alt.hn

2/24/2026 at 12:33:06 AM

Shatner is making an album with 35 metal icons

 https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/guitarists/william-shatner-announces-all-star-metal-album

by mhb

2/24/2026 at 1:27:44 AM

If I had a nickel for each actor who recorded a heavy metal album after their 90th birthday then I'd have two nickels, which isn't much but it's weird that it's happened twice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne:_The_Omens_of_Deat...

by jsheard

2/24/2026 at 1:47:17 AM

Impressive.

The great Orsen Welles spring chickened out by only recording heavy metal tracks when he was 70. His excuse for not repeating that at 90 was dying not long after.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AMi-vCfAWw

by defrost

2/24/2026 at 3:09:13 AM

Manowar are such a guilty pleasure of mine. They have a lot of very silly material, but hard to deny that Dark Avenger is anything but absolute art.

by mberning

2/24/2026 at 3:11:31 AM

I knew about this, though I'd never listened to it. I gave it a shot now, and I wanted to like it, but... it's terrible, unfortunately.

by stavros

2/24/2026 at 3:26:44 AM

He also did work with Rhapsody of Fire from 2004 to 2010, where his contributions were of much higher quality.

by bebebop

2/24/2026 at 3:32:55 AM

It doesn't bother me, it's fantastic that he did this, it was just objectively not very good. I'm glad his other contributions were better, and he's obviously had an illustrious career in general.

by stavros

2/24/2026 at 7:45:12 AM

If you want to give it a listen, I'd recommend this album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arAgnVGFZbs

by cess11

2/24/2026 at 11:06:27 AM

Excellent, I do love me some Rhapsody, thanks.

by stavros

2/24/2026 at 8:14:23 AM

That’s unfair to Sir Christopher. He was only 82 when he started working with Rhapsody.

by kergonath

2/24/2026 at 3:39:35 AM

Phineas and Ferb had some of the best scripts ever written for TV, and I'll die on that hill.

by russellbeattie

2/24/2026 at 2:36:41 AM

Oh wow he looks incredible for being 94

by ziofill

2/24/2026 at 1:39:41 AM

William Shatner has the most experimental, wild Spotify I've ever seen. If you haven't ever seen it, look at his discography. He does a lot of almost spoken-word poetry over soft rock, punk, etc. You get the sense that he views acting as his side hustle and is waiting for his musical career to take off.

by jimberlage

2/24/2026 at 2:04:54 AM

He's also (to my knowledge) one of the only major Hollywood actors to ever star in a movie filmed entirely in esperanto. I've heard that the pronunciation is rather rough around the edges though I have no way of corroborating that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubus_(1966_film)

by vunderba

2/24/2026 at 5:23:00 AM

Shatner speaks Esperanto with a perfect native accent. Everyone else is pronouncing it wrong.

by jimbokun

2/24/2026 at 5:24:46 AM

This has strong Chuck Norris facts vibes.

by rkomorn

2/24/2026 at 6:13:30 AM

I know you were speaking tongue-in-cheek.

Esperanto has native speakers. Shatner is not one of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Esperanto_speakers

> Native Esperanto speakers (Esperanto: denaskuloj [denasˈkuloi̯] or denaskaj esperantistoj [deˈnaskai̯ esperanˈtistoi̯]) are people who have acquired Esperanto as one of their native languages. As of 1996, there were 350 or so attested cases of families with native Esperanto speakers.[1][2] Estimates from associations indicate that there were around 1,000 Esperanto-speaking families, involving perhaps 2,000 children in 2004. ...

> some families have passed Esperanto on to their children over several generations.

by eesmith

2/24/2026 at 12:59:56 PM

My Esperanto teacher told me 'there are always a lot of marriages after Esperanto conventions '. It makes sense it would be the primary shared language of some couples

by eucyclos

2/24/2026 at 1:23:49 PM

The Wikipedia article points out 'native speakers have limited opportunity to meet one another except where meetings are specially arranged. For that reason, many parents consider it important to bring their children regularly to Esperanto conventions'.

