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”).

Killing The Dragon, Ronnie James Dio

“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.”

--Ursula K. Le Guin

Dragons are fire-breathing lizards, the great wyrms confronting the heroes Beowulf and Sigurd. And they can also be something less tangible but no less terrifying or formidable. A conceptual or symbolic evil. A dark philosophy of hard and cold materialism that says we are nothing and to nothing we shall return or a desire for selfish wealth-hoarding above altruism, or love for fellow man. 

In the pivotal scene of Growing Up Metal I confront my dragon. Not those described above, but a very personal struggle of my own making.

What is it? It’s in the book man.

Dio sang about this theme powerfully and beautifully (as if he’s capable of anything but) in 2002’s “Killing the Dragon” off the album of the same name.

This particular song concerns a dark dragon we’re all fighting today: Electronic serfdom. Dopamine leashes, AI slop. Digital overlords selling us paid subscriptions to the world humanity built—not they.

Kneel and behold your new king

Digital dreams

And wonderful things to tease you

Small gods with electrical hearts

Later “killing the dragon” became the rallying cry for Dio’s battle with cancer. As he and his wife Wendy said of  their trips to MD Anderson for chemo treatments, “We’re Killing the Dragon.” 

It’s also of course an absolutely kick-ass song. I love the haunting, spectral intro. I love the powerful chorus, the chugging guitars, and most of all I love the lyrics and the underlying theme for all the reasons mentioned above.

I love it most of all because it’s Dio. He lost his battle with the dragon of cancer but continues to inspire me today.

The Howling, Gary Brandner

Warning: Some spoilers and discussion of sexual assault.

We’re in the witching season, and with it comes my pivot to all things horror. Today a review of “A Terrifying Tale of the Occult”… Gary Brandner’s The Howling.

The basics: Published in 1977 by Fawcett Gold Medal. A little about them: Fawcett broke ground with paperback originals at a time when the standard was 1) Hardcover first and 2) Paperbacks later. Fawcett said straight to paperback.

Smart. The Howling probably doesn’t need a collectible hardcover edition. It is the definition of a disposable horror novel.

But I think it’s a little more than that.

The plot is basic: Abandoned town with a bad reputation, high number of strange disappearances, and a werewolf problem. Out of town couple moves in, trouble ensues. The characters are rather wooden, the build slow for such a short (223 page) novel. But I enjoyed it all the same. It’s the equivalent of a good B movie. It works, a solid little horror novel that rates a 3/5, or generously a 3.5/5.

Brandner is an effective writer of atmosphere. The story is quite telegraphed but that hardly matters. He creates a mood and I enjoyed said mood.

The book opens with a graphic sexual assault, so reader beware. This has gotten a lot of flak on review sites. Most declare it gratuitous and unnecessary and almost a DNF non-starter. For example (Goodreads sample):

Karyn endures a horrific assault at the beginning of the story which is described in grossly intimate detail. Worst of all, it's done just for shock value. It doesn't really aid in her character development, it doesn't add much to the overall plot and it just ends up feeling like pointless tastelessness. It's brushed off and dismissed way too easily. 

I agree with the part in bold. I get why it might stop you dead in your tracks.

I disagree with the rest of this paragraph.

Karyn’s terrible assault might be the very hinge of the book. I think it is integral to the plot.

During the assault she is bitten on the thigh; werewolf bites transform their victim. Her attacker is not a werewolf, but after her experience Karyn is transformed. The bite is a metaphor for the terrible and deep trauma a sexual assault has on not just its victim, but their relationships. It ruins Karyn’s relationship with her husband. Everything else in the story afterward is its consequence. I get the complaints and the non-starter issues people have, but I think they’re missing something Brandner might have been trying to do. Am I giving him too much credit? Possibly. Brandner does not have a reputation as a sophisticated novelist and isn’t around to defend his choices (he passed in 2013). 

I’m just giving you my opinion. YMMV.

Heavy shit aside, let’s talk about the packaging, the 1970s, and the werewolf genre.

The Howling features an interesting back cover blurb declaring it “in the tradition of ‘Salem’s Lot.” Eh… not really. It’s hard to imagine how a tradition could be launched in two years (‘Salem’s Lot debuted in 1975). Stephen King was a rising force at the time and I suspect Fawcett was trying to catch a piece of the wave.

