Nanowar is a comedyheavy metal band from Rome, Italy and San Marino. Their name is a pun on the metal bandManowar, and represents their tendency to satirize True Metal, the primary focus of their music. Their work mainly aims to make humorous references to and jokes about the genre, often parodying the way in which power metal bands are perceived to take themselves very seriously. In 2006 the band changed their name from Nanowar to Nanowar of Steel, as a parody of the Italian power metal band Rhapsody changing their name to Rhapsody of Fire after a legal dispute.
History
The 2005 album Other Bands Play, Nanowar Gay! was published on Jamendo under the Creative Commons-BY-NC-SA licence. The 2010 album Into Gay Pride Ride was published on the same platform under the Creative Commons-BY licence. In April 2012 they released the videoclip for a new single entitled Giorgio Mastrota, which reached over 100.000 views on YouTube in just two weeks. The song became extremely popular in Italy, being broadcast by several radio stations and also appearing on national television on several occasions. In 2013 they started cooperating with Feudalesimo e Liberta’, a well known Italian pseudo-parody political movement which advocates the return of the Empire and Feudal Rights in Europe. They released a music video in August of the same year, which was covered by mainstream newspapers and echoed through the whole Italian peninsula. In July 2019 they released the song Norwegian Reggaeton. The video received 800.000 views on YouTube within the first 5 days, and 2.8 million views within the first month. The song combines hard rock and reggaeton. The group performed Norwegian Reggaeton at Spanish television show Got Talent España, where two of the four judges said "no". Later the band announced their intention to represent Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest. In December 2019, they released the song Valhallelujah, a Christmas song combining heavy metal and gospel, dedicated to Odin and IKEA. Angus McFife of Gloryhammer plays the part of Odin. In May 2020, they released Sneeztem of a Yawn, a song about their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic, with scrambled lyrics.
