Sword & Sorcery's Affinity with Heavy Metal (Rogues in the House podcast)

A couple weeks ago I got the opportunity to join the Rogues in the House podcast to talk about the intersection of heavy metal and sword-and-sorcery, Flame and Crimson, and Growing Up Metal.

It was a great conversation and as usual I had a blast.

That podcast is now out. Check it out on YouTube.

I've written about the symbiotic relationship of sword-and-sorcery and heavy metal before. Many, many metal bands have been influenced by sword-and-sorcery fiction, and we now have heavy metal band members writing S&S fiction. Howie Bentley of Cauldron Born and Jason Tarpey of Eternal Champion a couple chief examples.

Anecdotally, readers of S&S listen to heavy metal in higher proportion than country or rap music. There are reasons for this. The sound of S&S is heavy, and of battle. James Taylor cannot be the soundtrack of “Black Colossus.” 

Metal bands have appropriated sword-and-sorcery imagery wholesale. Dangle Kings of Metal in front of a Robert E. Howard reader and you’ll get a grunt of recognition, if not appreciation, even though they might have never heard of Manowar. Some will go on to sample the music, discover that “Heart of Steel” is really fucking awesome song, and become a metalhead.

(I dangled a copy of Kings of Metal on camera during the show, BTW).

This is not to say if you like one you'll like the other... but you have to be...willfully ignorant? Obtuse? not to see any relationship. When Manilla Road performs "Queen of the Black Coast," or Eternal Champion "YSLSL," subtlety and coded allusions have vacated the premises. They have become the same art.

I also appreciated the chance to talk about Growing Up Metal for the first time in a public forum. I have been blown away by its reception; I've been contacted by several folks I haven't seen since high school 35 years ago who read it, loved it, and wanted to talk to me about it. It's had impact. 

I don't know you, oh reader, but I suspect you'll like the book even if you don't love heavy metal.

Horror Hunters, a review

The 70s paperback tour continues with Horror Hunters, a 1971 anthology edited by Roger Elwood and Vic Ghidalia. 

I own the 1975 Manor Books reissue. Last I checked 1975 was more than 50 years ago (I’m no good at math but I feel confident in this claim). That makes it old… and the stories it contains, even older. The first two were first printed in 1908 and 1910, respectively. Nothing newer than 1956 vintage, now 70 years in the past.

But old is often good, time-tested and true. And this is the time for horror. It’s October and the veil between our world and the spiritual realm, thinned. So, on to the contents.

• “Ancient Sorceries,” Algernon Blackwood

• “The Gateway of the Monster,” William Hope Hodgson

• "The Unnamable" by H. P. Lovecraft

• “The Thing on the Roof,” Robert E. Howard

• "Mr. Ames' Devil,” August Derleth

• "In the X-Ray,” Fritz Leiber

• "One Foot and the Grave,” Theodore Sturgeon

• "I Kiss Your Shadow,” Robert Bloch

Despite the lineup of heavy-hitters I found Horror Hunters a bit more mixed than I hoped. But overall it’s a solid little volume. I love the cover, even if the leering skull seems to portend flesh-eating zombies and a bit more mayhem than we get. Horror Hunters is the stuff of chills and atmosphere, less so murder or gore. 

Blackwood’s “Ancient Sorceries” sets a sedate tone. It’s a very slow burn … that eventually catches fire. I liked it once it got going. The story is about a timid, highly sensitive, conservative Englishman traveling in the Alps who wanders into a town of secretive lycanthropic cat-people. It turns his worldview upside down. It’s really about the fear of losing oneself, our helplessness when confronted with our primitive lusts. The narrator experiences equal measures of self-loathing and shame, and the release of taboo and sexual abandon that accompanies the dropping of his stifling civilized veneer. 

Blackwood wrote a series of stories about a paranormal investigator named John Silence and this is one of them. These were all collected at one point and I probably need to pick them up.

William Hope Hodgson’s “The Gateway of the Monster” was OK, a classic haunted house/haunted room story. Bumps in the night, restless spirits etc. Not a whole lot else to say.

Lovecraft’s story was the one that grabbed me most of all the stories in the volume. I’d read “The Unnamable” before, perhaps a couple times, but it was nice to revisit the moldering old graveyard in Arkham.