In fact, I wonder if King’s Cycle of the Werewolf (1983) isn’t in The Howling’s tradition, owing its inspiration to Brandner and the general werewolf craze of the era—not the other way ‘round. There were a lot of werewolf treatments at this time in book and film including Whitley Streiber’s The Wolfen and An American Werewolf in London. Cujo (1981) is another fine werewolf story, the tale of a St. Bernard transforming after a bite from a rabid bat into something monstrous. Not a werewolf per se, but the same principles apply.

The Wolfen and Cujo are far superior to The Howling if you’re asking for my opinion/recommendation. But that doesn’t make the latter worthless. It has a period charm of its own. 

If you like sex in your stories there’s a fair bit of that. In fact the best writing is the sex, in particular when Karyns’ husband Roy gets it on with the wicked and voluptuous Marcia. Brandner’s ordinary, workmanlike prose comes to life here in full Skin-emax, late-night glory:

The shadows of evening moved into the valley and darkened the windows of Marcia’s small apartment, but the people within had no sense of time. For Roy Beatty the universe consisted of the hills and hollows, the knowing hands, and the wet, clinging orifices of the wild black-haired woman.

I love the novel’s intense isolated 1970s vibe. No cell phones, no internet, everyone reading books (remember that?) The haunted town of Drago where the action unfolds is haunted and sinister and utterly insular. No police station, a creaky general store and post office, homes left mysteriously abandoned. As the howling intensifies and her pet dog disappears and the menace increases Karyn finds a sympathetic local schoolteacher who knows the town’s backstory. The two plow through books on werewolves, trying to discover all they can to defeat the supernatural monsters. 

Stuff that really doesn’t happen anymore unless you set your story in the past. Which is probably why I prefer this era of horror.

I’ll probably watch the film now, which at best shares a passing resemblance to the novel but has its moments.

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Silence your inner critic, enter the unknown deeps

I have a critic. He has made it his life work to follow me, hound me wherever I go. When I’m online. In the car as I’m driving. I’m taking a shower and look, he’s there again.

He’s not only persistent and annoying (and kinda creepy), he’s also a master of disguise. 

He assumes the voices of readers of works that I haven’t published, offended by what I’m about to say. And he whispers, don’t say that. 

He is the looming presence of a lecturing conservative father. Keep that bottled up, dude. No one wants to see your dirty laundry.

He is the shrill voice telling me I’m not a talented writer, and never was. What a joke… that post, that book? That sucks dude.

He is the placid voice of the common man, urging me back to the safe middle. Don’t write that. Do another top 5 sword-and-sorcery list—that’s what people want. Play it safe. 

He reminds me I’m not worthy to write about certain topics because they’re too complex, the field too well-sewn. That I’m out of my depth. What could you possibly say about heavy metal that Chuck Klosterman and Ian Christe and Eddie Trunk haven’t already said, and better? Who gives a shit about your story when we've got Bruce Dickinson's?

That critic is me, of course.

I fight the battle with him every day. Sometimes his voice barely rises above a whisper, other times it drowns me with a deafening roar. I push on.

I’m currently reading Moby Dick (yes, I’m a glutton for punishment—but not really. Moby Dick is far more accessible than you think, long diversions into the details of whaling aside). It is worth reading because it’s a book loaded with rich, imaginative writing and profound wisdom applicable to all of mankind.

One chapter relevant to this post is “The Lee Shore.” In it Melville describes the primal urge to turn away from the safety and surety of the shore and embrace the unknown of the treacherous deep. The courage to be at sea when dry land calls.

Here’s a pretty good analysis.

So it is with Bulkington. He arrives home after a long whaling voyage, and immediately signs on with another, back out onto the tempestuous ocean. Not because he loves the sea particularly, but because he must, for some reason, be at sea, there being some intolerable pain that assaults him on the land. 

I have to go to sea, again and again. I don’t know precisely why, other than being on land for too long grows intolerable.

My critic is on my shoulder now, as I type this post. Aren’t you mixing metaphors? Are you just showing off by saying you’re reading Moby Dick?

Hey, merciless critic, fuck you. OK?

Today I’m feeling worthy to be on this shelf. 

The real message of Fahrenheit 451

The firemen are you.

People (myself included, until a recent re-read) often get one of the core messages of Fahrenheit 451 backwards.

People ended books. Not top-down government authority. 

People decided shallow entertainment was preferable to literature that challenges them to think and invokes discomfort. The Firemen who burn books—the splashy and memorable part of Ray Bradbury’s novel—aren’t one-dimensional monsters, they’re just men giving the people what they want. 

