Mythology in Music: Clutch's "Release the Kraken"

Clutch is a four man American rock band which has been performing together since 1990. They have had eight CDs released with a ninth, Strange Cousins from the West, set to hit stores next month. Clutch is known for their unique sound which combines both hard rock and blues/funk influences. Their lyrics are also equally thought provoking and often contain references to history, mythology, science-fiction, and religion.

The song "Release the Kraken" off their 1999 album Jam Room draws its influence in part from the actual Greek myth of Perseus but mostly from the 1981 film Clash of the Titans, a loose retelling of the same story. Clash of the Titans was directed by Desmond Davis and featured special effects by Ray Harryhausen, who also produced the film.

Clash of the Titans’ biggest, and perhaps most iconic, addition to the myth of Perseus was that of the Kraken; a monster from Norse mythology, not Greek. It is also interesting to note that Harryhausen’s Kraken looks nothing like its mythological namesake but rather like a multi-limbed version of another one of Harryhausen’s monsters; the Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957).

The following video was created by YouTube user sidewalkhawg and features "Release the Kraken" played to clips from Clash of the Titans.

The italicized words in found in the "Release the Kraken" lyrics were taken from Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1995), page 819.

Sources: "Release the Kraken" lyrics found at http://www.stlyrics.com/.

What's the matter brother, does the drought got you down?

(Open up the bomb shelter, sweep it on out)

Sing to the ocean in the afternoon haze,

Up the iron pillars, rise in the waves.

Andromeda is weeping. Inside one teardrop swims

Brave Useless in training less a millimeter thin.

RELEASE THE KRAKEN!

GET THE SACRIFICE ON!

RELEASE THE KRAKEN!

GOOD GOD Y'ALL!

Useless the Younger we pray for you.

You know we got your back in whatever you do.

Bathysphere bobbing in Eyeball Bay,

Black lash crashes, forty foot waves.

Cepheus is holding Cassiopeia's free hand

As the Kraken breaks the surface making bee-line to the land.

In Greek legend the son of Zeus and Danae

He and his mother was set adrift in a chest,

But rescued by the intervention of Zeus.

He was brought up by KING POLYDECTES,

Who, wishing to secure Danae, got rid of him by encouraging him

In the almost hopeless task of obtaining the head OF THE MEDUSA!

With the help of the gods he was successful, and with the head,

Which turned all that looked on it into stone, he rescued Andromeda

And later metamorphosed Polydectes and his guests to stone.

Do You Believe In Centaurs?

The “Centaur Excavation at Volos” is an exhibit which has been on permanent display at The University of Tennessee’s John C. Hodges Library since May of 1994. Located in the Jack E. Reese Galleria, the centaur was brought to the university by two men; art Professor Beauvais Lyons and Neil Greenberg, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. Lyons and Greenberg first began raising funds to have the centaur brought to the university in 1992 and by 1993 the two professors had gain enough financial backing to purchase the centaur. The installation of the exhibit took one year.

Centaurs are mythological creatures featured in the legends of Greece and Rome. They were said to be the offspring of either the goddess Hera (Juno) and Ixion or the children of Centaurus; the deformed son of Apollo who lived amongst the Mares of Magnesium. As a people the centaurs dwelt amongst the mountains of Erymanthus in Thessaly as well as the Clyon countryside. Considered to be kind, hospitable, sporting, generous, and wise the centaurs were well received, the most famous centaur perhaps being Cheiron who tutored many of Greece’s greatest heroes including Aesculapius, Achilles, Jason, Meleagor, Nestor, Peleus, and Theseus. He also instructed the famed necromancer Faust, postmortem.

The centaurs were not without their faults however, having a practically nonexistent tolerance for alcohol centaurs where prone to drunken brawls. In one particularly notable episode a group of intoxicated centaurs manage to get into a fight with the legendary hero Hercules, who was also inebriated at the time. Being little match for the famous strongman the bulk of the centaurs where slain but one named Nessus managed to escape. Nessus would later take revenge on Hercules by attempting to rape his second wife Deianira. Hercules kills Nessus with an arrow dipped in Hydra’s blood before he can do the deed but not before convincing Deianira to smear some of his poisoned blood on Hercules’s cloak which he tells her will insure her husband’s everlasting fidelity. Once Hercules places the cloak on his back he is immediately seized with unbearable pain and kills himself via immolation.

So is the centaur from Volos real?

Well despite the display itself and an impressive accompanying University website the truth is that the centaur is an elaborate fake created from a human anatomical skeleton and the bones of a Shetland pony. The mock excavation itself was created by William Willers, professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh, in the mid-1980s and it was Willers who sold the skeleton to Professors Lyons and Greenberg. According to Lyons the purpose of obtaining and displaying the skeleton on a college campus was to test the critical thinking skills of the students. On the centaur’s official website Professor Greenberg notes that “Our CENTAUR is implausible at one level, but inevitable at another” in that hoaxes such as the centaur from Volos are touted out all the time as being ‘evidence’ of otherwise incredulous claims – just consider last year’s Georgia Bigfoot hoax for a recent example.

