This man has ascended to the big moshpit in the sky, but his body is rumored to still be rocking on Earth.
Tampa, Florida metalhead Yaago Anax, who goes by the name Prince Midnight, has allegedly turned the bones of his deceased relative into a functional guitar, ensuring his uncle’s corporeal form can continue shredding on this mortal plane while his soul does headbangs in heaven — or so he claims.
Publications including the Huffington Post, Guitar World, CBC Radio One, Complex, and the AV Club have since reported on the bone guitar as well, but local outlet the Tampa Bay Times has now raised doubt the story is accurate — although, whatever the real story is here, Prince Midnight has certainly put a lot of effort into trying to make his tale appear true, and definitely did build a functional guitar out of something appearing to be human bones.
The story goes, according to Midnight, that his uncle Filip died “way too young” in a car wreck in 1996, and — per his wishes — his skeleton was donated to a local college, where, for two decades it has served as an educational tool for students, Midnight first told MetalSucks.
The school eventually found it no longer had a use for Filip’s rendered skeletal system, and returned him to Midnight in a “giant wooden box.” The Greek Orthodox family does not condone cremation, and Midnight didn’t want to continue paying for a rental “cemetery space” the partial corpse was apparently being kept at. So he decided on a very personal method by which to memorialize his uncle, who first got him into heavy metal: Turn his bones into a guitar.
The process “proved to be challenging,” he told the music publication.
“I did a lot of research and no one has ever made a guitar out of a skeleton,” he went on.
The Greek government reportedly required a lot of paperwork from him before he could musically immortalize his uncle’s mortal form, but after dotting all his i’s and t’s, Filip has finally been reborn — Midnight completed him this week, and said that he “plays perfect and sounds awesome.”
A YouTube video of Midnight picking his uncles’ bones serves as evidence.
“[Now] Uncle Filip can shred for all eternity,” Midnight said. “That’s how he would want it. I’m super proud of the project and how it serves to honor him, his life and his influence on me.”
However, the Tampa Bay Times raises the question of whether Prince Midnight is, in fact, a local character known as Odilon Ozare, who has been accused of creating a fake persona as a dandy hatmaker, has struggled to verify Guinness World Record submissions and physically looks a lot like both the Tampa resident who once convinced a newspaper to publish a photo of a two-headed alligator and Prince Midnight.
If Ozare is behind the bone guitar, he has been extensively fabricating its backstory for months, recording a full EP as Prince Midnight and getting it on Spotify, creating Prince Midnight merchandise, maintaining Prince Midnight Instagram and Twitter accounts for months, and giving multiple in-character interviews.
When reached for comment, Ozare told the Times he never listens to metal, only Barbra Streisand, and that the guitar is horrifying.
“No, I only really listen to Babs,” Ozare said. “Looks dreadful!”