Chilling.

What they think they want, anyway. Some resort to sleeping pills to silence the pain of existence. Some hold on to their books and are burned to husks. 

Montag never asks to think if his life—which includes a well-paying job and a wife and all material needs met--makes him happy. Without poetry or color or depth or diversity of thought, it does not. 

Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 as radio dominated and television surged in popularity. He saw and grew fearful for the steady erosion of reading and book culture. In the late 1950s he recounted the following incident:

In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451, I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.

I can only imagine what Ray would have thought of the age of the smartphone and its endless short form video reels and doomscrolling and Twitter and AI.

We might lose to AI, and if we do people as much as big tech will be at fault. Because we settle for its comfortable babble, “create” with it instead of creating with our own skills and intuition and effort.

Fahrenheit 451 is also a stark warning against censorship in all its forms, including softer forms like “political correctness.” Interesting that Ballantine Books censored some of the “problematic” words from the text in a 1967 edition. Did anyone there read the book, I wonder?

If you’re a right-winger who wants to ban books with sex or depict a gay family in a positive light, you’re the person Ray Bradbury was warning against. If you’re a left-winger who condemns Lovecraft and Howard and Burroughs and labels any author who doesn’t check every diversity checkbox as “problematic,” you’re a person who needs to read this book. And do some rethinking. 

Fahrenheit 451 might be old but it’s still a very sharp book. It can cut. 

Great.

Reject machine culture. Reject TikTok. Read.

Growing Up Metal is available on Amazon

Growing Up Metal: The Story Of A Fan Who (Kind Of) Rocked is now available on Amazon.

Kindle: $5.99

Print: $15.99

I'm psyched! And now, for one naked ask.

Please buy a copy.

You’re a loyal reader of the blog. You’ve loved or at least read (skimmed?) my essays, my posting about sword-and-sorcery and heavy metal. Some of you for years.

Thank you.

You know I don’t charge a thing to read anything I’ve written. There’s no annoying pop-up ads, no asks to join my non-existent Patreon, no paywalls, no tip jar. Nothing.

I plan to keep it that way

But I have an ask.

Please buy Growing Up Metal.

If you don’t like heavy metal, you probably know someone who does. Or who likes memoir. Or who grew up in the 80s and 90s. Or struggled to grow up, struggled in his or her marriage. And made it to the other side, with a story that doesn't pull punches.

Read it, review it. Send me feedback. Tell me if you love it, tell me it sucks. Tell me if it moved you, or didn’t.

What is it?

My story from teenager to adult, full and largely unexpurgated. The Truth, the facts of my existence and what I learned from it all, how I listened, and changed. With a fantastic soundtrack.

The story of heavy metal, filtered through me.

The story of a bygone era of time that I tried to bring back to life.

Even a couple dribs and drabs of sword-and-sorcery. Not much, but not zero.

It’s time to tell my story

I’ve been telling stories all of my life. Lots of stories. More than you might think. For some perspective:

• I worked eight years as a full-time reporter for a daily newspaper, writing and publishing stories every day, Monday-Friday.

• I spent 18 years working in healthcare publishing, during which I interviewed hundreds of experts for industry newsletters. And hosted hundreds more on a podcast. I wrote and told all of their stories.

• I spent 25 years covering high school football. In that time I spoke to hundreds of players and coaches, likely thousands. I witnessed great victories, painful defeats, and stood in the pressbox and the stands capturing every detail, sometimes in the driving rain or shivering in brutal cold. And cataloged them all in the pages of a newspaper.

• I’ve told the stories of my grandfathers and their incredible service in two major world wars.

• I’ve told the story of a former colleague who passed away far too early, a keynote speech I delivered to a crowd of more than 1,200.

• I’ve written hundreds of essays, book reviews, and author profiles, here on The Silver Key and for websites like Goodman Games, Black Gate, SFFaudio.com, and The Cimmerian. 

• I wrote a non-fiction book about the lives of sword-and-sorcery authors, telling the weird story of the creation of a niche subgenre of fantasy fiction. A long and interesting story, start to finish, as told in Flame and Crimson.

I learned something from every person I researched or interviewed. Even if it was someone I thought I knew well, my knowledge of them deepened. I’m incredibly grateful to have had this amazing career. No regrets, I loved it all. I would do it all over again.

But something was missing. 

Where was my story in all of this?

Did I even have one worth telling?

