In the land of Lee, the King Ugh sits upon his throne wasting away in his loneliness. Wariness consumes his ugly heart as he yearns for the day when he will finally gaze upon his true love. Legends say the hideousness of his soulmate will match his own. The two will become one and fall desperately in love. And thus, these events will trigger the great war between the armies of Ugh and the evil Prince Charming, who desires the lands of Lee and the swamp of Ugh for his own dark domain.

This is part of the epic quest composed by Saint Radar front man Ben Shin and lead guitarist Stephen Volcko in their rock opera about true love between the ugliest man and woman humankind has ever known. Shin says his and Volcko’s rock symphony was inspired by a couple they saw while eating at the Oak-Elm dining center last year.

“We’re just eating and I think I was having apple pie or something and I look up and I see them,” Shin says. “The funny thing is they were sitting so close to each other – like hugging/ crying. We’re like, ‘Find the proper venue for this – like a dark room.’ What’s so interesting is they looked like they loved each other so much, despite the way they looked at each other.”

Shin says the tale became much more complicated than can be told in a standard three-minute radio single.

“I finally got the idea of King Ugh of the land of Lee, who falls in love with a frog princess, and it just spirals into this gigantic rock opera,” Shin says.

The story revolves around the details behind the personal struggles of King Ugh and uses different styles of music to convey the attitudes and emotions of each character, Shin says.

“So King Ugh is, like, bitchin’ about how he’ll never find somebody as ugly as him,” Shin says. “He’s walking the swamps of Ugh and meets this frog that turns into an equally ugly woman. They fall in love. She was actually the frog princess, then the Ugh swamp unites with the Kingdom of Ugh and Prince Charming wants that land. Prince Charming wages this war on King Ugh and we had, like, these sweeping operatic songs with these hardcore rock songs, and it was ridiculous. And in the end, of course, King Ugh wins somehow, after he fights an army of robots. King Ugh and the frog princess live as ugly as ever after.”

Shin says the ideas for songs to add to the rock opera came from late night jam sessions in which they would receive input from people on their dorm floor.

“Me and Steve [Volcko], what we’d eventually end up doing is I would start playing this chord progression and he’d start playing a solo or riff over it and we would just have people walk by and be like, ‘Hey, give us a subject,'” he says. “And one time we saw this frat boy in a pink shirt with a popped collar and we were like, ‘Tool Song’ and we wrote this 15 minute song about how that guy was a tool in general.”

Shin says the epic will not be performed live. He scrapped the idea before the summer began because they didn’t have a full band. Instead, the band will be performing its current songs, which are much shorter and sound like blues-influenced rock, he says.