Heir Apparent - Graceful Inheritance

We may have never lived but we will never die, we are eternal and so, here we are again.

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.

Pirates of the Underground

 In the long and ill-considered term where old internet got subsumed into the grotesque corporatist conglomeration of 'web 2.0' services and when all the little useless homes of personal chronicle like this blog felt truly outmoded, people of our subculture struggled to recreate and retain their spaces with variable degrees of success on the new attention economy platforms.

One such small community is 'Midnight Lighting Steel.', a facebook group of 100-150-odd people, lovers of old metal, weird metal and unique metal all the same that I was part of founding. 

In this space over the last few years many topics were brought on for discussion and many an obscure metal gem was dusted off for re-appreciation. Interesting thoughts came out of seeing disparate individuals appreciate forms of metal and particular cuts that I thought were truly passé for the constitution of the modern heavy metal listener, but that's a story for another time. Suffice to say that even in this crippled state the promise of internet connectivity still inspired something new for me and others.

Web 2.0 being the cretinous machine that it is, however, it soon became apparent that even the groups internal oral history was getting lost in the obscurity of the near yesterday, as the search functions and, generally, the archival functions of the platform are pointedly inoperable, discouraging any sort of conglomeration of fact in lieu of an endless re-discussion. That's attention economy, isn't it? 

My mind rebels to that idea, especially when it comes to matters of passion and fetish; Surely we have talked about Secrecy before, right? Surely we have all listened to Last Crack by now, no? We can build upon an edifice, but how? How do we know what is worth bringing up and what's been enshrined in the certitude of fact?

The idea that new members come and go and old members forget and we can't simply fish out our own discussion out of a deaf-dumb archive set me to ponder on the kinds of ways we propagated metal wisdom in the older world, the nascently connected but not yet overconnected world. What is an attractive package, even for a very small audience, even better, exactly for a very small audience to remember and remind itself of its oral history? 

In the world of tomorrow no-one should seek to talk to the many, the many are deaf to the world of tomorrow. One should seek to talk to the few because the few can become a community that imagines freely what will come to pass.

In this sense, for Midnight Lighting Steel I sought to do a little bit of a pirate radio show. I do not want to be a 'content creator' for youtube, I don't especially want to have my face or voice on the internet at all to be honest, but I thought it a decent challenge to contain my generally extremely verbose brain on all things metal down to the radio show format, and to hearken back to a different standard of how we package and convey information on this style of art to each other all the same.

Furthermore I sought to be a living example of how 'we listen to music', in ways that to people of similar background and idiom to my own will seem obvious but to a generation of listeners fed by spotify and listening to music on a phone that mutes their song with a ding about a video ad will be a challenge. Offline hard drive of meticulous collection, record cover and lyric, year and country, genre and ambition, the lives of little humans given with such passion and steel dedication to a purely useless thing. The inspiration is to never forget them, so we as well may never be forgotten. To listen to music with love and to comment with wit, it is a simple thing to the loving and curious but fewer and fewer of us remain...

Ultimately, and this is no shame it is in fact the biggest ambition of them all, these are meant to be videos you put in the background that deal with something you dearly love with passion and mature understanding, to keep you company and give you a feeling of comradery while you have to work a stupid fucking dayjob or take a long car ride or just assuage the loneliness of a long night, here and there. Steel has always been there for us and I am paying it forward.

The videos were unlisted, they were meant to be seen by 10, 15 people tops. They were meant to incite small discussions and more than anything they were meant to do that one magic thing where when, say, Secrecy would come to mind for one of the viewers/listeners, the memory would also conjure up a comment, a bit of wisdom, something mentioned or something sparked in relation. A metal brother has already given years of life to thinκ of this, we learn from each other.

To assuage this catalogue fixation, the rateyourmusic wound of endless scroll and no papyrus of what the metal chronicle has become we need to get a little post-apocalyptic. A small human's story, an interesting anecdote and not too much more, an overarching theme and concept to this subcultural endeavor of metal, all of it dancing madly on a stolen radio-wave, hijacking a service meant for gross self-exploitation -- pirates of the underground, lightning, the speed of sound we will prevail


I did a few of these inward-looking radio shows for the group and then I thought since they're unlisted and they still fall in a hole of facebook groups backlog not easily fished out, I might as well give them a final resting place here, where all my other thoughts are, where my heart always rests, in the ethereal tomb of Poetry of Subculture: my most useless and in some ways my most cherished creation - and trust me, I've indulged in so much uselessness over the decades - satisfying the double credo of maximum effort and for no apparent credit. Levitating between the anonymity of the unlisted internet of yore and the data aggregative totality of the future, we soar the liquid seas of imagination.

