chorus. In fact, something by Rhapsody shoulda topped this list, and had Emerald Sword included a part in Latin and a narration by Christopher Lee, like several of their other songs have had, it would have won hands down...
See if you can spot the pattern here: the band Bolt Thrower are named after a siege weapon from Warhammer, the song is named after a legion of the Chaos Space Marines, the album on which it was found was called "Realm of Chaos / Slaves to Darkness" which is also the name of a Warhammer 40K source book, Games Workshop partly funded the album's production, and the cover art is the same as is used on the cover of Rogue Trader with a horde of space marines backing up desperately to protect their standard against an unseen foe from all sides while smoke and fire and corpses fill the air. Brilliant song though. "WÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖRRRRRLLLLLDDDDDDDD EEEEAAAAAATTTTTÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖRRRRRRRRR."
Grindy, sleazy riffing! Well built men in loincloths singing about having hordes of well-jugged wenches at their beck and call! The lyrics, "Woman, be my slave! / Chained unto the bed / Woman, be my slave! / Begging to be fed!" and so forth! Yep, it's like the Chronicles of Gor come to life. And since Tarl Cabot, at all times with a sword in one hand and a chained naked slave girl in the other, is who a lot of teenaged misfits spend a lot of their wank fantasies wishing their were, this song is very very very very geeky. Yes, I know, it's toe-curlingly sexist. But undeniably geeky. And I like it anyhow, mainly because it annoys preachy feminist types. And let's be frank, who would pass up being a well-built studmuffin with a ginger mullet whose sword is constantly wet with the blood of his slain foes and whose... other... sword is constantly wet with... well, other things?
This black metal number is based on the back story to Vampire: The Masquerade, which is a tabletop role-playing game, and moreover, a tabletop role-playing game that not everyone's heard of. The song is all based on how Cain was cast out of Eden and encountered Adam's first wife Lilith and from there on spawned the vampires. The video, though, is where the geekdom is truly ratcheted up to terrifying proportions, as it is for all intents and purposes a fan film of this backstory by the band, so they've got Kaiaphas in leather trousers, black shirt, corpse-paint and plastic vampire fangs as Cain and Kimberly Goss of Sinergy (appearing on keyboards for this song and its album) looking confused in a floaty red gown as Lilith. In between there's shots of the guitarist shredding in a moonlit forest, loads of extreme close ups of Kaiaphas lunching up on Kim Goss's forearm, and some get with green face paint who appears to be performing invisible cunnilingus from time to time during the video. If anyone who's played more Vampire: The Masquerade than I have can discern what this person's meant to be, please let me know.
Second prize goes to Rakoth, who are from Obninsk in Russia and aren't really heard of outside of the former Eastern bloc, for this song. "Og'elend" is a creepy, atmospheric, drifty number which gets the prize because not only is it about drow from Dungeons & Dragons, it's about drow who aren't Drizzt Do'Urden, and BECAUSE PART OF IT IS IN DROW. Which, for the record, is an incomplete constructed language the precepts of which were only really set out in an appendix to a D&D manual dating from 1992, "The Drow of the Underdark." I must say, though, that drow, as a language, sounds even more sinister when delivered in a Russian accent. The song's not half bad either. Dal ultrinnan ulu el'insrigg!
But alarmingly, this is not the geekiest song in metal.
The title alone propels this one into the top ten, as it is, I think, the longest song title of any metal song ever, though there are some pretentious indie-rock bands that have longer song titles I'm sure, and Demilich's "The Planet That Once Used To Absorb Flesh In Order To Achieve Divinity And Immortality (Suffocated To The Flesh That It Desired)" comes close. It gets Geekdom Points because it's the continuing saga of the Sagoth's earlier song "The Splendour of a Thousand Swords Gleaming Beneath The Blazon of the Hyperborean Empire," which deals with some ridiculous fantasy battle between the forces of chaos involving the Ogre Mage of the Black Lake and the Swordmaster of Kyrmanku'ul against the glorious legions of Hyperborea. The whole having read too much Robert E. Howard aside, there's also some good friendly guitar noodling and choruses of "RIDE THEM DOWN!! RIDE THEM DOWN!!" thrown into the mix, all of which mean you could probably invite the regulars at your Tuesday evening round-the-kitchen-table Magic The Gathering sessions along to listen to it and they'd all pronounce it totally awesome.
And that brings us to the end of this oeuvre. I wish you well. And if music be the food of love, then KILL BURN MAIM, IN KHORNE'S UNHOLY NAME!