For most of my life I’ve considered my story, if it all, as irrelevant, inconsequential. Who was I, next to a star football player, an influential selectman, the chief of police? Next to men and women who wrote influential works of fiction, or fought in wars? Or played in heavy metal bands?

But with the passage of time and (slow) accumulation of wisdom I came to realize a profound truth: That every life is a story. That anyone who has lived a life—even one marked heavily by disappointment and failure—has a story in them, if they are brave enough to speak about it, or set it to paper. That my life, which I formerly had not bothered to examine—and if you had asked me just a few years ago would have said was not worthy of examination—might have something of value. That it was a unique story, and therefore one worth telling. 

For I too lived. Foolishly, tentatively, averagely. But also loudly, passionately, and colorfully, in my own way. In no small part because I grew up listening to the best damned music genre for pale teenage boys our planet has ever seen.

Heavy Metal.

I was part of a unique culture, during a unique period of time that shall never again exist. I was never on the stage, but I was, and remain, a fan, passionately devoted to an utterly unique and misunderstood genre of music. 

I don’t look the part, and never have, but heavy metal resonates in my soul, with the same volume of an amplified arena concert.

The fans’ story is an unwritten chapter in the rich and colorful history of heavy metal. We’ve got Ozzy’s story, and Gene Simmons’, Rob Halford’s, Bruce Dickinson’s, and hundreds more…but what about those who bought their albums, attended their concerts, and followed their exploits on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball? 

Eventually I came to realize this was a story worth telling. It was time to tell the story of a fan … who happened to be me. 

I started with a difficult and subjective question for which I did not have an answer—how much of my story, vs. how much of metal’s? But as I began to draft, and redraft, the decision made itself: it would be my story, with metal as the backdrop. The soundtrack to my life, if you will. 

My story needed to be told, finally, after a lifetime of telling everyone else’s.

Growing Up Metal is not a heavy metal history. If you’re looking for that, look elsewhere. There are many other worthy metal histories written by authors with far greater knowledge of the genre’s depth and breadth than my own. I’ll happily send you my recommendations. 

I think in Growing Up Metal you will find something unprecedented, and unexpected.

Growing Up Metal is the story about how I grew from boy to adult with heavy metal as my constant companion. I tell the story of heavy metal, but heavily filtered through my experiences and perspective. Growing Up Metal is not a sordid tell-all, but it’s intensely personal. Revealing, and raw, and real, which was not easy for someone who spent most his life wearing masks of one sort or another. Who was I, underneath the Gene Simmons face paint? Writing it was incredibly therapeutic, and transformative. Difficult … but also a lot of fun. I did a lot of dumb things, over-the-top, ridiculous things, and lived to tell the tale. 

If you’re going to write a memoir you can’t half-ass it, deflect the spotlight, paint over your faults, tell lies or comforting untruths. Books are a serious business that when told truthfully and at length put their subject under the microscope. 

You can’t hide in a memoir, and if you do, it will suck. No one wants to read a pale copy, sharp edges shorn off and colors muted. 

I didn’t hide writing Growing Up Metal. My life is in its pages.

***

In my younger days I lived a life of consumption. I voraciously consumed music, books, and experiences, at the expense of never looking inside. Today we’re constantly bombarded with external stimulus. The smart phone is if nothing else the greatest distraction machine ever invented. “Doom scrolling” has entered the vernacular. 

Writing Growing Up Metal afforded me a space to stop and reflect. 

The great mythographers Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell said that the real frontier we are called to explore is within. In Growing Up Metal I excavated the events of my past. I reflected on the life I’ve lived, who I was, and who I became, after many trials and false starts and failures.

In the end I was surprised to find it resembled something of The Hero’s Journey, though it did not set out as one.

Heavy metal has an interesting story. It rose, it fell, and was reborn from ruins … a story which strangely parallels my own. All of that is in there. Triumph, failure, crash, and coming to life again. 

Each chapter ends with an “amplifier” sidebar in which I digress from my life and discuss the history of metal, or its themes and importance, in more detail. If you remember the 80s and 90s and life before the internet, how we bought and consumed music before Spotify and YouTube, you’ll get mainlined nostalgia for a brief point in time that no longer exists. If you grew up in the New England region, you’ll recognize a lot of the venues where the events unfold. Some of these venues have been bulldozed into the ground, which might be for the best.

