It’s starting to get to the point that I myself can’t even remember everything I’ve talked about on this blog. When I decided to spotlight Lacuna Coil, I thought for sure that it was the first metal band I’ve ever covered. But no, it turns out I have talked about D before.1 Oh well, it’s still the first Italian metal band on this blog. The specific song2 comes from their 2014 album with the title Broken crown halo. I’m not sure something can be both a crown and a halo, but I’ll let that pass; it’s not my department.
But the music video starts by showing a chessboard and that is my department. It’s even been set up correctly! But the first move we see executed is 1.b4, so I’m not getting my hopes up. And rightfully so, because, except for the starting position, this is the first position we see:3
Admittedly, most black pieces are conjectural, but I definitely got the white ones correct. And that’s enough to make one’s eyes bleed. Why is the queen on h6? Why is the king on d1? Why c3? I’m not sure forgiving is the right approach here. Instead, I’d suggest harsh judgment, possibly accompanied with damnation and eternal suffering in hell.
Black, who is one of the band’s female singers, quickly dispatches her opponent. His place is taken by the drummer, but he doesn’t fare much better. He somehow manages to get himself in the following mess:
What horrid spectacles must have taken place on this board!4 Once more, forgiveness is not really in the cards here. Although black can hardly claim the moral high ground: the bishop I so carefully and tenderly put on f8 is lying prone between f8 and g7 and she’s in no hurry to help the poor thing up.
Unsurprisingly, the guy who gets his knight to b3 before he thinks about possibly developing bishops or putting pawns in the centre is soon dispatched, too. His successor doesn’t fare much better:
but now the black position is ridiculous, too. Apparently, somebody on set knew that h1 was supposed to be a white square, but they were less certain about the position of the royalty.
Or maybe this is how kids these days rebel against their parents. They don’t try to tumble the establishment, rage against the machine, or protest the oppression inherent in the system. They just film the most pathetic attempts at chess positions.
Realism: 1/5 It’s the same mark for all three diagrams. They are all technically legal but pretty much impossible to arrive at in practice.
Probable winner: Apparently, it’s black in all cases, although that’ not obvious at all.
1. [That turned out to be a bit of a one note band.] ↩
2. [Incidentally, I’ve listened to it quite a bit now in writing this blog post, but I still don’t know what it’s about. Not even because of enunciation, as is so often the case, but simply because the text makes no sense.] ↩
3. [I feel kind of bad using this wonderful diagram editor to make this kind of positions.] ↩
4. [Horror movies are hugely popular nowadays, yet this still remains unfilmed. Either this is a huge market failure, or it was too awful to be filmed.] ↩