In the end perhaps Professor Lyons sums it up best when he asks; “Just because something is in the non-fiction section, does that make it true?”

Sources:

Giants, Monsters & Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth (2000) by Carol Rose.

Don't Know Much About Mythology (2005) by Kenneth C. Davis

Library hails centaur’s 10th anniversary (2004) by Maggie Anderson

The “Centaur Excavation at Volos” Offical Website

Monsters of Legend: Bigfoot

Never fear, new posts are coming. But until then, check this out. Brought to you by MSN Video and The History Channel, this is just one of four new mini-documentaries chronicling the history of four of the worlds most infamous Monsters of Legend. The mythical creatures in question include; Bigfoot (see below), The Loch Ness Monster, Mermaids, and Dragons. Enjoy!

The Tall Tales of Rabbah bar Bar Hana

Complied at the end of the 6th-Century C.E., the Babylonian Talmud is one of the major religious texts used by all practicing Jews today. Making up the Babylonian Talmud is a collection of discussions held by various learned Rabbis over a wide variety of religious, philosophical, ethical, and legal topics that were themselves previously covered in the Mishnah (200 C.E.), another book of rabbinical commentary this time focusing on the Jewish Torah.

Naturally, all of this makes for some very dry reading and not the sort of place you would expect to find some of the most fascinating bits of Jewish myth and folklore. However, as it would turn out, it appears that even the Rabbis doing the commentary in the Babylonian Talmud knew how boring some of this stuff was and so decided to every once in awhile spice things up by veering off topic and telling some really great stories.

One such rabbi is Rabbah bar Bar Hana whose tall tales of giant beasts and strange monsters can be found in Tractate Baba Bathra (73a-77b), a section that initially deals with how to properly sell and or buy a boat.

In Tractate Baba Bathra, bar Bar Hana begins telling about his many travels around the world and the strange and freighting creatures he’s seen. The first beast he speaks about is an antelope who was the size of Mount Tabor and who cast a dung ball so big that it damned up the River Jordan. Next, bar Bar Hana describes how he once saw a frog the size of sixty houses, which was then swallowed by an even bigger sea monster. The sea monster was then plucked out of the ocean by a giant raven which then preached itself on the branch of a massive tree which can still seen by any who wish to look.

Bar Bar Hana then sets in with some lively fish tales, one about the time he saw a fish so large that when it was cast upon the shore it destroyed sixty towns and provided food for another sixty. When the rabbi returned a year later he discovered that the towns’ people were cutting rafters from the giant fishes’ ribs which they were then using to rebuild the towns that had been destroyed.

On another occasion while out at sea, bar Bar Hana said that he encountered a fish so large it took three days and three nights for him and several other men to sail a fast ship from one end of the monster to the other. And in case you doubt it was a fast ship, bar Bar Hana adds that when an archer shot an arrow the ship easily outstripped it.

Then there was the giant fish that had sand and grass growing on its back. When bar Bar Hana and his crew saw the beast they thought it was an island and landed on it. However, when they started cooking their food the fish woke up and rolled over forcing the men to make a mad dash back to their ship in the nick of time.

Bar Bar Hana then rounds out this set of tall tales with two more. One about the Ziz; a giant bird whose head reached the heavens and whose legs were in the sea. Thinking the water were the bird was standing must be shallow the men decided to go for a swim when a ‘voice from heaven’ (Heb. Bath Kol) called out saying; “Do not go down here, for a carpenter’s ax was dropped [into this water] seven years ago and it has not reached the bottom.”

Lastly, bar Bar Hana tells how an Arab merchant once took him to see the Dead of the Wilderness; those Jews who had died in the desert while wandering for forty-years looking for the Promise Land. The Dead of the Wilderness were truly an impressive sight, for bar Bar Hana did not even realize when they had reached them on account of the fact that they were so big he thought they were mountains and even rode his camel under one of their raised knees. Bar Bar Hana also tells his fellow rabbis how he tried to take a piece of the beautiful blue-purple fabric the Dead were wearing as proof of what he had seen but when he cut a piece of the cloth off and tried to ride away he found himself paralyzed. The Arab explained that one can not take anything from the Dead and expect to leave.

Prof. Timothy K. Beal of Case Western Reserve University says in his fascinating book Religion and its Monsters (2002) that stories such as those told by Rabbah bar Bar Hana are intended to inspire fear and awe in both the listener and reader, much the same way that scary stories around a camp fire still do today. The difference here is that since the stories are told in what is considered a religious context, the fear and awe they inspire is that of the infinite mysteries of God and the universe, rather than the dark.

Center: Giant fish, mountain sized bulls and the Ziz (here depicted as a griffin) were just some of the larger than life creatures that appear in Jewish myth and legend. Illuminated manuscript page from Germany circa 1238.