I was further spurred to write this book with the advent of generative AI and large language models (LLMs). These are machines that “create” using machine algorithms and aggregated text others have written. LLMs are powerful tools which I believe have a useful purpose… but not in creative spaces. I draw a firm, unwavering line when it comes to using AI for the arts. After all, the life I lived was profoundly human, full of awkward romance and painful mistakes, occasional catastrophes and towering triumphs. Of a modest sort, but not to me. The writing needed to be mine. It’s 100% authentic meat space, and I was adamant my voice would be mine, not a machine.

I hope you enjoy Growing Up Metal, learn something from it, and perhaps recognize something of yourself in its pages. And if you’re at the right age, at a pivotal time in your life, it may even help you make different choices, ones I might have made to change the course of my life.

Growing Up Metal is complete. I hope it strikes a heavy power chord among metal fans, maybe something akin to the shock we feel when Judas Priest starts into The Hellion/Electric Eye. 

I think it rocks.

If you’ve liked what I’ve had to say here over the many years, please consider picking up a copy. Consider it my personal mix tape to you. 

Growing Up Metal cover reveal

(note: this was the lead item in my free weekly email newsletter Arcane Arts. Sign up the link or at the widget at right)

I had some difficult decisions to make regarding the cover of Growing Up Metal. I engaged a cover designer and he sent me four treatments, three of which I liked but had to dismiss.

Spinal Tap volume dial: A bit too plain and a bit too clever.

Guitar: Clean look, great font, but implies I play the instrument.

Average dude with silhouette of guitar hero—near perfect, nearly the cover. But I could only pick one. 

It lost out to this one.

The winner. Fuck yeah!

Why did I go with this cover?

1. The over-the-top imagery and garishness. All characteristic of metal.

2. It's nostalgic. For a time of tapes, and of a time when heavy metal was new and vital and emerging from primordial sludge.

3. Its symbolism. The figure that is vaguely me stands atop the music that has helped make him who he is. He is made of metal.

4. It places me on the center stage. The book is a memoir, and the story is my own.

My cover designer nailed it. My only edits were to add a few more metal touches (amplifiers to match the “amplifier” sidebars you’ll find in the book) and a picture and the copy for the back cover design.

I hope it grabs you as it did me and inspires you to give Growing Up Metal a read. It’s almost ready for print.

This week I set up my Amazon Author account, which included enabling two-step verification, scanning my face (!) and driver’s license to verify my identity, and connecting my bank account to ensure I can receive payments.

I also selected a half-dozen representative photographs for a picture collage included in the back matter. I purchased two ISBNs, one each for print and digital editions. Next I’ll be exporting the final print-ready file and uploading it and the cover to the KDP platform. Setting the price, filling in the details and marketing copy on the Amazon website.

And pressing publish.

An email from marketing guru and author Seth Godin hit my inbox as I was writing this issue: On the Verge of Done. It can’t be a coincidence.

"Knocking At Your Back Door," Deep Purple

Ritchie Blackmore, the talented but mercurial (i.e., notorious reputation as a douchebag) guitarist for Rainbow, Blackmore's Night, and Deep Purple, returned to the stage with his old Deep Purple bandmates this week for the first time in years. 33 long years... wow.

Growing up I was never a Purple fan... too much of keyboard 70s rock in them, not enough metal for my tastes, they seemed old fogies before my time. But, I have come to admire some of their work. And conclude that Blackmore is a very talented guitarist.

When Brian May calls you something like a comet from a clear blue sky, a figure of mystery and wonder who influenced a generation with his improvisational play, no more needs be said.

"Knocking At Your Back Door," a fine song about, well, back door sex and the thrill of the chase, features some fantastic guitar work by Blackmore. The exit solo taking us out of the studio version is so good I wouldn't mind another 10 minutes of it.

Good for Blackmore, now 81, for getting up on stage with Purple one last time. Today is a good day to bury whatever hatchet hovers above you and your old grudges and make peace.

A title reveal

I revealed the title and an important progress update on the heavy metal memoir in this morning's edition of Arcane Arts: Dispatches From The Silver Key. Check it out here, and please consider subscribing if you haven't yet done so. 

It's free, just an email needed.

Arcane Arts is my weekly e-mail newsletter, rounding up what I'm working on, a bit about my personal goings-on, and cool stuff of a fantastic/metal and S&S bent I find interesting/provocative/worth sharing. 