by eesmith

2/24/2026 at 6:29:49 AM

I'd heard of this movie before and had to check it out - the scene I watched where he was speaking to who I assume is the female lead sounded like an American and an Italian both speaking perfectly passable Esperanto. If I were to nitpick his i's were a little soft - Esperanto i's are canonically pronounced ee - but Esperanto was made to accommodate lots of different accents without losing comprehensibility and it did that here. I actually found his Esperanto easier to follow than the girl's, but that's probably because I learned Esperanto from people speaking it with Canadian accents.

by eucyclos

2/24/2026 at 3:51:03 AM

When I watched Incubus I remember him sounding very much like he was trying to speak Italian. My only basis for comparison are some podcasts in Esperanto I've listened to, and completion of the duolingo course (I've forgotten everything).

by peatmoss

2/24/2026 at 4:45:58 AM

His rendition of “Common People” is my favorite cover and I honestly prefer it to Pulps original.

by wodenokoto

2/24/2026 at 8:56:53 AM

Hand to heart honest, I had a listen to this, and this is the only version I know. This was a very popular song when I was in university in 15 years ago.

I did not realize it was shatner!

by beAbU

2/24/2026 at 11:41:00 AM

Ben Folds co-composing the album and songs featuring Henry Rollins, Lemon Jelly, etc, as well as having Nick Hornby (and I believe Aimee Mann?) on That's Me Trying is incredible, and also probably my favorite song on it.

by croon

2/24/2026 at 5:17:54 AM

Thank you. 100% agree. I would love to hear Shatner work with John Cooper Clarke

by daveac

2/24/2026 at 7:18:20 AM

An interesting choice of words: "has the most experimental, wild Spotify" when referring to someone's discography :)

Is Spotify becoming the new Kleenex or Hoover when referring to music?

by theshrike79

2/24/2026 at 2:37:19 AM

At one point he was huge into the paintball scene as well. Beyond hobby level

by etrautmann

2/25/2026 at 12:52:47 AM

> You get the sense that he views acting as his side hustle and is waiting for his musical career to take off.

Steve Martin paid the bills with stand-up comedy and acting until his banjo career finally took off.

by throw0101c

2/24/2026 at 1:04:56 AM

If you’ve never heard it, his duet of the song Common People is pretty awesome:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cMXhWf0vE7c

by this-is-why

2/24/2026 at 4:19:29 AM

Even better is the live version: https://vimeo.com/714215610

by dpe82

2/24/2026 at 9:14:41 AM

Thanks! That was actually really good. His performance matches the emotions underlying the song.

Something all the covers of Behind Blue Eyes by The Who seem to miss is the slowly rising anger and frustration.

by i_don_t_know

2/24/2026 at 3:34:36 AM

I honestly thought his voice fit better for the theme of the song than the original

by lovich

2/24/2026 at 1:09:54 AM

I'm amazed the guy is still ticking at all. He's 94! Seems he's also still driving... and eating his breakfast at traffic lights: https://www.tmz.com/2026/01/20/william-shatner-eating-cereal...

by amiga386

2/24/2026 at 1:18:00 AM

Only in earth’s frame of reference. He spent a long time at warp. So he’s really only 65

by 2muchcoffeeman

2/24/2026 at 2:18:08 PM

There's no time dilation at warp. What are they even teaching at Starfleet Academy these days?

by shmeeed

2/24/2026 at 1:15:16 AM

The breakfast cereal thing was a commercial. A successful one, apparently.

by LeoPanthera

2/24/2026 at 2:36:15 AM

I honestly couldn’t stop thinking about it. People around here eat plates of pasta in cars and throw them out the window.

by dole

2/24/2026 at 4:58:05 AM

William Shatner is someone I really wish I could dislike. I mean, he is certainly not a conventionally talented singer or actor. He's laughably, painfully bad sometimes.

But the man keeps going! He's one of the hardest working people in show business. He clearly takes his craft very seriously, even if he defines it a bit differently from the rest of world.

The Wrath of Khan has no business being as great a movie as it is, and his version of Common People is fantastic.

I'm sure this collaboration will be .... something else.

== Edit I'm sure I am over-analyzing this - I do that with everything - but Common People is actually "perfect" Shatner.

When you start listening, you feel "OK, this is lame." After a bit it clicks and it becomes "Oh! I see what they are trying to do here." and by the end it becomes "Damn! This is awesome."

