True Metal: Attacker

I've seen the Attacker album Battle at Helms Deep floating around the internet for years but I can't remember actually listening to it until today. I didn't expect it to be awesome. But it is.

The sound is pure heavy metal. This was from 1985, merely two years after Slayer and Metallica debuted. Metal was just starting to develop sub-genres, but it would be a while before we became obsessed with such divisions. This isn't thrash, death, black, grindcore, or speed. It isn't power or pirate metal. It's just heavy metal. Thrashy crunchy riffs with soaring and screeching vocals, rock and roll rasping vocals, and hard rock drumming. Plenty of tempo changes and shredding lead guiarts.

It's a true metal masterpiece, if you ask me. This is in the vein of Saxon, Raven, Judas Priest, and Mercyful Fate.

 

Moozik

I've been using Spotify since it launched. I don't know who owns it or what happens behind the scenes. I admit full ignorance on this matter. All I know is it has shit tons of music and I have logged a shit ton of hours using it.

Anyway, here's one of my "daily mixes" that the fine folks at Spotify put together just for me. I feel so special! It's actually a nice jam. I mean... these are all songs from my favorites list, so duh.

ROCK OUT

Nature of the Barbarian

"Conan is the damnedest bastard"

I stumbled upon something buried deep in my file folders, lost and forgotten. Perhaps for good reason. Who knows?

This is a link to a file on Drive. It is a file created in Mod Plug Tracker, I believe. It's a music file. You can play it in WinAmp, for example.

It's a mix of Vincent D'Onofrio talking about Conan the Barbarian from the movie The Whole Wide World with some ambient drums and sounds I mixed in.

The file extension is ".it", which I think was for some tracker software from the early 2000s. I have no idea if the tracking scene is still a thing or not. I got into it in 2000ish and made a dozen or so tracks. This one and another called Mandarin Slice were my crown jewels, such as they are. I can't locate Mandarin so it is probably lost to the void. Possibly for the better.

Cutty Sark: Die Tonight

 I don't know shit about Cutty Sark. Are they still active? (edit: doesn't appear so)

Die Tonight was a good listen. For me. But hey, if you didn't grow up in the time when this kind of album was being made then maybe this will sound like hot garbage to your ears. It isn't clean or exceptionally produced. It's rough and basic and I dig the shit.

So I'm not a music expert. In fact I'd call myself a music IDIOT. I like stuff, I don't like stuff, and I really struggle to identify why. I also struggle to compare music or talk about it in a meaningful way. That being said, this album reminds me of metal groups from the 80s such as Mercyful Fate and maybe Accept or Running Wild. If you like that shit, you might like this shit.

The cover is interesting. The name "cutty sark" is a ship, right? So this is a stark contrast to the art.

Gaming it: A band of madness-plagued desert warriors ravage the land, burning stone monuments (?). The PCs must track them and put a stop to their evil! The leader, Cutty Sark, has a demon sword that possesses his soul and the souls of his band mates.

Album Law

Using my free time wisely, I created a sophisticated system for ranking music albums based on music + cover art. This is important work. Here is my system, which I have dubbed Album Law.

Albums have 4 stats.

2 of the stats are ranked 3-18 (you know how that shit works).

2 of the stats are derived from the other 2.

Music (Mus): This is how much I like the sound. Ranked 3-18.

Art (Art): This is how much I liked the album art. Ranked 3-18.

Disharmony: This is how closely matched the Mus and Art are. Like descending AC, you want a low number. It is the absolute difference between Mus and Art, rounded down.

Level (Lvl): This is the album's overall power. Ranked 0-9 where 0 should stay home and 9 is name level, lording over a keep. It is derived from a secret forumla based on Mus and Art (add them, average, round down).

In my head, albums ranked in this way are PCs about to embark on a deadly adventure such as G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chieftain. But it strikes me that an adventure for levels 6-8 would work better. I just need to think of a good one.

Example albums:

Slift "Ummon"

Mus 17

Art 18

Dis 1

Lvl 8

Greyhawk "Keepers of the Flame"

Mus 9

Art 6

Dis 3

Lvl 3

I feel like I accomplished something this morning.

EDIT: I changed "Harmony" to "Disharmony" since that is what I was actually going for. The idea is that if the art and music score the same, then they are in perfect alignment. The higher the Disharmony, the less the art and music are in synch. This is important.

Musical Musings: Gaskin

Here's another odd old heavy rock find. The album starts out letting you know exactly what you're in for with a straight up 1981 heavy metal/rock riff that makes your Camaro start without a key. The rest isn't bad. I'll have to give another spin but I didn't hate it. There's a cowbell. And the bass player can be heard, which is super cool. Too many albums in the mid to late 80s decided we don't need no stinking bass for some fucked up reason. I blame Metallica. Fuckin' Metallica.

But the cover art. Hmm.. "End of the World" is the title and we see two people who seem to be huddling near burning houses. Who is burning their house? Nay, ALL the houses. And why are they in their undies? Were they awakened from sleep and rushed out to avoid the flames?

