"Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other."
--H.P. Lovecraft, The Silver Key
Slayer and Sepultura… really no heavier than that. There’s no need, from my perspective.
I can’t do cookie monster vocals. That means that Death Metal and Black Metal bands are out.
To be honest, I haven’t made a concerted effort to break into these genres. The barrier to entry is so high that I just can’t bring myself to do it, even though I can appreciate some of the riffs and melodies.
I need to be able to understand what the vocalist is saying, and I can do that with Max Cavalera and Tom Araya.
Sabbath is heavy enough for most mortals, and will raise an eyebrow in mixed company. Slayer and Sepultura will get you flat-out kicked out of parties … but I still greatly enjoy them. As with here, on Refuse/Resist, and South of Heaven.
Both awesome, and really fucking heavy. But I don’t feel the need to go any heavier.
How did you spend your Saturday night? I was in a hall you might know, called … VALHALLA!
Or maybe it was the Worcester Palladium.
Either way, I was somewhere else. And that’s a good thing.
We need fantasy in our lives.
Blind Guardian lead singer Hansi Kuersch screams at the end of “Valhalla,” No, we can’t live without gods! He and his bandmates put to powerful music what many of us who breathe deeply of this type of thing have come to know:
We can’t live without fantasy. It is indispensable as air or water:
Songs I will sing of tribes and kings
The carrion bird and the hall of the slain
Nothing seems real
You soon will feel
The world we live in is another Skald’s
Dream in the shadows
--Skalds and Shadows
We’re all just telling stories. Reality is what we make of it.
Blind Guardian knows this, and takes us to other places, fair and perilous lands where magic is real. Lands we once knew, but have forgotten. As we age our fantasies wither. We prioritize work and money, and embrace conformity and dull routine.
We might be lost, but Blind Guardian knows there is another world. Which can break down the walls around your heart. For a short time on Saturday at least.
Blind Guardian delivered on this stop on The God Machine tour. They were great. The setlist is below.
As always it’s a privilege to see a band of their magnitude in a place like The Palladium, which has a listed capacity of 2660. Blind Guardian plays to much larger crowds overseas.
Take a bow, dudes.
Maybe you don’t need German power metal bands in your life. That’s OK, with a good book or a well-done movie you can get (some) of what Blind Guardian offers. Enchantment, to restore a disenchanted world.
What you don’t get in a book or a movie however is the power of being in a big group of like-minded people, all experiencing the same powerful call. Chanting, “Valhalla, Deliverance!” like Viking warriors of old.
Where was I Saturday night? The lands of Faerie, or Worcester?
It's been a while since I did one of these. Too long. And I've got Blind Guardian on the calendar tomorrow. So, time for another Metal Friday.
Blind Guardian is great for so many reasons, but starting a song with a lute and either a flute (or perhaps a fife?) is one. Another is songs like "Curse My Name," which could be a number in an alternative metal universe performance of Les Miserables.
This is a great song, atmospheric, melodic, epic... and underneath it all some hard critique of monarchy. We are the nation, we are the law, and we won't take it anymore. How do we depose the monarch? Put him to death, that's what I say.
I wasn't even sure there was an electric guitar in this song... but yeah there it is at 4:38. Yet despite the lack of typical heavy metal trappings it's heavy AF, heavier than many guitar forward tunes.
Very dark.
And awesome.
Hard to believe this came out 14 years ago, on At the Edge of Time (2010). I feel like this album just came out yesterday. But time is subjective. The passage of years is different now than it once was.
Some stuff that might be interesting to you, but at minimum is important to me.
I’m not going to Howard Days this year. I was never planning to do so, but enough people have asked me that I figure I’d make it official here. I LOVED my first Howard Days experience and would gladly go again, but time and budget won’t permit me to go every year. I’ll just have to enjoy it vicariously and remember my experience of a year ago, which Deuce Richardson recently recapped on the blog of DMR Books in fine fashion here and here.
No book review requests, please. A public message that I’m not accepting any further books for review at this time. Recently I’ve received several requests to review new S&S and S&S adjacent titles, from authors and publishers, even a work in progress. I just don’t have time, due to personal and professional obligations. For more reasons why I made this decision please read this prior post. This is not to say I won’t be reviewing books here on the Silver Key, but they will be books I voluntarily seek out.
A terrific Mad Max conversation. I listen to a fair number of podcasts on topics that range from political to self-improvement to all things fantastic. Weird Studies with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel has remained in my rotation when others have fallen out because the hosts are so damned good—even though I probably skip 50% or more of the episodes. I’m just not interested in the occult or tarot or TV shows I haven’t watched (i.e., most of them), but when these guys turn to a topic I love—i.e., the Mad Max film franchise—I’m in. This episode does not disappoint, even though it’s (as always) lit-crit heavy and intellectual AF.
A one-star review and 5-star feedback. I got my first one-star review of Flame and Crimson on Goodreads, from an individual whose review reads, “Meh, DNF.” This bothered me to some degree; I would never one-star a book I didn’t finish. But whatever, the book is definitely not for everyone and evidently was not for this dude. On the other hand, this recent email from a reader warmed my cold heart all the way through:
Hi Brian, I just wanted to tell you I'm on my second read through of "Flame
and Crimson" and I'm enjoying it equally as much. I first read CONAN in the
late 1960's as a teenager and found a world and a hero to identify with on
an internal level. Here were stories that led me to realms of the fantastic
and a cast of characters to cheer or boo, they even convinced me buy some
weightlifting gear. (I never achieved the frame of the fabled warrior.) So
many thanks for the research, the writing and the publishing of this
wonderful book. It makes a 70 year old feel young and vital again.
That makes it all worth it, including the one-star reviews.
Blind Guardian powers into Worcester MA on Saturday. My personal heavy metal tour makes its next stop at The Palladium in Worcester this weekend, where I’ll be taking in legendary German power metal band Blind Guardian. With my old friend Dana, who introduced me to these guys a couple decades ago to my delight. Thanks Dana. Any band who writes concept albums based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion gets my attention, and these guys are always amazing.
I’ve got a college graduate. My oldest daughter Hannah, 22, just graduated from Colby-Sawyer college with a degree in professional and creative writing, and already has a job offer which she’s accepted teaching at a local boarding school. I couldn’t be prouder. She’s both like her Dad and very much her own person and I’m looking forward to watching her continue to grow into young adulthood. I’m a lucky man.
