Despite being named for a character from a famous French novel (incidentally…), who is himself a highly-romanticised version of an actual historic Frenchman, the band dArtagnan is from Germany.
Now, that’s not really all that ridiculous. France and Germany do share a border and the regions of Alsace and Lorraine have historically changed hands between France and Germany several times (they are currently both part of France). Though dArtagnan is from Nuremberg, which is in Bavaria, which is not particularly close to the French border.
Though, as dArtagnan describe themselves as playing “Musketeer Rock”, the reasons for the name are pretty apparent.
Although some of their videos do show them playing rather modern musical instruments or performing rather modern concerts with rather modern pyrotechnics, they are fundamentally a folk music band that, while they do occasionally play fairly modern-sounding albeit Folk-influenced Rock music, at least in what I’ve seen of them, never really lean into any of the Metal or Hard Rock aspects of, say, an Ensiferum, or a Korpiklaani.
From dArtagnan’s 2019 album In jener Nacht, comes the song Wallenstein. The subject of which is turn-of–the-seventeenth-century Holy Roman generalissimo Albrecht von Wallenstein.
Wallenstein’s Camp: Rudolf Otto von Ottenfeld. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
In brief, Wallenstein was a major figure responsible for several major Imperial victories during the Thirty Years‘ War — notably including the battle (technically a defeat) that killed the Holy Roman Empire’s major nemesis Gustavus Aldophus of Sweden — as well for attempting to negotiate an end to the war between the Empire and its rivals.
Ultimately, he was accused of treason and assassinated on the orders of the Emperor.
Admittedly, Wikipedia is a little sparse on the details of Wallenstein’s character as a person, but if the song is anything to go by, he wasn’t a nice man.
“Wallenstein
Far from home,Wallenstein
Never return home,Wallenstein
Translation of the original German taken from here.
We are lost, to your heart of stone.”
Which, honestly, might go a ways in explaining the whole “assassinated” thing…
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