As these videos are not meant for general use keep in mind they need not be circulated, nothing has to be made out of them, and I don't particularly want to think of them as media to account for in any other way than a measured discussion in this old world comment space. If you've found yourself here there is surely a reason and they're meant for you, instead. You understand this distinction and you know what to do with such information.

As always I remain your faithful correspondent, beyond time and space, amidst world-ending chaos and uncertainty. We met a long, long time ago and before this is all over we may truly never die.

Helloween - Victim of Fate

Do you hear the thunder crack, readers?

Destiny is split asunder. The hero's tale can be rewritten, destiny shall die, willpower cradles the hilt, hope is the blade!

This is it. This is where Helloween become something more than a Teutonic speed metal band, this is where the formalist vantage will stop proving fruitful for us and we shall have instead to get in touch with the Eternal Return, teenager pathos. We shall have to... feel. I know it is difficult, lonely men, women and cyborgs out there, but we must and we shall!

Every time I listen to this song, I get so pumped, I'm not going to cut and paste these lyrics from some website, I am going to type them out while headbanging to the song. There shall be no spell checking!

THUNDER CRACKS THE SKY

THIS RIFF IS AWES

I was born in the rotten part of the town
The biggest trap I've seen
Wherever you go wherever you get to
Evil's all around

My mother's a bitch my fathere's a killer
Getting paid for murder
Fight in the front in the ???
The only way to survive

Wanted for murder they'll never catch me
I'd much rather die in this bloody war

Fly high, touch the sky
Never know the reason why it ends
VICTIM OF FATE

Fly high, touch the sky
Never know the

I had to kill people to save my own life
I don't wnat to go to hell
I started at the bottom
I'm headed for the top

I'll never return I'll never go back
to that god-damn part of the town
Headhunters won't get me 'cuz I'm not stupid
But this ain't the life that I dreamt of

Wanted for murder they'll never get me
I'd much rather die in this bloody war

Fly high, touch the sky
NEver known the reason why it ends
VICTIM OF FATE

Fly high, touch the sky,
Never know the reason why it ends
VICTIM OF FATE!!!

What now lonely man,
Who is standing in the shadows of the streets
YOu're left alone with no helping hand beside you

You hide from the daylight
Living in darkness
You've got no friends
You can trust nobody except from yourself

The only shape stands beside you
It's the shape of Lucifer
Laughing with a satanic smile
AHAHAHAHAH

And his friend death
Sharpens his shickle

You don't want to die, do you?
But you will!

You will burn in hell.

THIS SOLO SECTION MELTS MY HARDENED CARAPACE
ERADICATES MY DISTANCE

Fly high, touch the sky
NEver known the reason why it ends
VICTIM OF FATE

Fly high, touch the sky,
Never know the reason why it ends
VICTIM OF FATE

LET'S GO FASTER

YES YES ANOTHER SOLO SECTION BECAUSE FUCK YOU, METAL MUSIC IN 1985, HELLOWEEN ARE BETTER THAN YOU

The second 'wild' solo is full of power. My soul doth elevate.

And finally:

FLY HIGH
TOUCH THE SKY
YOU
WILL
DIE

And yet,
I feel about ten years younger after listening to this.

I am not dead. Though I will die, eventually, I have now for a moment completely forgotten. The lyric of this song is at odds with its musical presentation because Helloween are on a trajectory, perhaps unbeknownst to them as well. They are not a cynical speed band with morbid tales for us. They are a power metal band, and their music gives hope, it points to the light.

The thema of this song is close to that of those that followed it on the first part of this record. Imagined - probably extrapolated from teenager experiences - difficult life, having to do sinful acts to survive. Pursued by carriers of nemesis (hilariously, headhunters. I am imagining Charles Bronson in Deathwish), there seems to be no way out, death is certain.

And then, out of the blue, this chorus. What does it say? "Fly high, touch the sky. Never know the reason why it ends". This is not the sound of tragedy, it is, instead that of triumph. Focus especially on "never know the reason why it ends". This is such a human, naive look at the face of death. This music takes that simple line, which in other contexts could exist in some morose existentialist poem and makes of it in a totality-of-the-real inversion, a deposition of faith, a decree: It will not end, it doesn't end. It never ends.