I say revisit not merely because it was a re-read but because I've visited the dilapidated 17th century burial ground in Salem/Arkham, aka., the Charter Street Cemetery, that serves as the setting of this story. I’ve seen many such houses Lovecraft describes here, low gambrel rooves nearly touching the ground in the back, and old diamond-paned windows that might have images of their long-dead former tenants burned into them. I have walked alone on the grounds of the abandoned Danvers State Mental Hospital before it was torn down. It is in my blood, the dark history and haunted atmosphere of old New England. 

“The Unnamable” is good stuff.

The Robert E. Howard story is a workmanlike Cthulhu mythos tale… not one of Howard’s best, a bit too paint by numbers pastiche, but I did enjoy the Von Junzt Nameless Cults myth-making. 

The August Derleth story was pretty lame, a ho-hum demon summoning story that read like C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters minus the philosophical insight.

Fritz Leiber’s “In the X-Ray” was excellent. Today, the ending is quite predictable (Stephen King wrote an entire novel about the concept of parasitic twin with The Dark Half), but Leiber’s execution is outstanding. A creepy and convincing depiction of simple hate, how some people are just plain bad—even one’s twin—such that even the grave can’t keep them from coming back to torment their victims.

Theodore Sturgeon invented Sturgeon’s Law, aka. 90% of everything is crap… in an ironic twist I found his story just that. So crap I did something I almost never do: I DNF-d it. It was intolerable … meandering, absent any horror or drama or compelling reason to go on. Not sure what happened here.

Fortunately the volume ends with a solid little shocker by Robert Bloch, a story of love reaching out its spectral arms from beyond the grave.

A book that inspired Growing Up Metal--and another that didn't

Note: This is an excerpt from this week's Arcane Arts, my weekly email newsletter. Sign up, its free. 

When I first heard of Chuck Klosterman’s Fargo Rock City circa 2008, I thought to myself: Finally, someone has written the book I want to read. Suburban nowhere in rural North Dakota + heavy metal, seasoned with youthful nostalgia. A look back at 80s metal and what it all meant.

I read it with avidity. I laughed at Chuck’s shrewd observations even when I disagreed with them, sometimes violently (the dude hates Iron Maiden. WTF). Chuck has a sparkling wit and combines genuine love for some of the material with an unserious, lampooning look at its 80s excesses. Plus, he’s a good writer.

But in the end Fargo Rock City was not the book I wanted, or hoped for. Reasons here.​

This is not the book’s fault, necessarily, even though the back cover copy is a bit misleading (“classic memoir of growing up as a shameless metalhead in Wyndmere, North Dakota”). It’s not really memoir. Fargo Rock City is largely adult Klosterman’s analysis of heavy metal music, the 80s metal scene, the best and worst albums and bands, and the cultural impact of it all. What has made metal last, and what hasn’t aged well.

What it isn’t is his story.

Yes, it has elements of memoir, a few scenes from his childhood, but most of its page count is devoted to adult, half serious, half lampoon analysis of heavy metal. There is very little if any of the details of Chuck’s life, and even less self-examination.

In summary, I believed that the first metal fan’s memoir remained unwritten.

Fast forward 14 years. In 2022 I began to give serious thought to what would become the detailed outline for Growing Up Metal. In preparation I did some deep internet research. And turned up this book:

I bought it, read it, and immediately thought, this is what I’ve been seeking. Here is a blueprint for how I might grapple with my own story. Adventures of a Metalhead Librarian was proof it could be done. It was also a reminder that, like O’Brien’s book, it had to be done with heart, and authenticity, and my interior life on the page.

Adventures of a Metalhead Librarian is wildly different than my book but the arc is the same: The story of a metalhead from high school to adulthood. The transition from a life of relative irresponsibility and freedom, to parenthood and mortgage payments and commitments. O’Brien’s journey is more “metal” than mine; in 1990 at the age of 18 she moved to Los Angeles to live on the Sunset Strip. Metal was at its zenith and her book is full of authentic sex/drugs/rock and roll (sometimes with the band members themselves). She even landed her dream job with Metal Blade Records and saw everything upended with the arrival of grunge. Reading it, I felt some trepidation—my life was not as interesting as hers—but also a measure of relief. Our stories are very different. While hers took her out west (she eventually settled down in Arizona) mine took place on the east coast.

O’Brien’s stories of the strip are compelling and interesting and well-told but that’s not what makes the book excellent IMO. It’s the rawness of the narrative. Memoirs are powerful because they have a messiness and realness and complexity that fiction often lacks. Life is rarely tied up in a nice bow. O’Brien grapples with her demons, including her parents’ divorce and her complicated relationship with her father, a damaged, alcoholic Vietnam War veteran. She was a huge reader in her childhood and sought escape in the pages of stories, a trait I recognize in myself. Metal fans are if nothing else split personas--passionate and plain, rebellious and conformist, loud and quiet, often in the same package. It’s all part of the mystique.

