Shadow Warriors (band)
| Shadow Warriors | |
|---|---|
| Origin | London, England, United Kingdom |
| Genres | Power metal, hardcore punk |
| Years active | 2000-2014 (hiatus) |
| Labels | unsigned |
| Associated acts | DragonForce |
| Members |
Akimo Naoki Kazuma Jyuohki |
Shadow Warriors was a British comedy power metal band, formed by guitarist Sam Totman in late 2000 as a "secret" side project of DragonForce. The band also featured ZP Theart as lead vocalist and two other Fictional members, drummer Jyuohki and bassist Kazuma, the two "members" are actually drum machine and bass parts played by Sam Totman. The band performed Power Metal music with Japanese Warrior-based lyrics, such as Ninjas and Samurai.
Shadow Warriors recorded demo songs in late 2000 around the same time DragonHeart, later renamed DragonForce, recorded and uploaded their Valley of the Damned demo songs to MP3.com. In late 2001, Shadow Warriors made their demo CD Power of the Ninja Sword available for purchase through MP3.com, but via an artist page error, the demo CD was not able to be purchased. By the time the error was fixed, it was decided to leave the demo up for download only and not make it available to purchase through MP3.com. A few demo CDs were burned to CD-R with the full album cover and tray inserts in early 2002, and were handed out to a few people as collector's items by Sam Totman, whose performing name is Akimo. The songs on the album were entirely written in Engrish, an agrammatical dialect reminiscent of how the Japanese speak English as a second language, with lyrics such as "Fight for be free" and "The sky he turn black, the nightfall appear" for the sake of humor.
In early 2002, Master Samurai created a website for Shadow Warriors on Angelfire, and like the demos, this website was created in one day. Later, the Shadow Warriors' presence and interest waned, but picked up once again. As the popularity of the Shadow Warriors grew, so did the demand for more Shadow Warriors material. It was at this time that there was talk about reviving Shadow Warriors amongst Totman and two colleagues, Knightrider of Doom and Samurai Sweetie. In early 2003, the website was redone, alongside the artist page on MP3.com. The website offered more information and material related to the band. Among the additional material made available on the website was guitar tablature, MIDI songs, Winamp skins, wallpapers, lyrics for the demo songs, and a Yahoo group. At this time, the original demo songs were remastered and made available for download from the website, along with the original low quality demos from mp3.com.
...
Wikipedia