Shatner doesn't change throughout the performance, but everything just falls into place around him.

by timoth3y

2/25/2026 at 1:00:12 AM

> But the man keeps going! He's one of the hardest working people in show business. He clearly takes his craft very seriously, even if he defines it a bit differently from the rest of world.

I still think him (of Star Trek) opening AFI's tribute to George Lucas (of Star Wars) was genius:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEZVwQptvWw

(Also love Mike Myers' AFI for Sean Connery.)

by throw0101c

2/24/2026 at 10:54:22 AM

His acting is laughably, painfully bad and then suddenly incredibly poignant and for some reason for the whole time it's bad I'm subconsciously like "oh this part doesn't count". It's so easy to root for him

by dgllghr

2/24/2026 at 5:28:06 PM

His style seems quite Shakespearean which was done in a slightly over the top way to entertain the live crowds at the time, rather than the realistic style popular nowadays with close up filming.

by tim333

2/24/2026 at 4:02:55 PM

Shatner singlehanded made American Psycho 2 better than the original. It's so awful it's great.

(I know no one else in the world feels this way.)

by nosioptar

2/25/2026 at 12:03:22 AM

I didn't know there was even a sequel.

Alien 3 is my favourite in the Alien franchise, so I'm a chance to see it your way. But then I love American Psycho and the portrayal by Christian Bale, so maybe I'm already out of the running.

by BLKNSLVR

2/25/2026 at 3:55:38 PM

Maybe, it has a very different tone from the first movie. It's kind of like how Sleepaway Camp sequels went all goofy and campy.

I love shitty campy horror movies from the 80s/90s, so it works for me.

by nosioptar

2/24/2026 at 5:38:18 AM

Denny Crane!

by GolfPopper

2/24/2026 at 2:15:52 AM

No mention of Shatner's music career is complete without listing Spaced Out: The Best of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner[1]. And, yes, it's exactly as -unique- as you'd imagine it might be.

1: https://www.amazon.com/Spaced-Out-Leonard-William-Shatner/dp...

by ryandrake

2/25/2026 at 7:32:34 AM

Bilbo, Bilbo, Bilbo Baggins, greatest little hobbit of them all ..

by qmr

2/24/2026 at 1:02:08 AM

Shatner ... knows ... how to ... have fun ... in his 90s!

by WalterBright

2/24/2026 at 1:36:40 AM

As I age, I look on these happy, productive seniors, people like Dick Van Dyke (100), David Attenborough (99), and Mel Brooks (99) and keep my fingers crossed.

by johngossman

2/24/2026 at 2:20:01 AM

Brooks was a combat engineer at the Battle of the Bulge! That always blows me away. What a life's journey.

by phasetransition

2/24/2026 at 5:28:12 AM

Like a stray bullet and his journey ends there but instead he’s still going strong at 99.

by jimbokun

2/24/2026 at 3:23:08 AM

100 is the new 80... I hope!

by esafak

2/24/2026 at 1:48:52 AM

And more power to him; he's enjoying himself and that's all that matters. We should all be so fortunate.

by ThrowawayR2

2/24/2026 at 4:57:23 PM

Exactly!

by WalterBright

2/24/2026 at 7:34:10 AM

Whenever someone overuses ellipsis I imagine they talk like William Shatner.

by Tade0

2/24/2026 at 1:15:53 AM

Captain Kirk is climbing a mountain, why is he climbing a mountain ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU2ftCitvyQ

by saas_startup

2/24/2026 at 9:27:01 AM

If Will Shat would do a cover of Styx's “Come Sail Away” using AI SpaceX Starship imagery in the music video

   https://youtu.be/sm-Vh3j8sys

by __patchbit__

2/24/2026 at 4:19:32 PM

HN: Flags anything politics adjacent because it's "not tech-related".

Also HN: Remember Star Trek?!?

by ShadyTrail

2/24/2026 at 7:34:08 PM

From the HN guidelines: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting." Star Trek was wildly popular among the OG hackers before most of the people reading this were even born.

by ThrowawayR2

2/24/2026 at 10:51:14 PM

A lot of non-hackers also like Star Trek, and a lot of hackers don't like it. Liking Star Trek isn't indicative of or relevant to being a "good hacker".