The tension between this chorus and the lyrics and the musical motifs of the verses (which are again, speed-thrash of that era) was not lost on the band. The middle slow atmosphere building section deepens the disparity of emotion. This song is a wild ride. It was for twelve year old Helm and it still is. A masterpiece. There are rough edges, sure, but they also helped to break a specific mold (That of the Judas Priest / Iron Maiden multi-part quasi-mythological epic, to be exact). Helloween needed those edges to push them towards hyperbole, and through that to the palace of wisdom, the road to awe.

The second solo section, it's just the final statement of what I am describing. At first ordered and lamenting, then wild chaos breaks loose. Fly high. Touch the sky. You will not die.


Fuck it, we're not stopping. Let's talk about 'Cry for Freedom' as well because this is a trajectory nearing its end and I don't want to wait four months to reach my own metaphorical ejaculation either (and I wonder at what position does that put you, dear readers).

CRY FOR FREEDOM

This is a beautiful, ferocious power metal song. It is the perfect ending to a record that starts from solipsism and the terror of the I and ends with a social critique of injustice in its most blatant form. There is no exact political regime named in this song and therefore all are targeted. The structure of  totalitarianism is targeted.

The intro to this song seems like something Judas Priest would do, only and blatantly without the pipes of one mr. Halford to grace it, it becomes a different thing. Halford knew well of the theatric capacity of metal music and his stories, many of them centering on the 'we're not going to take it anymore' theme, were as much performance as say, that slice of Victorian melodrama, "The Ripper". This isn't to say that Halford didn't get into it but as any performing artist will tell you, their training is not to immitate, it is to inhabit. But it is still a performance. That the young audience of Judas Priest elevated their songs to true anthems of the oppressed (or imaginably oppressed, as it were) stands as a monument more to them than Judas Priest. Other bands, with their rugged edges and more meager talents would cut much closer to bone, the theater would become much more secondary to the message. Other bands, simply, did it better than Judas Priest.

Helloween, for example. Kai Hansen is, at this point, a very rough voice. Nasal and without great control of his vibrato, very accented and sometimes tonally shaky. This stops a lot of listeners from getting into this era of Helloween which is a shame because with the arrival of their full time singer, Michael Kiske, the said theatricality came with full force. There's a punkish vitality with Hansen on the vocals that is sacrificed. As I've said before, Kai Hansen is inviting to sing with (not over, his voice is still much more powerful than most). He knows he's no Pavarotti but he's going to hit that high note anyway. Sing with him.

This is the lyric of the calm before the storm. It's truly touching if you destroy the distance.

"Freedom, the cry of all slaves will be heard.
And the tyrants will feel the steel of our sword

The chains will be broken by all slaves on the earth
Forever to be free from their load"

This flows dramatically into a lead section that winds down with such grace that puts the violence that follows in even starker relief. This is truly savage. Death metal can eat it, The contrast between beauty and force shakes me in such a fundamental way that tales of gore and guts never have and never will.

"Time has run out for all you tyrants on earth
The slaves are heeding the call
Making an end to all this terror and pain
An end to your lies and your law

Taking away all your gold and your money
'Cause dead men don't need it anymore
Much too long we've felt the slash of your whips
So now you will feel our swords

Freedom, the eternal cry will echo high in the sky

The day will come when all power has been broken
Your blood will flow down to the gates of Hell
Satan will wait for your souls
Pray to your god, he won't help you, he's dead
He won't fool our minds and our souls
Anymore"


(I'll overlook the lamentable choice of allegory what with loads and being free of them, I didn't get that as a child and I'm sure Helloween didn't either.)

This is a fast song, but with such compositional nuance. First of all, the reverbated chorus of oohs after the first verse. This is OUR voice, we are meant to join in. This is a song for all of us, we are included, in such a vital way. Helloween can't do it alone, we can't overthrow tyranny unless we understand ourselves as part of a 'we'. This is a core characteristic of Heavy Metal that turns to the light. Those given to solipsistic pursuits will forever understand themselves in isolation. The light will only serve to blind them. It is in the shade that their objects of desire can best be understood, their subtle nuances in texture and form. Simpler forms, closer to black and white, in light and darkness, those inherent to the language any collective understands, as common currency to communicate and consecutively carry on as a cohesive core. The dangers of such maneuvers are recorded in history as a startling remembrance of atrocity and horror. Yet Helloween, closer to such horror than you and I are now, in 2012, still rally to the call of 'Freedom', for all slaves on this earth. Do you join in on the song?

