Let me introduce to a record from my childhood. Let's walk through the steps of how such a thing happened and how it is meant to happen again. If you know it and love it, give me a hug, metal sister, brother, or metal non-conforming, I salute you. Stay a while and read... be reacquainted through my eyes with a vision of your long-lost future's past. Fall in love again.
Let's fall in love, again.
If it is new to you give us a hug anyway, we're here as friends and we will part as comrades, you will see. Art has never lied and the truest steel cuts deep the vein of romance that will drown this world of utter lies, ah... you know the score.
Surely you hear the funeral bell by now, for decades it has been massing in the distance, this cacophony of anger...
Let's leave aside the rotting death for a moment and play a part in the summer bloom of love. The flowers are so fragrant, in heat the locust grinds away a madness all-encompassing, the mountain song is wordless, as if sculpture'd in air.
From the ancient ritual site of Dionysus I send you this lonely letter, and it reads:
Let me introduce you to a record from my childhood.
I got it on cd 10 years after it came out, which means the record cover has been absurdly shrinked from the LP original down to a little jewel case.
Did you know, dear reader, that it has been a long-standing tradition in the world of comic book art, back in the ancient times when humans read them on printed paper, for the artists to do the art at double the size of the intended print resolution and then have the art shrank down for the final product? They did this because it hid away imperfections and tightened the art on one hand, but it is also of another effect, the effect of miniature, of sharpened detail that invites the eye to look upon this Entire City all at once.
Comic books are a cubist medium by structure, you can follow the panels one to one in pleasing free jazz tempo, the languid sequence as it were, but at the same time you're also unconsciously always looking around... below, behind the current panel, the whole page you take in in furtive glimpses, you pervert. You're constantly spoiling the future and you connect it to the past, such is the beauty of the most ancient of our artforms of de pict ion, from an apeman hunting a mammoth on an ancient cave painting to Little Nemo and to whatever superhero crap springs to your mind now, the power to look at this, but also look behind it and ahead of it, all at once is a most ancient power. It grew our brains, it did.
So it is that the perfect format of a comic book is not so big that you cannot take the whole page in at once, it is, somehow, handy to make things small so that you may see them better.
That effect came into play when child Helm (Helmet, indeed?) came to possess this album, because the impossibly detailed and complex composition by artist Eric Larnoy, such a piece that would induce an LP appreciator to spend hours potentially, following every little nook and cranny of the grotesque and magical forms is all but augmented by the miniaturization of jewelification. It speaks to the fantasy therein before we even tackle the what-is-it-about-ness of it all, we are taken with the intensity and sharpness of the detail. Perhaps the music will match this ambition, a child would think.
It would be such cruelty to let a child down, and this is not a story about such, don't worry.
Take some time to look at the art and be transported back, years, to meet me in a small greek room. The fairest metal warrior of them all was still alive back then, he looked with pride and support to you as you perused this artifact of magical power. His echo never left us.
As to what-it-is, a horrifying duality confronts us. A conjoined twin – surely the work of a foul magic – wearing a kickass jacket to be sure, together but apart but of one transcendental, stitched together mind. He is standing in a passionscape of chiaroscuro, neither here nor there but surely everywhere you've been and felt a chill run up your spine.
A dead one and a live one, a serpent and a ring, a spider and a demon bat?! It has that je ne sais quoi energy of a record cover chosen after the fact for a selection of music instead of one explicitly drawn to the music and as such it is selected because of an existential concept that it matched to, not because of a storyline that needs to be exact and to the letter to fulfill its fantasy.
For me it is one of the perfect heavy metal album covers, then and now and I have indeed spent that hour looking at all the details. I must have been 12 or 13 then. I am 41 now. The form of an angel tops the bracycephalic, shared brain of the past and future twins, like an illumination that can only be resultant of thesis and anti-thesis coming together to produce... a thesithesis? I don't know these things very well you have to excuse me. What if I bang my head to this but also think it through? In any case we may not become any smarter today but wiser still is on the table.
Heir Apparent were here to tell us that heavy metal can be and indeed is much more than an one-sided affair. It is more than the sum of the parts, even! It's the music of the future, sans cliché. This is where, what we would come to call 'progressive metal', was also born. Q-ryche local to this Seattle scene paved the way. 'Tower in Texas an affront to every poser who thought in their puny minds we can draw a circle around what's wrong and what's left. Fates in Connecticut the effervescent soul of it all. They were all conjoining a twin of inspiration and aspiration in a similar manner. Though today relegated to the 'true metal' bin because it's old people with beer bellies and mullets that still listen to them, back in their day they were carving with force a new way through the hair metal of their contemporaries, tryin' to bring the message to you, and as such we must remember their pioneering spirit and not just how they conform today with a refurbished heavy metal immitation.
