A Florida-based musician created a fully functioning electric guitar out of his own uncle’s skeleton, naming it the ‘Skelecaster.’ It doesn’t get more metal than that.
His name is ‘Prince Midnight,’ and he’s been featured as a special guest on Steven Colbert’s Late Show and even had his works displayed at Ripley’s Believe It or Not.
Based out of Tampa, Florida, Prince Midnight is a true metalhead in every sense of the word, making his own music and creating gnarly art pieces — one of which has taken social media by storm.
The ‘Skelecaster’ is an electric guitar made out of his Uncle Filip’s backbone, pelvis and ribcage, outfitted with Telecaster parts from Fender. You can watch him play a snippet from Dark Throne’s Transylvanian Hunger using the instrument in the video below.
The most metal guitar ever created
But, why make a guitar out of your own relative’s skeleton? For Prince Midnight, it was all about honoring his Uncle Filip’s memory, who he says took him to his first metal shows as a kid and introduced him to the genre.
After his death in a motorcycle accident at 28 years old, Filip’s skeleton was used to teach medical students at a university. When they no longer had need of it, the responsibility fell to Prince Midnight, as his uncle’s parents had also died by that time.
According to the musician, his Greek Orthodox traditions wouldn’t allow his family to cremate the bones, leaving him two options: either pay for storage or bury him. But Prince Midnight had another idea.
The Skelecaster uses the ribcage, spine and pelvis of Prince Midnight’s Uncle Filip.
“It just popped into my head. I’m going to turn Uncle Fil into a guitar,” he said in a statement to CBC. “That is the best way to honor him. He would love that idea.”
His plan wasn’t met without some pushback, though. His mother instantly rejected the proposition, with Midnight saying she called it “sacrilegious and a work of the devil” — but after asking if his Uncle would rather be “in the ground or shredding,” she eventually agreed to the project.
Making the Skelecaster was a week-long challenge
It was a bit of a challenge to make a guitar out of a real human skeleton, though. After attempting to drill into the spinal vertebrae, he opted to weld a metal frame to the spine and added red and blue wires, making the components look like blood vessels in something out of an 80’s fantasy paperback novel cover.
He also wanted to use his uncle’s skull as the guitar’s headpiece, but said it was too damaged.
All in all, it took him about a week to build the entire thing, even saying that “drilling bone smells worse than soldering wire.” The guitar is a tad difficult to play, given the ribcage being in the way and all, meaning he can’t play anything above the 13th fret. It’s a power-chord kind of guitar — and it’s the perfect way to honor his Uncle’s legacy.
“It’s not a typical guitar, so it’s got some quirks,” Prince Midnight said. “But sometimes the limitations we have with our tools are what make the products great.
“I feel like Uncle Fil is not just here now figuratively; he’s here literally too. I’m literally giving my Uncle Fil hugs while he’s figuratively with me, creating heavy metal riffs.”
Prince Midnight continues to upload music videos showing himself playing the unique instrument, which he says he’s forbidden by law to sell, given it’s a human corpse and all.
