Dionysus
“Sign of Truth”
(The End Records)
It’s kind of like if a power metal band was heavily influenced by Queen’s soundtrack for 1980’s Flash Gordon. People today watch the Dino De Laurentiis production of Flash Gordon for camp value, but it really is quite an exceptional movie. In the film, Ming the Merciless, ruler of the Universe, decides to wage a catastrophic attack upon the Earth for no other reason than his personal amusement. This form of amusement, however, proves quite dangerous for Ming when Jets quarterback Flash Gordon winds up, through a series of coincidences and bad luck, on Ming’s home world of Mongo. It may be bad luck that delivers Flash to Mongo, but it sure is good luck for us earthlings!
Flash, with the aid of his lady Dale and mad scientist Zarkov, incite a revolution amongst Ming’s subjects and overthrow the evil tyrant of the universe. Ming is a much superior evil to George W. Bush. Bush wants to wage a vicious attack on Iraq for control of oil fields. He’s motivated by greed. Ming is not. Ming is wicked and foul for the sheer delight being wicked and foul brings him. Ming does not need wealth, yet he forces his subjects to regularly honor him by showering him with riches.
Take all this fast paced Sci-fi action and throw in Ming’s super hot daughter played by Ornella Muti and you have one hell of a film. I read the novelization of the 1980 film version of Flash Gordon by Alan Dean Foster in that same year. In the novel it’s heavily implied that Ming’s relationship with his daughter is not necessarily a platonic father/daughter relationship. It seems Ming and Princess Aura engage in some fairly rough S&M, drawing blood and reopening old wounds.
Dionysus is the Greco-Roman God of Wine and general debauchery, but the band doesn’t embody that spirit better than Aura and Ming.