The label? Black Dragon records. Of Epicus Doomicus Metallicus fame, so much I knew. The time was 1986, but truly, the time is now. A black dragon, such a fearsome imagination!
The band is called Heir Apparent because they're here to collect their crown and the album is called Graceful Inheritance, for the crown must be passed on to them with all due honours and all social graces must be observed. 1986 is the defining year for everything we have ever talked about, dear reader. Have you noticed?
With age the paper seems all the more yellowed I notice. This ancient manuscript, what does it reveal? Well, as it always is this is a thing made by people and because we will all pass from this earth eventually, scripta manent.
Let us celebrate the people and have a little peek at their mugs before we let the fantasy unfurl. That was and remains a part of the experience. If the band took a band photo and put it on their stupid cd, we will look at this photo and make our judgments.
Ah, yes. Dress-shirt metal of the highest decree.
I see a vest, I see a skintight sleeveless, I see the perms. But I also see the steely eyed resolve, I see a band that isn't here to fuck around. Do you also see? I see young men that dedicated their lives to something utterly useless and it moves me deeply. If only I could through my persual of the utterly useless also inspire one single other human in this billion earth, it wouldn't be a waste.
Heir Apparent for this recording are:
Paul Davidson Vocals
Terry Gorle Guitars, Vocals
Derek Peace Bass
Raymond Black Drums
Also, if this band had a real budget they would have a photographer worth a shit to tell them that in this arrangement there's a visual illusion: it looks like scarf boy is holding the hip of vest man and vest man has his little precocious fingers of his reverse hand in scarf boy's belt loop. Do you see it? You're never going to unsee it now, you're welcome. What a strange thing, to both somehow find a couple of talented musicians with two left hands each and to have them touch each other so sensitively.
Enough fucking around, time to listen. You could listen along, or listen first, or listen first and then listen again as you read, whatever's your kink is fine with me, pervert.
The album starts En Trance, gettit? A wordless minor key fanfare of an intro, percolating in an air of mystery. Like gates opening, revealing to child Helm an altogether outer realm. Such an intro track feels like it's setting up an existential concept and not a storyline album. It's as if to say 'welcome to our world, leave all else behind'.
The introduction of the instrument tones and sound space is in a word elegant. There's no technical excess to it, it's restrained and short. A hooky chordal opening establishing the key we'll be spending a lot of our time on in this record to be sure. Given the emergent form of heavy metal relying on a guitar's lowest available open string tone, you'll often find a lot of any given album centers and wanders around that lowest tone. Heir Apparent are – and continued to be on their second album, it's no accident – a very airy heavy metal band. They're robust and tight as a unit but not so concerned with grinding your face on an palm chugged E note over and over the thrash revolution happening around them notwithstanding. The heaviness here is more of a theatrical weight, tubular bell ringing along with rhythm, bass, lead and cymbal in unison. Apocalyptic tolling, you are enthralled, pulled to the edge and then left to shimmer as we fade on to
Another Candle
From intro to intro, we gently glide, dreamlike from the gates to this oneiric plateau, punctuated by shimmering delay returns and chimes, soft and inviting. Today such elements of a heavy metal soundpicture get flattened down for there has been so much metal inbetween of every stripe, of every genre trying this and much more. But for 1986, for you having just bought this and for you playing it expecting the lightning bolt of Marshal steel, it is a fake out. The conjoined creature is given to such melancholic shifts, it gives it a soul and a longing. We haven't even heard a human word and we are already in a complex musical world. An inbetween place. And then there is a man, talking in harmonic parallel, in fact:
I've seen through times of mystery
And dreamed of truth in history
I can't imagine why we'd let our lives be stolen away
For armageddon
To be their pawns
And fear their gods
With no free will – No!