And then you see it. You zoom in and you see it clearly. That chick is topless. WHY is that chick topless? I guess we'll have to email Danny Flynn and ask him. Like, did the band request she be topless? I'm not complaining, Danny. You know me. I'm all about it. But it's kind of weird, right?

Oh, and we can see the white dove of peace flying away. So is this wartime? If so, how inefficient is it to go around burning individual rural homes? Takes serious dedication. Maybe they're using smart bombs. Fuckers.

Musical Musings: Testament: Titans of Creation

Testament: Titans of Creation

Speaking of great music. I randomly clicked on the new Testament album Titans of Creation and lemme tell ya this motherfucker rocks. It grabbed me from track one with a nice powerhouse riff and I was shocked to discover that track two was another powerhouse riff and the damn thing just kept going. After hearing the entire album I can't think of a track I would call weak. And I can name several I would call badass.

If you like thrash, this is the shit right here. And from one of the all-time great thrash bands! This is so god damn good to see.

Thematically... there are tracks about cults, nuclear annihilation (a staple of the thrash scene), and witches. I'd say this is gameable as all fuck.

Musical Musings: Kreator: Coma of Souls

And here you thought this blog was just a place for RPG stuff. Nonsense!

(Well it's mostly that, naturally. But I like doing what I want, so...)

I click on a lot of random YouTube videos when I'm drawing. YouTube knows that I like metal, among other things. So I clicked on Kreator: Coma of Souls this morning. And... I was slightly pleasantly surprised.

Kreator is one of those early thrash bands that I just didn't like back in the day. I remember buying one of their tapes (remember... I'm 49 years old... when I say "back in the day" I'm mostly referring to the cassette tape era, though as a young man in the 90s I clearly bleed into the CD era as well). I put it in the deck and gave it a listen. I ejected it after a song or two. Like my reaction to Candlemass, I just couldn't hack it. Where Metallica, Megadeth, WASP, and AC/DC had killer riffage, this album seemed to be just rapid fire guitar banging with machine gun polka drumming. It was a little more on the Slayer end of the metal spectrum and Slayer was as far on that end of the spectrum I cared to go.

In fact, this band dead up sounds like a Slayer cover band to me, at least during the verses. I know that's not fair since Slayer was the big dog and anyone with fast tempo and somewhat screechy vocals could be compared to them. But y'know...

This album definitely has that polka-blast thing going on. But there are some tracks, such as People of the Lie, where a nice groove is established... a thrashy groove you can headbang to, not just a nuclear assault of speed.

The whole thing has that crunchy high register typical of the time period that is also a bit of a turnoff. It's a product of the late 80s, after all. But it's not bad. If you like thrash, this is not a bad album to check out.

That is the extent of my musical reviewing chops. I am a lifelong listener, but not an aficionado. I don't even know what the word "register" even means, in musical terms. I just know what tickles my earholes and I like to share it.

I would ask my dear readers if they want to see more of this kind of thing, but since I do what I want anyway it kinda doesn't matter, does it? You all are used to me going all over the place.

Next up: chainmail chicks!

Musical Musing: Slift: Ummon

This album is so good. It reminds me of everything wonderful about 70s/80s sci-fi and sci-fantasy. It's prog, it's a bit metal, it's psychedelic. I hear tones of Pink Floyd, Hypnos 69, and even Donald Fagen (think True Companion).

The song "Hyperion" in particular is really heavy. If you listen to the whole album, this song hits you like a hammer. In context it is heavy as fuck. Of course, comparing it to straight up heavy metal songs it won't seem as heavy. But that's a really neat trick about albums: they provide contrast. They build soundscapes. I'm a huge metalhead, but I gotta say that most metal albums that try to be all heavy all the time fall flat because there's no story, no flow.

This album has a story. It is a journey.

Not to mention a sweet ass Caza cover.

So what is this album about? I've already said that the music is fucking unreal. But what about the lyrics? I actually have no idea. I haven't paid any attention. I just love the journey the music takes me on. So let's look together and see what is happening here. Is it gameable?

Here's Ummon:

Set the controls to the earth’s surface
From the night we have waited
Bring the fire to your sleeping brothers
From the night we have waited
Now we’re climbing through the ancestral stones
All the night we have waited
From the center to the earth’s surface!
A blade, a sword coming from the void
Titans, Gods, they’re coming from the void
A blade, a sword, it's coming from the void
FROM THE CENTER TO SURFACE!

Oh hell yeah. Gameable.

So it sounds like we have something massive coming from the center of the earth (possibly a void?) to the surface. An arising? An awakening?

Here's Hyperion:

From the deepest ocean to the highest mount
In the storm and nebula fury we hear now his name
He was born and raised where the chaos rules
He’ll be the thunder in the night when the lights will be gone
From the deepest ocean to the highest mount
In the storm and nebula fury we hear now his name
He was born and raised where the chaos rules
He’ll be the thunder in the night when the lights will be gone

Lead us beyond, tides and traps of time
Lead us beyond, tides and traps of time
Lead us beyond, tides and traps of time
Lead us beyond, tides and traps of time

So yeah. Gameable as hell all over the place. I like the there are very few actual lyrics on this whole album. It's poetic.