O’Brien does in fact go on to become a librarian.

I admired it so much that it served as a loose model for how I wanted to craft my own memoir. In the end I did not want to write tongue-in-cheek cynicism or artful distanced criticism like Fargo Rock City because I felt neither of these things about metal. Instead, I wanted to write about my passion for the genre and how it accompanied me on my life journey. This is what O’Brien’s book delivers. It is a true look inside the author and the soul of the metal fan.

I hope I’ve managed to capture some of the same magic.

To Walk on Worlds, a review

I dig this nostalgic cover art (Mike Hoffman).

Sword-and-sorcery occupies a small space in writing and publishing and so you probably already know the name Matthew John. He wears many hats. Host of the Rogues in the House podcast. Conan game contributor/designer. Does an Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation that could be taken on the standup comedy circuit.

What about Matthew John the writer?

I set out to find more by picking up his To Walk on Worlds, a 2024 publication of Rogues in the House Presents. It’s a 250-odd page collection of 11 short stories, each of which stand alone but are connected by the land of Pathra, a loose chronology, and through the recurring appearance of a mysterious wizard Maxus who has the power to walk between worlds. As a result, it is something of a fix-up novel, akin to what Ray Bradbury did with The Martian Chronicles or Charles Saunders with Imaro. 

To cut to the chase: I enjoyed To Walk on Worlds. It is a cut above (pun intended) much modern sword-and-sorcery. I’ve heard good things about it, I try to support modern S&S, and I can recommend it.

John shines with his depiction of tough, terse, no-nonsense barbarian warriors and opaque wizards. Lachmannon is Conan like but also reminded me more than a little of Logen Ninefingers, which comes as little surprise given that John’s biggest literary influences are Robert E. Howard and Joe Abercrombie. Maxus cuts an intriguing figure, not evil but not even close to good. He’s self-centered and amoral, a wizard out of the pages of Jack Vance or Merlin pre-Disney moving in mysterious ways.

I like that the collection includes both of these characters in something of equal proportion, which speaks to both sides of the S&S equation: Its brawny, heroic, Robert E. Howard-esque side, and the weird, eldritch, Clark Ashton Smith-ian strain.

S&S (and S&P) fans will recognize its hallmarks. Low gravity leaps and interplanetary travel. Weird towers of green stone of an unknown origin beneath alien, multicolored skies. A page that has both “ziggurat” and “thews” on it (bold choice, Cotton). Another with the famous Abercrombie construction “let it be said that Lachmannon can find the humor in any instance.”

There is a risk here of becoming generic S&S, but what elevates it is John’s style and heart. His writing style is quite visual. He does dialogue well. He uses humor well, a dark and sardonic brand that can make you smile (grimly). A pit is described as “an agreeable pit as far as pits go.” I liked that; I laughed. And in a good way he wears his influences plainly, it makes the stories familiar and resonant. For example “Cries From A Sleeping City” reads like a cross of “Worms of the Earth” and Ridley Scott’s Aliens. It is a fine example of suffocating subterranean horror. “A Fate Worse Than Exile” was perhaps my favorite. It has echoes of both “Red Nails” and Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal with a persistent “dragon” that has much of a T-rex in him. What makes it work is the interplay of the two protagonists, the Conan-like Manus and the squirrely, loose with the truth rogue Quent. This was particularly well-done. The stories generally are propulsive with very little flab to them.

As with every collection I’ve ever read there were a couple stories that did not land, but these were greatly outweighed by the good. I’m not exactly sure where the broader story is going, I probably could have used a few more details to hook me on vol. 2 of the Maxus Cycle, Within the Weeping Eye. It feels like a bit of a prologue rather than a complete work in and of itself, even though the stories each have a beginning, middle and end, save for the last, which serves as both coda and teaser.

But sword-and-sorcery is supposed to be mysterious. The motivations of wizards are notoriously veiled. Jack Vance’s Dying Earth stories did not need anything connecting them to some grand narrative beyond cool things happening in a cool setting. There are a few hints dropped that lead me to believe Matt has something interesting planned for future volumes and the fate of Maxus.

One final word about the presentation. To Walk on Worlds is graced with great cover art, some neat and unexpected black-and-white interior illustrations, and a throwback pocket-sized format. All of which makes for a nice package (resisting, and failing, the urge to add “that’s what she said”).