And the band enters into the metal gallop in earnest. Now with modern ears we can discern weaknesses when put next to aforementioned Q-ryche or a Fates in terms of the singing power, or in terms of production and sound design that could relate to us why this band is seen as an obscure entry, for die-hard enthusiasts as it were and not a band that put out an Operation Mindcrime and made a million... But if we set our modern ears aside and listen to it as if it's the only heavy metal record that ever was we will see not deviation but innovation of the form. I will briefly highlight the harmonic-heavy ornamentations of the guitar player – of his time surely a guitar hero of a sort – that here and on every song very clearly establish an identity that is unmistakable. When you listen to Terry Gorle play guitar you immediately know it's him not so much because of technical affectations but because of his chorusy tone and his compositional choices that always highlight these gestural mannerisms that come from an era of guitar playing where a heavy metal player of some accomplishment didn't seek to be a Swiss army knife of tricks and tones but instead to purely express one or two particular ideas at the full logical extent of their application. This is the best way to describe the guitar approach of this band: Terry, in rhythm and solo does just a couple of things, all of the time, but he does them to their utmost.
Heavy metal is inspiring because it isn't jazz fusion or classical music. It's inspiring because it is the overreaching achievement of regular humans wanting to play rock n' roll for the gods, it is exciting because you can hear the sweat and lust to materialize something useless in full force, something only a few thousand humans in the world would end up vibing with, but vibing with it hard. Terry plays for that crowd and he will until the end. His hand brings the soul to this band.
I don't know if Heir Apparent had misgivings because they didn't make it big, if there were inner arguments and band strife about how to commercialize their sound – historical anecdotes point to yes, mind you – but when it comes to the immediate riffery and tone and attitude of this guitar-driven power metal band from 1986 it surely doesn't come across as confused at all. It comes across full formed and confident.
The picture in the poetry is lucid as it is abstruse. It could be about anything but it isn't. It's about a real anxiety and a real foretelling. It is of consequence as are all the lyrics, we shall find together throughout the duration. There's the weltanschauung of a studied mind, young but studied. Confident enough to tell the truth, naïve to a fault, it's the voice of heavy metal circa 1986, a voice that thought the world would go much different but in reflection is not surprised it went as it did.
The band confidently hits their beats throughout the verse leading to a rousing, chorus-and-wah washed solo. You'll find every solo on this album to be absolutely memorable without ever devolving to brainless pyro. Heir Apparent didn't put 'grace' on the cover for show, they're cut of a different cloth in regards to their peers in american metal.
The song coalesces to a powerful coda verse with muscular drum and bass punctuation of every little emotive detail of the simple riff.
Desire – the lust for total joy
The fire – a world it shall destroy
And there's nothing you can do
Cause the world you've known is through
A perfect heavy metal song? An eternal staple. A song sang along to by the metal faithful again and again indeed. And we're only getting started.
The Servant jumps off with its arch riffery and loquacious soloing and young Helm was headbanging then and old Helm is headbanging (more carefully, neck issues) today. As we dovetail into the verse section the vocal comes in with such melancholy, Heir Apparent aren't a simpleminded band. You can say on its face an album such as this is about spraypainted wizard mural on the side of a van kind of theatrics but that'd be missing the (or a) point. The puppet show is a puppet show but the lead puppet is taken with these melancholy moods, often. The puppet play quiets down and there is a spotlight on lingering, small emotions, you know there's a human holding up the puppet, really and the human is letting you off easy. You'd be a fool to throw away this tension between this absolutely grandiose verse loopy guitar playing and the softness of this, ostensibly, power metal singer going on about a misty dew that settles down on this earth below, the winds of time are telling us there's no play for us to go.
We're on our way, alone.
Progressive metal isn't about Berkley chops. It's about this tension. It's the power metal band, stealing from Iron Maiden and Rainbow but to tell a human story, an inspiration to strike steel and melt the heavens in a cast that is abstract, it follows the crevices and frames our most hidden desires. It pictures us as kings propped up in our fantasy by servants – us, as well, servants to our own fantasy – we are the ones that sweat for this fantasy, we are the ones crowning ourselves for our useless achievement. We are the ones playing and the ones listening, this music was - and is - ours.
These are the emotions this song pulls out of me, then and now. As Icarus is falling to the earth surely there is a moment where the dread subsides and there is a stoic joy to this ending. To believe in your wings as they melt, to rejoice in life as you die. Icarus regrets nothing, he'd fuckin' do it again, believe it. I could listen to Terry Gorle solo the fucking phone book to be honest.
Two perfect heavy metal songs back to back... Slowly you begin to understand, as countless heavy metal bands and their various offerings start to observantly move aside for Heir Apparent is walking in the centre stage. That feeling, that ancient feeling: this is the only Heavy Metal band that ever was.
