I was just listening to Carach Angren's EP "Ethereal Veiled Existence", which of course, is inspired by the famous The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall photo.

I was wondering if anyone has any other suggestions of metal albums inspired by true events/stories. I'm not counting WWII or any other war, or even historical stuff like ancient Greece / Bible stories. I mean stuff from the 20th century on, and again, not one of the wars. Any stuff like this "haunting" or any other events?

Cryptopsy's eponymous album is based on a whole bunch of different Canadian historical events. I don't know a ton about all the events referenced, though one was about a UFO incident in Nova Scotia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shag_Harbour_UFO_incident

Kauan's latest two albums are of true events, Pirut being influenced by the Chelyabinsk meteor and Sorni Nai being influenced by the Dyatlov Pass incident.

Ahab's album The Divinity Of Oceans was about the story involving the whale ship Essex.

That's all I can think of for now.

This one sounds interesting to me, as I'm from Canada.



I forgot about that Ahab record. I am familiar with that one. I've got to look into the Dyatlov Pass Incident. Thanks!

In that case this one does not apply as the raynham hall ghost photo has been proven to be fake and all the stories about the hauntings are just myths, not true events.

If you're looking for conceptual albums about ghosts, hauntings and related stories King Diamond is definitely the way to go.

There's of course Iron Maiden's "Empire of the Clouds" about the R101 airship that crashed in France in 1930.

Watchtower's "Instruments of Random Murder" is about the 1982 Tylenol scare in Chicago which involved capsules being tainted with cyanide leading to the death of some innocent lives. The song is also true in that the creep(s) behind it weren't caught.

Children of Bodom?

Every song on Lions Share's The Dark Hours is about a 20th century event. The cold war, Vietnam war, JFK assassination, Martin Luther King, the Presidio 27, the moon landing, Charles Manson.

Great album too!

Doesn't Sabaton sing about historical battles/wars?

(Too bad they suck though )

I forgot about that Ahab record. I am familiar with that one. I've got to look into the Dyatlov Pass Incident. Thanks![/quote]

The Dyatlov Pass Incident is pretty fascinating. The Wikipedia article is great because it starts leading you one way and then twists to a different direction and by the end of it you're just baffled. I recommend reading it while listening to the album. (I think the whole album is on youtube and Bandcamp to listen to.)

Sexit has a song called Mor Ho! (kill him! in Slovak) which is about a famous event in Slovak history of some young men sent to persuade an invading force's king (I forgot who) to not invade with gifts. When the king refused, the men bravely charged him - knowing full well that they'd be killed - to show the king just how stubborn and brave the people of Slovakia are. Eventually the invading king got run out and Slovakia was victorious. (Only Sexit's first album is really metal, but this is one's got some good crunch to it and is one of my favorites of theirs.) This might be a little too far back in history for your requests, but it's a great song by a great band and might fit your bill.

Probably thousands of songs could be mentioned in this thread... Just from the top of my head, all the stuff about specific criminals, such as dealt with by Macabre in multitude. Also Annihilator have some stuff like Alison Hell, as presented in the intro text to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTYHYglem-M . And I believe Never, Neverland is based on some true story about a child being isolated from the world by her religious grandmother.


Obviously there are thousands of bands singing about that, but read the OP...

Oh, I'm very familiar with all the King Diamond records.

They do! And while I agree they mostly suck, I actually love their album Carolus Rex. It's about the period during which Sweden was an empire. A "rise and fall" kind of deal. They did one version completely sung in Swedish, and I guess it just appeals to my inner patriot.

The newest Destroyer 666 album has "Tamam Shud", about one of the most fascinating unsolved mysteries of the last century, known simply as The Tamam Shud Case. The lyrics of the song itself are super vague and honestly could be about anything, which is a shame because its namesake is super intriguing. Short version is a man was found dead on a beach in Australia in 1948. He still has not been identified to this day, and sewn into his trousers was a small slip of paper that simply read "Tamam Shud". The scrap was eventually traced back to the book it was torn from, which was found to have indents showing a local phone number, another unidentified number, and a random jumble of letters long assumed to be a yet-undeciphered secret code.

i can't think of any albums like that off the top of my head, that aren't mentioned yet, but since everyone else is ignoring the op's request for albums instead of individual songs, i'm also gonna mention god dethroned's typhoid mary, which just barely fits with the "20th century on" part

also, i guess i'll also mention the devil, tho' it's a bit of a stretch whether they fit the thread or not - all their "vocals" are recordings of famous speeches etc., which sounds kinda stupid, but it actually works really well - they were interesting live as well

Kadath, a death/grind band from Germany, has an album called Chasing the Devil about the crimes, pursuit, capture, and prosecution of Ukrainian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo.
https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/K ... evil/10419

Not that there are non-fucked-up serial killer stories, but this one is supremely fucked up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Chikatilo

Album's not bad, either. Pretty effective.

Metal Church has their Titanic song Rest In Pieces (April 15 1912).

A well-attended Manowar concert is an event inspired by True Metal.

