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I come across a lot of interesting music looking for new entries for this feature. This week my musical travels take me all the way to Slovakia, home of power-metal band Signum Regis, who have been around for nearly a decade. Some websites suggest that they are a Christian band—I know, some of you are already envisioning those Stryper gigs from the ’80s, where the band is throwing out Bibles to the audience—but hey, I'm not about to let labels or preconceived notions get in the way of enjoying good music, so why should you? And what is wrong with a band wanting to use music to spread their good message? Plenty of other bands do it by way of socio-political means, and I've got nothing against that either. In fact, one of the first power metal bands I ever heard was Ohio's Jacob's Dream, an openly Christian band who wrote songs based on Biblical epics the same way that other bands in their genre use mythology or fantasy. So I am certainly not offput by a band who wishes to infuse religious imagery into their music.
Speaking of the ’80s, I grew up a quintessential ’80s kid, in that I had my butt parked in front of the television, watching MTV like every other kid (my mom even says that as a child, I watched MTV more than cartoons, and if you know my love of ’80s cartoons, that's saying a lot!). So, when watching videos as a kid, I became particularly fond of the “mini-movie” video format—the type of video that told a little story during the song. Sometimes those videos re-enacted the message of the song perfectly; other times the story seemed to have nothing to do with the song, but it was always interesting to see the kinds of stories that could be told in 3-4 minutes. In fact, when listening to music, it became part of your psyche to imagine what a video for that song would look like, and the disappointment you sometimes felt when the actual video was nothing like you'd pictured at all!
On to the Signum Regis video. The band is rocking out in a jail cell, while the camera cuts to a man in another cell. He appears to be a boxer or MMA fighter of some kind. As the video proceeds, we see him in a match while a seedy bookie is off to the side of the ring, collecting bets. Clearly the fight is fixed. While contemplating his loss, he meets a young lady. As their courtship progresses, they are seen walking together, when the crooked bookie and one of his fighters proceed to assault him and the girl. In defending her honor, he ends up going to jail, where we see his single-minded devotion in returning to his girl, who may or may not be waiting for him. Without giving away the complete ending, let's just say that she was waiting for him, but she was not alone!
Musically, the band has a fantastic power metal sound; some elements of their sound reminded me of Seventh Wonder, who might be considered more prog-metal, but like I said, labels really don't matter much to me. The band's vocalist has a voice that is a little more gravelly or rough-around-the-edges than your standard power metal vocalist, but I think he sounds great. This video is a little over a year old, so I look forward to checking out more of their music and hopefully sharing it here!
For more information on Signum Regis, visit their official website.
Special thanks to Scott Johnson.
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