Tear Down the Walls slows things down and delivers another pristine guitar hook, supplanted by these ghost noted volume swells that feel like violins. This regal, yet melancholy feeling. Heir Apparent are very unique in this way, they don't surrender to the campy cheese of the Kingly metal thing like a Manowar would often do, yet they don't decohere in the other direction by a way of a confused, fragmented composition. There's such confidence and direction to this song, it's no wonder it's another eternal live show staple, another song sang word for word by regular humans at the top of their lungs, people like me and you. Because this song is actually about us, as it goes:
They dwell in a palace of ivory and gold
In beauty and comfort, a fortune untolled
Yet, out in the courtyard injustice prevails
They've turned their back on what lordship entails
They squander their riches on oceans of wine
The masses are starving while ministers dine
The bringers of Sorrow, the masters of Pain
Rise up in anger, let sweet vengeance reign
Tear down the walls!
So we see Heir Apparent are on a humanist crusade, an enlightenment borne through heavy metal steel. For decades in the interim heavy metal fell prey to the funeral of meaning of a globalized, neoliberal post-modernity. Reading lyrics is embarassing, so let's stop. Extreme metal is about a vague feeling of superiority, let's keep things vague because if you look too close it all falls apart.
For decades people would laugh at you for taking a heavy metal song seriously as if talking about the human plight of the downtrodden through purple allegory and Conan the Barbarian prose like this. But in 2025 looking back, guess who was right? That heavy metal spirit was right. It never lied. We had to grow up to become children again and realize that what we once felt was true was the only thing that was true and we spent our whole lives struggling for the wrong things. Art never lied to us, ours souls were just too small to accept it without some fingers crossed behind the back, without some sort of moral escape clause lest we are mocked for our simplicity of mind. With age comes the torture and from the torture the soul either withers or engorges itself with wisdom.
Unafraid, now, now that heavy metal has survived itself, somehow, and the world accepts the spandex as much as it accepts the double bass and hollering as part of the cultural milieu at large we headbang demanding more, we demand this human spirit, we demand a cry for justice even if it is the last naked scream that will percolate through a blasted nuclear universe, the last thing of value that humans had to say is right here in songs like this, dumb heavy metal songs by idiot savants, not a symphony, just a dumb riff and a rousing message that burns incandescent, still.
Running from the Thunder
This bar room boogie pace switch-up best serves as a backdrop for the guitar man to go wild, showing us the more Dionysian flavour of his playing. Old heavy metal records were not obsessed with keeping style consistent from every track because what they were selling was not a subgenre niche, they were conveying the whole thrust of heavy metal, ambiguous and open ended as it felt to them before it congealed into selected offerings for selected audiences. This aspect of heavy metal isn't easy to reinvent without appearing instead as some sort of post-modern circus music conglomeration of styles. For Heir Apparent, as they were of their age this is seamless and congruous, much like it would be for '70s Priest. Strong chorus about being filled with dread and inexplicable power. Every bar punctuated with some sort of guitar wailing, all propped up perfectly by an incredible rhythm section. Truly the power metal essence of this band isn't necessarily to be found in the guitars in the conventional sense, it is in the extremely lock tight and groovy pocket rhythm section where we see clearest the deliniation between older styles of rock and heavy and what we called USA-styled power metal. There's also an inventive key change in here for the musically observant, and at the very edge of this short song Heir Apparent threaten to take off, they just cannot contain themselves. That's my favourite part of this song even after all the guitar theatre, it's where the song lands of this threatening V and surges on its climax.
The Cloak
Another shorter one. It's actually interesting how fully formed the sorter tracks are on this album by this band that I squarely would place in the progressive metal originators camp. That's a thing they have on all their competition, these extremely catchy shorter tunes that work themselves out fully without ever feeling throwaway. Another killer, winding riff going into taut and gallopping verse sets up this morbid fantasy. When Heir Apparent do grim melodrama it acts as this beautiful foil to their more high minded ambitions on the signature tracks. This and another track down the line are some of my favorites from the 'heavy metal of the darkest night' variety of composition on offer on the debut.
Often I listen to this album and just follow the bass, it's so on point and it does the lion's share of outlining the harmonic movement as the guitar often is arpeggiating in a chorus sheen and building to a soaring solo from such foundation. Only Crimson Glory had an equally crucial bass element to their US power metal. There's been many others with a strong tone or chops, but that the songs so depend on the space given to the bass to propel the compositions is where I find Heir Apparent very unique.
R.I.P.