Hypocrisy - Roswell 47
Inspired by famous UFO case that happened in Roswell, USA , in 1947.

Mind's Eye - A Gentleman's Hurricane
A conceptual album based on the assassination of JFK.

Testament - Evil Has Landed
A song about 9/11.

How about Kreator's 'Satan Is Real'??!!

PS. Just noticed that the topics deal with possible conspiracies...

Epica - Facade of Reality
It's about 9/11, and it's pretty good. The Tony Blair speeches are a bit cringy and makes it a bit dated. Still, one of their best songs.

Talking of Cryptopsy and Canada, they wrote a song on the last ep called "The Knife, the Head and What Remains" inspired by a real event of a public beheading.

True story here...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tim_McLean

if you're not into gore, you are strongly advise in not searching for photos of that event.

An aside,



they weren't "tainted," they were poisoned. Cyanide doesn't just accidentally get introduced into eight bottles of Tylenol post-production.

There is a song called "the day burzum killed mayhem"

Well, y'all have let proven hoax hauntings in here, so I assume this thread would also welcome things that almost certainly did not happen? Brazil's Skull and Bones have written songs about all kinds of half-assed conspiracy theories, like the nazis escaping to Antarctica, the "interdimensional" Philadelphia Experiment, and various others. It's too bad their music is dreadful, because I'm interested in some of that stuff, and would love to hear good music about such topics.

The whole of Cult of Luna's Eternal Kingdom is a hoax.

Cradle of Filth have done this on several albums, obviously Cruelty and the Beast about Elizabeth Bathory, Godspeed On the Devil's Thunder about Gilles de Rais.

I don't really like them but I think Crack the Skye by Mastodon was about Rasputin.

This was a huge media frenzy here in Canada when it happened. Barbaric shit. I didn't know Cryptopsy made a song about it.

These are the only ones I could think of based on more recent historical events.
based on the Herman Hill riot 1979


based on the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

I can't believe I missed that part of the OP

Jeez well in that case about the only thing I can think of is 1912, the mostly-terrible concept album about the Titanic by the mostly-terrible winner of the "most saccharine flower metal band in existence" contest, Reinxeed. Even then, that was over a century ago now so that might not even qualify on technical terms.

I'll ignore it too and say Manowar - Guyana (Cult of the Damned), about the 1978 mass suicide at Jonestown, Guyana ("Thank you for the Kool Aid, Reverend Jim..."). Such a weird topic for a band like Manowar to cover, but a fascinating story nonetheless.

Yeah, I was really wondering if there were any concept albums about true events. A few popped up in this thread though, so that's okay.

Should probably edit the thread title so more don't miss the word "album" in the first post and waste their time on something the thread isn't for.

The Meads of Asphodel's "Sonderkommando" is specifically about the holocaust, not WWII as a whole so I'll count that. Campo De Mayo's "The Falcon Years" is a collection of songs about Argentinian politics under the dictator Rafael Jorge Videla and associated figures.

Eh, probably, but I also didn't post a 1000 word essay as my OP. It takes approximately 15 seconds to read.
I still found some great songs I hadn't heard yet (Like that Destroyer 666 one) so, it's fine.

I don't blame you for people misunderstanding the thread. I'm just saying if this many misunderstood it already, chances are more will, and that would be avoided by taking five seconds to edit the title. Probably less time than it took to reply to my previous post...

Actually Never, Neverland is also inspired by the Alison Hell story (ref: http://www.songfacts.com/blog/interview ... nihilator/). I drive through a neighborhood where Jeff Waters live (or used to) on a regular basis, as part of my morning commute, and there's a street named Alison. Always makes me think of the song. I have no idea how the original Alison 'case' (said to have happened in Montréal) was notorious when it happen in the early 80s; was it somewhat of a locally famous incident, a page-4 tabloid story, etc.

An album "based" on true events but turned into a fiction story actually mixing two unrelated 1996 events is Savatage's Wake of Magellan (Veronica Guerin and the Maersk Dubai incident). The Maersk Dubai incident also has ties to Canada.

Angra's "Holy Land" is based on the conquest of Brazil.
Misanthrope's "IrréméDIABLE" is about Charles Baudelaire's life.

Primordial's The Coffin Ships is about the great Irish Famine of the 1840s & 50s. Hundreds of Thousands of Irish people emigrated to North America due to potato crop failures in Ireland. The ships were so unsafe they were dubbed Coffin Ships because so many people drowned attempting to make the crossing. Ireland was still producing crops besides potatoes, but as most of the land was owned by English absentee landlords the vast majority of it was exported to England. Around 1.5 million people died of starvation and related illnesses.

Shameful episode in England's history, and sort of reminds me of the current refugee crisis with people drowning in the Mediterranean attempting to make it to Europe from Syria.

The song does justice to it all the same.

if you think any significant fraction of people trying to cross the mediterranean to reach europe are syrian, you should take a look at a map and switch to more reliable news sources - but i digress; this is hardly the place for that topic