Revolution Is My Name, Pantera

Dimebag Darrell was one of those rare one-of-a-kind guitar players with a unique style instantly recognizable as soon as he sets pick to string. Swampy, staccato, sharp, with trademark squeals that arrest the ear.

Exhibit A.

The main riff in “Revolution Is My Name” might be his best, and he has many. You can make a case for “Cemetary Gates” or “Walk” ; right now I’m feeling this one.

“Revolution is My Name” appeared on 2000’s Reinventing the Steel, the band’s last album. It was nominated for Best Metal Performance at the 2001 Grammys.

Dimebag was a huge KISS and Ace Frehley fan and the feeling was mutual. After his 2004 murder KISS stepped up. Gene Simmons donated a KISS coffin (!) for his burial. Ace spoke for Dimebag during his posthumous induction into Hollywood’s RockWalk and later dedicated an album to him. 

Numerous subsequent metal guitarists have cited him as an influence. The dude could shred.

Metal will always be the music of Generation-X. Even though it got underway in the early 70s with Black Sabbath and so was fostered by later Boomers, it exploded in popularity in the early 80s when high school aged Gen-Xers went all-in. In this song Phil Anselmo (an X-er, b. 1968) voices the cultural influences that made him, and our generation, who we are. The shadow of Vietnam and the turbulent 70s. 

'68, into the world born

The '70s, a breath after the war

Life was confusing because of my age

Should my eyes open for tomorrow's gains?

I can't help the way I am

There's no trust and there's no end

What is my name?

The somewhat amusing video is a paean to the formative music of our youth, KISS and Led Zeppelin and their ilk. Anselmo's rage, rebellion, and love of metal, will never change.

Enjoy this crushing tune on Metal Friday, friends.

The Dragon Sickness

(Warning; contains spoilers for David Drake's "The Barrow Troll")

Wealth hoarding. Obsessively clutching your treasure until it consumes you. This base and all-too human instinct manifests in our stories and myths as The Dragon Sickness.

The dragon is a creature out of myth, but also a symbol out of the theories of Carl Jung. A monster lording over its wealth, but also a beast lurking inside of you. Your ego, preventing you from self-actualizing, becoming your highest version of yourself, dragging you down into selfishness.

The dragon sickness finds expression in the Old English epic poem Beowulf, a common ancestor of both high fantasy and sword-and-sorcery. We can see its influence on works as diverse as J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and David Drake’s “The Barrow Troll.”

And we can see how the lesson of the myth diverges in these two stories, offering two very different ends.

Bilbo acquires and then gives away (most) of his wealth. He returns to Bag End with money, but is very generous with his treasure.

The “barrow troll” of Drake’s story hoards it, guards it jealously, and murders anyone who would take it.  When Ulf kills the troll and takes possession of its golden horde, he becomes the monster.

“Gold,” he murmured. Then, “Gold!” There must—the others—in God’s name, there are five more and perhaps all of them—”

“Gold,” Ulf grated terribly.

Johann ran to the nearest chest and opened it one-handed. The lid sagged wetly, but frequent use had kept it from swelling tight to the side panels. “Look at this crucifix!” the priest marvelled. “And the torque, it must weigh pounds. And Lord in heaven, this—”

“Gold,” the berserker repeated.

***

What should we make of wealth? Is it a metric for success or a sign of corruption? An earned possession of the rich that trickles down to the less fortunate? A sin to possess in quantity?

Wealth is not an inherent evil, it’s all about our relationship to it. Expending effort to achieve wealth is admirable … but more admirable is generosity, post-wealth. If you use it to help enrich others you can become a hero. If you set your north star solely by the size of your bottom line or your bank account you become a troll.

“It’s a Wonderful Life” contrasts George Bailey and Old Man Potter. Who had the greater moral clarity and lived a more wonderful life? The crabby old man who lived a luxuriant life of hoarding while keeping others poor, or the family man who lived modestly and sacrificed to give families in his community a fair mortgage and a reasonable start in life? 

Who received wealth in the end, in the most unexpected of eucatastrophes? 

Making the right choice isn’t easy. Wealth is seductive, the dragon, a fierce enemy. The Master of Laketown succumbs to the dragon sickness. The dwarves in Moria delve too greedily and too deep, arousing the balrog, a physical manifestation of greed. Thorin succumbs to it with the Arkenstone, and ultimately recognizes his error on his deathbed.

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world,” Thorin says to Bilbo. 

The dragon sickness can be overcome with compassion, generosity, a moral compass that places people above possessions. Bilbo and Bard are the guideposts. 