Ah, the heavy metal instrumental on side two... here, Heir Apparent return to that regal melancholy, painting a vivid tale without a need for a script. From the harmonic double led introduction to the beautifully twisty verse riff, this is one of the two guitar workouts on offer on this album. A strong Rush influence (there is no progressive metal without the seminal influence of Rush) rears its conjoined head, worshipping Dionysus and Apollo together, IAAA... mid-soaring in the verse riff, the power chord is pulled and we are plunged into this deep darkness of a soundscape. In an understated way, Heir Apparent here are providing a blueprint for motivic and suite-like composition as much as any of their proto-prog peers that could inspire many a contender for the crown. Much like the deep well in the middle of 'La Villa Strangiato' this is one of the highlights of this record that the listener's ear longs to re-experience. The attentive will be drawn into an otherwordly trance as the bass player gets a chance to lead us deeper and under floating pad chords and chiming spell... Terry blesses us with his most beautiful solo... often when in orgiastic mode I accept the solo as a wash of sound, but it's when we get a slower and more compositional extended lead line like here where I truly feel that feeling, as a guitar player you know it as well “I wouldn't change a single note of this solo, I wouldn't change a single bend or expression of his touch'. One for the ages, melting in controlled amp feedback, shimmering in chorus and that particular reverb... we do not make them like this anymore and when we try it's just a mockery of our own vacuousness of spirit.
This band, had they two guitar players would be tremendously diminished. I do not need a rhythm track propping up the solo work, I need just that punchy bass and Terry trading riff with lead with himself. It's exactly what the cover promised, this schizoid tension that in the end collapses into a brilliant, shimmering illumination. Pure steel but airy and inchoate. The riff reminds its dark majesty on exit and then the record needle scraches to awake us from this morbidly beautiful dream. A perfect heavy metal instrumental.
Hands of Destiny
Oh my god, how many peaks can this mountain range have? One of these perfect anthemic songs, in full splendour we again see this juxtaposition of glory and tragedy:
Yet in our abundant wisdom
Man can't tame the sky, the mountains or the sea
Held beyond our understanding, helpless to deny
The hands of destiny
For a heavy metal genre so taken with abject tales of shock and terror this is downright modern, yet in literary terms this is a point as old as The Odyssey. That's how Heir Apparent come off, that's why their style can both feel arcane and cutting edge. They understand rock and roll as a music that belongs to the people and so it should be thrilling, you know... the basic idea of the post-industrialization pop song, it's entertainment but it owes to people something more than that. There's not a shred of pretension to this and that's a very fine line to walk, to the point where a lot of listeners wouldn't necessarily place this in the progressive metal camp exactly because it's not self-absorbed in that particular way.
Keeper of the Reign
This is the other anthem back to back. Again the theme of melancholic regalia at focus. Much is expected of the first amongst men, a heavy burden to be king. The standout element of this track for me (beyond the endlessly singalongable chorus) is the romantic bass solo culminating in an extremely rousing coda that transforms the balladry into full-on power metal. The slow triplet, punctuated by the complete rhythm section is so classy, a stroke of understated genius while guitarman does guitarman things at full blast on top. Airy Heir Apparent only a couple of times on this album go full-on rocket fuel and as you'd expect this is a moment much beloved by everyone that has been to a Heir Apparent live show or listened to this record with any attention. If you're new to this, you're welcome.
Dragon's Lair
Back to the heavy metal of the night style, here. Impossibly great riff sets up one of the all-time greatest metal screams recorded on wax. Much like the Number of the Beast scream, once you've listened to this one you will often find yourself wanting to play this track just to listen to it again. Perhaps the vocal isn't as strong on the whole on this album at the impossible standard set by Tate, Dickinson, Dio and co. and, verily, Heir Apparent would try their luck on a second album with a more conventionally powerful throat on the mic but that's a story for another time. There are moments, though where the vocalist really gives it their all and this opening scream on this track is such a moment indeed.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa he goes and I am as excited about heavy metal as I've ever been. Time collapses to madness!
Looking through the windows to your mind
Can't you see that there isn't much more to find?
As you take the crystal deep within
Waiting for the magic to begin
And are the broken mirrors of your soul
Dying for a lesson to be told?
And will you ever find an answer there?
Daring to approach the Dragon's Lair!
Lurid melodrama and manic fantasy, a child taken by sojourns of the imagination. Songs about power, songs about darkness, songs about fear and dreadful joy. Heavy metal! The post-verse bridge juxtaposes again this particular brand of melancholia to the muscular verse rhythm. As usual with great heavy metal records, songs about dragons and such often betray a parable, here one about giving in to the worst vice. Chopping one's breakfast down a mirror as it were, daring to approach the dragon's lair, a rush that never seems to satisfy, tempting us once more before we die. Beware!