Here's an interesting experiment. There's a very specific part of this song where you might feel compelled to sing back to mr. Hansen (aside from the 'ooh' vocal chorus section). It's when he goes "The day will come when all power has been broken" and we reply "Your blood will flow down to the gates of Hell". Do you feel it? The cadence of the lyrics there give a huge opening for a second voice to say that line (it sounds like it is two different takes in studio as well). Listen to this song and if you feel it inside you to resonate any truth, do kindly sing along to that line there. Give it your best growly angry shouty voice if you don't have a proper range. What do you feel? Did your hand curl up as if tracing the contours of some invisible orange? Did your eyes open wide, did you scare your cat? That little tiny bit of dark power, the essence of all magic, it truly exists and can be summoned with such remarkably low-brow art that sometimes it scares me that society has worked out at all. We can be so easily swayed into a malignant, total fantasy that I am not even directly concerned with when that fantasy becomes action. That the fantasy exists inside us and can be brought to the surface by such a compositionally simple trick astounds me. Here's Helloween and then, think about a Richard Wagner.

This is powerful music, hence, power metal. It is not a formalist definition. Double bass and palm muted riffs do not make power metal. Achieving that sense of fantastical power and assigning that strength to the service of listener agency makes it power metal. The birth of this genre has little to do with how many major keys or singalongs there are in the piece and everything to do with coming up from the darkness into light, acknowledging a sense of belonging (even if the group one chooses to belong to is entirely fabricated, as in "metal brothers") and achieving a sense of positive motion by harnessing beauty.

Helloween would go on to become more beautiful, more inclusive and more refined in their approach, gaining a large following. Even the months between this EP and the "Walls of Jericho" record proper mark a difference, though not such a sizable one as with the records that followed with their new Bruce Dickinson-esque singer. The themes they will expand upon in the next few songs are those of the last few of the EP, as if they understood there's something more to what they only glimpsed at. The opener of "Walls of Jericho" is a monumental creation and it serves as an inspiration to anyone who has ever composed anything to see a band go from grasping at the vague structure of a concept in point A to mastering the perfect sculpture of it six months later in point B. But let's discuss that next time.

YOUR BLOOD WILL FLOW DOWN TO THE GATES OF HELL

Murderer

Excuse lack of posts

I landed a second job

Days turn to weeks fast

Now, pay attention to Murderer. From the intro, they're trying to do something outside the thrash paradigm. One guitar starts hacking away at a palm muted, E. Business as usual so far, it could be a slightly faster Judas Priest. Then the stereo guitar enters at a minor third, and then the bass at a fifth, and a snare fill takes the place of the octave. Go, Helloween-mini-orchestra, go!

The riff is introduced, an E - D is placed in the background and we're off to the verse. Tightly integrated to the movement of the vocal are mini guitar hooks. This is where power metal starts, really. In density. The main connective force between US power metal and the Teutonic counterpart is in this density. In putting thirty Judas Priest hooks into a single song. There is more considered melodic information in the verse switchup on 'Murderer' than in most individual Heavy Metal songs that came out up to 1985 in their entirety. Why is this? Were Helloween possessing some genius that their inspirations, say, Iron Maiden lacked? Of course not. Mr. Harris could write you his awkard Heavy Metal suite as well. The difference is not in capacity, it is in quantity. Helloween, along with a slew of NWOBHM-inspired Heavy Metal bands, are in a hurry to impress. Every song must be packed. Whereas America's Jag Panzer would go to a length even further and throw contrasting parts that do not seem to cohere at all in a sequence and hope their sci-fi power metal would stand on its whole merit at the end, Helloween are very concerned with both density and flow. Starlight showed this on the solo section, but Murderer goes at it throughout.

(As an aside, this density is why little Helm had a difficult time going from his power metal introduction to appreciating 'classic' Heavy Metal from the originators. Songs too slow. Too few parts. Not enough speed! Took a good decade and a very roundabout journey to see the brilliance of using less to achieve less)

Thematically, the lyrics to this song are kind of ridiculous on the surface level. They come to me often because I sang it to death as a teenager. The initial verse/bridge/chorus in particular 

He said get out of here 

Nobody wants you here 

You smashed his head

And the man died

And there's a murmur going 'round

For the appearing crowd

Searching for motives 

and reasons why

Now take a look at yourself and you'll see

What you are in the eyes of the world

You didn't want it but now he is dead

And you're on the run from the law

Murderer - in every crowd

Murderer - to the whole world

Murderer - you're on the run

Murderer - you'll have to kill
AGAIN

Let's look at the subtext here however. The first strong theme is alienation. The reason for the murder is not because the protagonist wanted to steal something or even because they were sadistic as in a death metal song. The reason is because the protagonist, before he even became a murderer, was undesirable to society. They wanted him out, he lashed out and it's a downward spiral from there.