By this logic being old and probably white and male is also what it takes to be a good hacker.

by ShadyTrail

2/25/2026 at 4:59:30 PM

May I remind you that Hacker News generally values civil discourse and that ageist, racist, and sexist comments are not welcome here. Please take some time to review the HN guidelines that are linked at the bottom of the page.

by ThrowawayR2

2/24/2026 at 4:36:54 PM

Yeah, this is literally the sort of mainstream celebrity news that HN should flag without question, but pop culture nostalgia always means the rules don't count. Pretending you flew in a spaceship in the 1960s shouldn't count for "technical merit."

Meanwhile the story about an Israeli massacre of Gaza aid workers with actual technical content didn't last an hour before being flooded with complaints about being "off topic" then getting flagged.

C'est la vie, Hacker News will never change.

by krapp

2/24/2026 at 1:40:35 AM

It's Rad. It doesn't even have to be good, it just has to exist.

by webprofusion

2/24/2026 at 1:44:25 AM

I'm guessing the music will be much like this one (more about fun than having the best actual songs) but didn't know there was a track with both Chris Poland and Marty Friedman: https://open.spotify.com/track/7yDb6NVzvuUVuvLyTSfDhz?si=0c5...

by webprofusion

2/24/2026 at 4:04:44 AM

In a thread full of attractive links, this was the one that got me to break discipline and click. Thanks!

by dotancohen

2/24/2026 at 1:16:17 AM

Sometimes I’m absolutely mystified by the items that appear at the top of HN.

by afavour

2/24/2026 at 1:31:07 AM

That's not a bug, that's a feature

by johngossman

2/24/2026 at 2:17:59 PM

There are a lot of Trekkies here. Star Trek was popular among hackers and nerds all the way back to when it first aired in the late 1960s.

by ThrowawayR2

2/24/2026 at 3:17:33 AM

I am also confused as to how this is relevant to HN.

by bgdkbtv

2/24/2026 at 3:34:53 AM

Apparently more than 100 registerd users with voting rights thought it interesting and few to none felt it flag worthy.

So, much the same bar was cleared as every other article that makes the "interesting to HN community" grade.

Rack that up to more Trekkie-adjacent and metal-heads than you might have expected.

by defrost

2/24/2026 at 1:29:52 AM

Mystified by the fact that people on HN have interests outside of computers and shit?

by Razengan

2/24/2026 at 2:11:21 AM

A lot of those non-tech get flagged from the homepage. It’s interesting to see what is allowed to stay and what is not.

by afavour

2/24/2026 at 3:36:47 PM

Do star trek and boston legal really fall outside of stereotypical HN interests?

by JasonADrury

2/24/2026 at 2:02:17 AM

...Yes. We're all fucking nerds.

/s

by Krutonium

2/24/2026 at 1:24:35 AM

His 2004 album “Has Been” is surprisingly good.

by DoneWithAllThat

2/24/2026 at 1:52:30 AM

I would never have expected that "Shatner and Henry Rollins ranting while Adrian Belew and Matt Chamberlain go absolutely wild on guitar and drums respectively" would be anywhere close to as good as it is.

Incidentally, Rollins talking about the recording[0] of it is freaking hilarious.

[0]: https://youtu.be/8zL3wtNrq00?t=4616

by pdpi

2/24/2026 at 4:40:59 AM

Well, thanks for cutting another one and a half hours from my already too short period of sleep at night and making me waste more time tomorrow at looking up more stand up shows from Henry if available.

by JamesTRexx

2/24/2026 at 6:24:35 AM

I highly recommend watching his live show if he's ever in your area. Great experience. Henry is the epitome of intensity for 2 hours. He doesn't stop. He doesn't sit. He doesn't drink. I'm not even sure he breathes.

by vlachen

2/24/2026 at 3:03:17 PM

You wouldn't think someone just orating without singing is entertaining, but it worked. I'm sure Ben Folds did a lot of the heavy lifting to make it great though.