“The Barrow Troll” is the warning.

"Into the Fire," Dokken

I've heard it referred to alternatively as hair metal, glam metal, sometimes by the less charitable, butt rock. Whatever. 

I've come to love it. 

It really all started with Quiet Riot's Metal Health, which made history by becoming the first metal album to reach no. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart. Then you had Pyromania and Shout at the Devil and it was on. Dudes with big hair and tight pants playing heavy but radio friendly-ish heavy metal, dominating the air waves circa 1983-91.

Dokken is one of the best examples of this sort of thing. Their first album, 1983's Breaking the Chains, was considered a commercial flop, and they needed a big sophomore effort. They got it with Tooth and Nail, released in September 1984. It had several strong tracks, "Alone Again" probably the most popular and recognizable, but I like this one best.

God I love these ridiculous videos... zero subtlety, near zero artistry, zero fucks given.

I've come to love George Lynch. He's an incredibly talented guitarist who writes killer licks and makes this band what it is. Guitar-forward, great hooks, great for blasting as you drive down the seaside in a convertible Iroc-Z or Camaro Z28.

You might be seeing a bit more of this type of music on Metal Fridays through September, for reasons that will soon become clear.

Gazing into The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune

Can sword-and-sorcery be quiet, thoughtful … philosophical?

Not typically … but Robert E. Howard was anything but typical.

If you want to know why Howard lasts while so many of his barbaric descendants have not, gaze into "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune."

But not too closely. You might not be able to rip your gaze away.

***

“Mirrors” starts with an epigraph by Edgar Allan Poe, placing the reader into the proper headspace for the story to come. Poe wrote stories of psychological disorientation and spirals into madness.

The stuff of “Mirrors.” 

Not much actually happens plot-wise. Kull is king but unsatisfied with reality, weary of life, and unable to hear the sea-songs of Atlantis of his youth. It has the same melancholy, disenchanted feel of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Silver Key” (Feb. 1929 Weird Tales), even though Howard wrote the story considerably earlier and that could not have been an influence. Must have been something in the inter-war air.

A slave girl with an ulterior motive recommends Kull seek out Tuzun Thune, a wizard who holds the secrets of life and death. And he does.

But this story isn’t about plot, or character. It’s theme, the exploration of life itself, and how strange and ephemeral this thing called “reality” is. When you get right down to it the relationship of reality and consciousness are incredibly complex, and uncertain, prone to dissolve if you look at them too closely. 

Is there reality if no one is there to observe it? Does the observer therefore create reality? And if so, can we create and inhabit worlds of our own making, every bit as “real” as this one?

Howard frames this strangeness through Thune and his probing questions. When Kull asks the wizard if he can create wonders, Thune replies, Is it not a wonder that flesh obeys the thoughts of our mind? That we can talk with the dead by talking with another person—who are already dead because they were born?

Skeptical of slippery sophistry, Kull nevertheless accepts Thune’s offer to gaze into his mirrors. And there finds the origins of man, a “dream of the gods,” and learns the truth of mankind’s ephemeral existence, that all our glories will fade like smoke on a summer sea.

Kull is soon lost in a hall of mirrors that seem real but may be a metaphor for his own tortured and bewildered metaphysical thinking.

Is his world real, or the world inside the mirror real? 

Does it matter, if reality is only in our heads, the product of our highly individual consciousness? Is life merely a dream?

The line between fantasy and reality blurs as Kull himself begins to fade; he threatens to vanish entirely into the world in the mirror until his Pict friend, Brule the Spear-Slayer, kills Tuzun Thune and shatters the glass. 

But this is no heroic finish. Unease remains. Kull is left to ponder, was it Thune’s witchery changing him to mist, or had he stumbled on to a secret? Maybe there are worlds beyond worlds, ones we can access.

Conan would famously reject such mirrors and place his gaze firmly upon this world. He scorns such bottomless and possibly destructive philosophizing (“Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me."). Perhaps both he and Howard came to discover that the only truth we can ever truly know is our own. 

Though even Conan’s words can be interpreted with ambiguity; after all he never admits he knows the truth, only that he will let others brood upon its nature, and that the illusion is real, to him.

A few additional notes

“The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune” originally appeared in the September 1929 Weird Tales and has been reprinted and adapted widely since. In print, too numerous to mention, but some notables include Skull-Face and Others (Arkham House, 1946), The Coming of Conan (Gnome Press, 1953), and King Kull (Lancer, 1967).