People try to understand why this happened and blame the protagonist for being out of control. "And like an animal which escaped from the cage, they're hunting off of their holy land" they go on. There is a strong christian morality substrand to this whole thing, especially with how sin leads to sin leads to sin. The protagonist will have to kill again, it's the only way to survive now that he's done it once. In effect, he is inhuman. Yet, the shocking power of this 'you'll have to kill again' is ambiguous in tone in the song itself. Power metal is about conveying the sense of will of the protagonist. This is the invention of Helloween more than anyone elses, this is their contribution. I am not sure they meant it to be so (we will discuss this on the next song, "Warrior" and finally on "Victim of Fate" to have a clearer picture) but this dreadful subject matter is elevated through the power of the song to the point where I did as a restless child - and still do as a well-manned, thoroughly docile and harmless adult - a surge of dark power at the end of that chorus. "So be it, then!" goes little Helm "a murderer by accident, a murderer by intent!". Stepping outside of Christian morality only to get air in one's lungs means one is a Christian pretending not to be one. As a result, they'd be wracked by guilt. One can only imagine what life would be in the shadow of the horns by pretending to be in-human. No gray zones, no middle grounds. If you've taken a life, you're a monster. Suddenly, the flirtation with Carpenterish campy horror movies makes a bit more sense, as they too, were completely Christian. The killer in Halloween is, we are told, directly to the camera by the psychiatrist in the film, beyond salvation, completely inhuman. A monster. Words no real physician of any kind would endorse.

So, I think mr. Kai Hansen was taking some air with songs like this, as he's definitely returned to the light triumphantly with further offerings. But that doesn't mean this music is incincere. In fact isn't it more sincere, this vague storytelling of a man's downward spiral as means of roleplay, than pretending to be, for example, a serious 100% goat-worshipping, blood-drinking, nun-defiling satanist when you're not?

Music doesn't need to be real. If art is anything, it is the opposite of real. Music doesn't need to be ideology to be imposing. There needs to be a passionate driving force behind what is expressed, and there needs to be ethos in the execution, certainly. But the text can be as little as 'Murderer' has to offer and still resonate. People do not really think in nuanced terms. They struggle to keep up with their own thoughts, and they put them in order in text (likeso) and with constant reviews until a higher structure seems, for a second, to crystallize. This is how philosophy is written. Philosophy is not written in art, in song, there is no such desire, I am certain of this. A lot of bands could stand to augment their art a lot be being stupider about it, by having less clever things to say, meta-conceptually, about their own art. A lot of art needs a lot less definition to be powerful.

Helloween didn't need anyone in 2012 to tell them any of this, they were in a big hurry to lay down these tracks. I am sure the lyrics to this song didn't take more than ten minutes to put down. I killed a man. I have to kill again. My rest comes in my own death. I've had this thought when I was twelve, as most of you kind readers did also. Why didn't you write a Heavy Metal song about it and yet Helloween did? This is a question that doesn't request an answer, a rhetoric device, if you will. What it insinuates is that the business of doing and the business of explaining are often divorced, and for good reason. There's nothing more crippling than the business of explaining when you should be in the business of doing. This is why I haven't posted here in a while, because I've had to make a whole lot, very fast.

Helloween were on the fast track too. The Helloween EP landing in '85, the full LP in '86, along with Judas. A good corpus of work, very fast, very dumb, yet reaching with mad ambition as far as composition goes. Soon we'll talk about the interesting brother track to Murderer, called, well... Warrior. From gazing inwards (Murderer) to gazing outwards (Warrior) and ultimately to gazing upwards (Victim of Fate). Don't hold your breath, gentle reader. God is far away.

Starlight

As I reflect on it all, I realize more and more that I initially came to Heavy Metal for light, not darkness. My best friend Nick would describe to me his early metal experiences and they were not like my own. Whereas he would listen to 'Fight Fire With Fire' and feel like setting his dad's pickup truck on fire for sweet revenge, I never felt like that exactly. Heavy Metal felt mystical, instead. Like a portal to somewhere not exactly inwards... more like turning oneself outside out. More like retreating, back turned, towards the exit. Does it become an entrance, then?