While most people cite Common People as their favorite song on the album, I also like "You'll Have Time" as one of the more philosophically important songs that I've ever heard.

by havblue

2/24/2026 at 8:58:21 AM

Hell yeah! HM on HN! I would like to do metal projects in my nineties! After the Iron Maiden performance we need an album from Ralph Fiennes. How'z'dat?

by aquir

2/24/2026 at 4:29:50 PM

15 hours and 95 comments later and nobody mentions that he's holding the Les Paul backwards?

by helterskelter

2/24/2026 at 8:06:51 PM

It’s possible for a standard right-handed player to throw a guitar over to that position while playing.

Anyway, see the pain on his face; he’s (obvs) just in the middle of an especially aggressive and passionate metal solo.

by mft_

2/24/2026 at 9:13:10 AM

I do hope Gibson/Chibson make that guitar with the inlays at the 11th/13th positions.

by antonyh

2/24/2026 at 1:42:05 AM

The album he made with Ben Folds was worth a couple of listens. Only a couple.

by block_dagger

2/24/2026 at 10:12:42 AM

A day.

by TiredOfLife

2/24/2026 at 1:28:23 AM

Still waiting for his spoken word, rnb, julius caesar.

by protocolture

2/24/2026 at 1:33:34 AM

Guess the Beastie Boys were never in the running.

by jrootabega

2/24/2026 at 1:17:36 AM

It's Shatner, he can score anything.

by Avicebron

2/24/2026 at 1:44:42 AM

Don't know if true or not but I saw somewhere on the web that he is also in talks to return to Star Trek.

by SilentM68

2/24/2026 at 1:53:31 AM

I recall that he consulted for an unofficial (semi-official?) concept video by the Roddenberry Archive that was a finale/sendoff for Captain Kirk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgOZFny7F50 . If you're a fan of TOS, it's worth a watch.

by ThrowawayR2

2/24/2026 at 5:24:13 AM

Yup, I am a fan and watched that concept video when it came out. I'm hoping he makes some sort of return, perhaps involving the Star Trek Picard Season 3 reveal that Kirk's body is being kept on ice at Section 31, on Daystrom Station. I would imagine that there are many ways that Kirk could be brought back, perhaps Kirk's body could have ended up being stored in a transporter's buffer similar to how the episode "Relics" from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Montgomery Scott (Scotty) is discovered alive in a transporter buffer after being trapped for 75 years on a Dyson sphere. The transporter has been rigged to sustain two life signals, allowing Scott to survive by maintaining a diagnostic cycle. His pattern remains intact, allowing him to be rematerialized after being rescued by the USS Enterprise. Another possibility is being back due to meddling from the Q or an evolved V'Ger. There's been published a comic where some of the old crew from multiple TV projects have been brought back to help solve the killings of some of Star Trek's Gods by an unknown figure. Emperor Kahless is eventually revealed to be Star Trek’s god-killer. Among the many cameos in the series are Benjamin Sisko, Jake Sisko, Kira Nerys, Odo, Worf, Alexander Rozhenko, Spock, Scotty, Uhura, B'Elanna Torres, Tom Paris, Ro Laren, and others like Q, Kahless (clone/Emperor), and crossovers with Picard-era or TOS characters. It does not have to be a TV series but could be a limited TV mini-series. The Star Trek financial gods wasted big money on a badly done Section 31 movie. I don't see why they don't do something more similar to Star Trek comic and Television canon.

by SilentM68

2/24/2026 at 3:17:39 PM

Kirk is in the Nexus still, even though he left and died. He could leave it again.

by NetMageSCW

2/24/2026 at 7:03:06 PM

Hmm, that would be an interesting twist, but I'd be great if we could get some closure on V'Ger's fate as well. Heck even a BSG vs Star Trek multiversal crossover event would be good about now, considering the low-quality shows that are being put out ;)

https://youtu.be/9HXz2oOlN0A

by SilentM68

2/24/2026 at 2:53:49 AM

God speed, Metal Man.

by ArchieScrivener

2/24/2026 at 4:11:46 AM

"Please God, don't let him sing." is my immediate reaction after curiously hearing one of his previous works.

by burnt-resistor

2/24/2026 at 2:03:21 AM

If you haven't heard his Bohemian Rhapsody cover, it's something else. He flat out admitted that he had never heard the song before recording it. Which... Number one, how? And number two, who let him do that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul6S84qF_TU

by excalibur

2/24/2026 at 2:59:07 AM

[dead]

by pixelsub