***

The story was adapted for Savage Sword of Conan #34 (Oct. 1978), with script by Roy Thomas and art by Mike Ploog. I have this. It’s pretty cool even though two of the pages are transposed. The images from this essay are taken from that.

***

The heavy metal band Arkham Witch covered the tale in a song of the same name.

***

It contains one of my favorite Howard passages, a prose-poetry which made Howard so special. 

“There comes, even to kings, the time of great weariness. Then the gold of the throne is brass, the silk of the palace becomes drab. The gems in the diadem sparkle drearily like the ice of the white seas; the speech of men is as the empty rattle of a jester's bell and the feel comes of things unreal; even the sun is copper in the sky, and the breath of the green ocean is no longer fresh.”

This passage was heavily adapted for the screenplay of Conan the Barbarian (1982) and voiced by Max Von Sydow.

***

Is Kull a proto-Conan? You can make the case for yes and no.

Yes: Conan was borne out of a rewritten Kull story and so contains his literal DNA. Both are powerful, massive, untamed, fierce fighters, barbarian outsiders sitting uncomfortably on the thrones of civilized kingdoms.

No: Howard was in a different place in his life when he wrote these stories, and the characters are therefore different. Kull has his own distinct characteristics: Brooding, reflective, relatively chaste, philosophical, prone to dreaming. In his essay “Atlantean Genesis” included in Kull: Exile of Atlantis (Del Rey, 2006), editor Patrice Louinet shares some passages from letters to his friend Tevis Clyde Smith at the time of the writing of “Mirrors,” and they are rife with the same sort of philosophical/psychological inquiry.

***

Can a story about the nature of reality be categorized as sword-and-sorcery? I don’t want S&S minus the Clark Ashton Smithian-weird strain. And it’s got a warrior and a wizard in it. 

So I say, yes.

The Myth of Progress

I am a big fan of modern medicine. I like my car, I need electricity, I even (mostly) enjoy the internet. I could do without my television … but watching a good movie (on the DVD player) makes the glass teat worth owning.

I mourn the fields and sighing pines that are now condos, and the state of my attention before the omnipresent pocket screen. I miss the world pre-9/11, life in the middle before extreme political division. I miss local bookstores and reading culture, when everyone seemed to be holding a mass-market paperback.

I am not a purveyor of nostalgia, though nostalgia is genuine human emotion and has evolved with us for a reason. I do realize that we’ve come a long way baby, and even the decades of my youth—the 70s and 80s—had pockets of shittiness we’re better off without.

But I’m also not a blinkered techno-utopian. 

I miss Google search before it became “enshittified” and definitely life before generative AI. Slop and outsourced thinking is a problem; not having a reliable way to know if something is true is worse.

Progress is just change, and change is sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Great things are gained with breakthroughs, something is inevitably lost along the way. There is no unseen digital hand, no Prometheus of circuitry and silicon, steering us ever forward to “better.” This belief is a myth.

The myth of progress does not only apply to technology. It applies to social progress, and the progress of a life.

As we grow older we gain wealth, wisdom, strength, autonomy, influence.

We lose innocence, wonder, malleability, potential. And if I’m getting dark, we lose everything at the end. Maybe we progress to some paradise of the afterlife, but there is no assurance there.

Unfortunately there is no magical formula for getting this balance right.

What can we do?

Slow the fuck down. Encourage and celebrate measured, incremental progress. Be thoughtful, as humans can be, and strive to make more of these changes the positive sort.

Be kinder, stop killing each other for a few minutes.

Celebrate our past, preserve and honor what is great about it.

Understand the tradeoffs that inevitably come with technology and efficiency and the sprawl of development.

Talk like adults about all this, rather than behave like children striving to win a game that never was one to begin with.

I realize I sound a bit like an old man shouting at clouds, without hope. 

But I am hopeful we can figure this out, and discover the peace that comes with balance.

...

Or at least bring back Pizza Hut of the 1980s.

Missives from Highland Lake

I'm up at the family cottage on Highland Lake this week, enjoying some sorely needed PTO.

I did get out an issue of Arcane Arts, which you can read here. And remember to click "subscribe."

I also got in some quality time with my friend Tom Barber, who left me a mighty gift: 10 classic paperbacks, most published by Zebra in the 1970s, all with his cover art.

In return I gave Tom a ride on the pontoon boat on a beautiful, 10/10 afternoon.