Masters of Invasion
This lurching beast takes a while to come together and groove, I always enjoy this slow start after the insaniac energy of Dragon's Lair. It settles into this bass pocket and a lyrical vocal outlined by a slow rhythm gallop. An Omen kind of feeling if you would allow. Though in the lyric one could pin the narrative to a particular war truly the crucial stoicism of Heir Apparent's approach broadly scrutinizes and condemns the inexorable inhumanity of modern warfare in general. The solo has this beautifully tense middle section that ups the tension before surrendering into itself again and returning to the sparse verse rhythm. When you think it's all over a coda solo soars as if to escape this madness, once again. A masterclass of understated grandeur and one of the best songs on this incredibly stacked record.
Nightmare
As we're nearing the end of the offering we are treated to another up-tempo banger filled with phantasmagorical visions. The only fault I can find on this album is the thin background vocal on the verse but even that is quickly assuaged by a killer bass break post-chorus that pumps me up every single time as it hits the solo. Once again bass player MVP on this track. As far as songs go that are about, broadly, 'nighttime is scary' this is a winner. This is another very short track that perfectly sets up the final statement of the album.
A.N.D. ...Dogro Lived On
For the life of me I have no idea who Dogro is and I haven't chanced on any interview material that would substantiate the title of the track (perhaps that can be a fun reader participation element in the comments if you, dear reader, know more than I do) but I have to say this is probably my favourite track on the album and the strongest all around statement on the debut, for a few different reasons.
First of all that segmented stop-starting riff is pure progressive metal majesty and I have tried to emulate the emotion such riffs evoke many a time in my own writing. That is to say a riff like this opens a whole new department in the mind thereafter from where many inspirations will come that are internally validated by enthusiastically the Ego confirming the base drive by going 'oh, yes, like the Dogro riff, yes! Yes!' and for that I can only be eternally grateful to Heir Apparent.
The way the rhythm section supports the mysterious riff with intelligent syncopation just melts me. You can imagine this band in fucking 1985 playing this in the rehearsal room and looking at each other with gold in their eyes it's so prime prog without a hint of affect about it... it's as if the riff tablature was found carved in a stone and there were parts rubbed off by millennia and that's where the band just opted to restart the riff over and over, mesmerized by the winding, menheiric gravity. One for the ages indeed.
What solidifies the approach here however is the lyric:
Face the facts of Life On Earth
The nature of Mankind
Pages from our past are now defined
Humanity has common sense
We all know right from wrong
We've lived in false pretense too long
RISE! RISE!
Face the facts of present day
RISE! RISE!
Rid yourself of ancient ways
Fear of gods and demons is the folly of your mind
Acknowledge facts of Science - don't be blind
The war of Good and Evil is what you create within
The Facts of Life are where the truth begins
RISE! RISE! RISE!
Prepare for your future - don't live within the past
The ancient cultures never knew the facts
Technology has given truth where myth had been before
It's time Humanity stepped through the door
This is where, in earnest Heir Apparent put their contribution forward to what they imagined 'a heavy metal for the future' could truly be about. Obviously withour Rush we wouldn't get here. We called it progressive metal afterwards and in our confusion we led it astray, but here it is, without much comment needed, honestly. It's 1986 and while the thrashers were still caught in a mosh Heir Apparent are conveying an altogether different worldview.
It isn't so much that I agree or disagree with the thesis, it's that I had, and continue to have a wealth of thoughts about it, passionate thoughts, complex and sometimes uncomfortable thoughts. That I sing along with it, I yelp 'Rise!' every time, puts me in a place where I am half-arrested, I am at a distance but I am in it at the same time. That Brechtian moment captured to be relieved for decades, the promise of heavy metal to me is right here. One can only hope to give a difficult but inescapable challenge like this to their listener in 1986 or in 2025.
Thank you sincerely, my dear reader, for listening and scrutinizing this old masterpiece with me. We did well, didn't we? Beauty only grows more beautiful as it grows old only in the sublime realm of art and all that will be left behind even after we are gone are these explorations of something that is of us but beyond us, it is of that other realm where a sound can be as a mountain, where a poem is as if it was never penned by instead always has existed. I wish to go to that place myself and spend a forever or two surrounded by these finer forces, indeed subsumed into them like I was never even here, because truly it never really mattered in any other sense that I was, but to become, once, solved inside the etheric alchemy of quintessent art.
I wish you well until we meet again.
