According to their Facebook page, Holy Grail has postponed their third album. Instead of doing it the old fashioned way via a press release, they’ve announced it by releasing a new song on their YouTube page. And the song, “The Condescending Owl,” explains that the album is being delayed because their singer James Paul Luna is missing. The song isn’t quite the power metal rager that you’d expect. Starting out almost ambient with owl noises, it’s mostly instrumental, with falsetto vocals, and has the following text running throughout the clip:
It is in good conscience that we here in Holy Grail come forward about the forthcoming album’s postponement due to singer James Paul Luna’s disappearance. After many months of not seeing or hearing from Luna, we received a very cryptic voicemail from his number. Like any concerned friends, we immediately made that message into a song before contacting his family and authorities.
This is that song.
Starting about a year ago, James Paul Luna mentioned seeing the same owl everywhere he went. Always dismissing the improbability of any bird of prey following a touring Metal Band, he would elaborate on the sightings saying that he could hear the Owl laughing at him anytime he made a mistake or was embarrassed. Over time his Owl encounters increased along with his recounting of the incidents, earning his feathered oppugner the title of “The Condescending Owl”.
Before his abduction, there was an incident at a Hooters where a distraught Luna feared entering an owl-ridden establishment (he claims it was because he was vegan), he posted a series of tweets that have since been mysteriously deleted.
His Tweets were……
“Mortified, you want to die. There’s an eye up in the sky.
Always there with a taunting grin. He’s gonna laugh, you’ll never win. It’s all harm, it’s all foul. He’s the Condescending Owl.
It’ll burn you to the core, down to the root.
You ask him if he’ll stop he says “I don’t give a Hoot”The few weeks leading up to his disappearance, Luna complained that now he was seeing more than one owl stalking and laughing at him. On April 20th in a Whole Foods parking lot, eye witnesses claimed to have seen a flock of owls…… or is it gaggle……Owls are pretty solitary predators and usually don’t hunt in groups………anyway, they saw a pride of owls swoop in and carry JPL away. No one has seen him since.
Immediately after mixing a rough cut of the song containing Luna’s recent ominous voicemail, we assembled a team of linguists from local community colleges to decipher his message for clues to his location. Due to a snafu with PayPal, our researchers could only conclude that Luna is singing in an ancient Cimmerian dialect not spoken since the Hyborian Age.
If you have any information or insight as to the whereabouts of our singer, please tweet it at #UponaMissingBuddy
Best hashtag ever? It’s pretty funny that Upon A Burning Body’s publicity stunt gone awry is now inspiring bands to run with it. And it’s also pretty great that Prosthetic bands are 2 for 2 when it comes to trolling UABB. Holy Grail’s last album, Ride the Void, was released in 2012.