Sure, the primal forces of this bludgeoning sort of music had some effect on me (it takes a certain kind of masochist to put their ear to so many decibels, but that's a different piece I always mean to write) and yes, I have headbanged alone in my room as a youth as much as anyone – or more? I remember denting my head against a heating body by mistake. Metal took its place, right? Anyway, it always felt like it was leading to something, even as early as twelve years old, I was looking for something more than a sore neck in all of this. This explains why I moved quickly from what turned out to be thrash to power metal at that age. I didn't know of course what these things were yet, but after picking up on Helloween and that whole Teutonic sound, I didn't look back into the darkness for at least three or four years.

Well... the Starlight's dim, frankly. A strange song for twelve year old Helm. Now I understand where it comes from much more. There's an intro before the song proper, it's a sound collage and we must spend a moment with each sound that comes in because, let me tell you, some of these signifiers here really left child Helm baffled.

The intro starts with someone snoring. They they wake up and – of course have their morning beer. Then a song comes on, on the tv, on the radio? Not clear. The song clearly says 'Happy happy Halloween', even at twelve I caught as much. Then... silver sheppard? That doesn't make sense. Silver shamrock, it turns out. Years later, with the benefit of our most-powerful Gnostic demiurge in play (that is Google) I found out that this song comes from a peculiar source:

Halloween 3? Pulpy slasher films? In my Power Metal of Light? Oh shit. The blood-curdling scream by Mr. Kai Hansen is not very power metal at all, is it? The implication is that the freshly woken up person in the intro has become a victim to molten steel, of course. Listen to Death growl like the primordial entity of terror that he is while his skeleton crew revs up the mixed metaphore. Mean and sloppy, muddy with reverb and filth Death is. And what's this riff now? Well, it's thrash, of course. Or 'speed metal', hilariously. Do you remember that Helloween debuted in the Noise compilation named “Death metal” just few months earlier than when the Helloween E.P. came out?

I wouldn't know it at twelve but what I was introduced to by friends and metal press as 'Germanic power metal' didn't come directly from Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. It wasn't a self-conscious invention by Helloween to start a new genre. Not yet. It's very clear here they were listening to Bay Area bands as much as the more classy European bands that usually get connected directly as power metal inspirations. But at twelve these weren't concerns, I could hardly tell how this enormous racket was produced, much less have an opinion on discerning thrash and speed and power metal.

The equal measures of pomp and filth here can be sampled clearly in the intro switch-up from glam rock chords while Mr Death here goes 'whoo hoo! Alright!' after the scream and the absurd polka tempo change that introduces the shape of the verses. It's so clear to me now that just like I, in the late '90s, were listening to two very different Heavy Metal bands at once and mixing their aesthetics up and thinking 'this is all Heavy Metal', Helloween were a product of a similar aesthetic mix of what was for a pre-fall of the Soviet Union, a largely foreign music. This is important. You cannot understand how Heavy Metal was shaped in countries under Soviet influence if you're judging from an American or British standard. Most of us, even people older than me, they didn't get the full story. They didn't follow Heavy Metal from its birth in the seventies through its resurgence in the eighties, the progression wasn't clear. They listened to whatever they got their hands on and if it was distorted, then it was good. If it was from 'the Western world', it was good. If it had anything to do with Robocop and Conan, it was good. I can imagine, now, Kai Hansen and co. at age sixteen, madly hunting for records from the USA and being just as happy with returning home with a Dokken record if a Metallica vinyl could not be found. Or, more to the point, with a Van Der Graaf Generator record. It's got distortion and it's not disco, it must be worthwhile, right?

It's a testament to the strength of this record (as we will see further on) that the band is more than an aesthetically muddy mix of “Heavy Metal as we see it in Hamburg, 1984”. It seems Helloween very, very quickly became more than the sum of their parts. But not on “Starlight”.

I know this song by heart, of course. I learned English with this record, more or less. The lyrics are obviously written by a non-native speaker and that suit me just fine as I was – and now remain - as non-native as it gets. I had a talent for learning English and I picked up a lot at that crucial age from music, computer games and television/cinema from the US. I would say I picked up too much, actually. Enamored with your decadent entertainment, at some point I handled English (at least written English, my accent was always clearly – and once embarrassingly - Greek) as if I was a cast-member for F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Later on, as I began to reevaluate those cultural influences, I began to purge my English from slang and more importantly, from the lingual cliché that comes with them. What is left is hopefully and obviously, Foreigner English. It is because I find this fitting and correct that I can read these lyrics by Helloween now and look at them kindly and embrace where they're coming from.

You're hangin' around and got nothin' to do
You wanna get out some pills in front of you
You fly on invisible wings
Be careful my friend for too many can kill
You say that the meaning of life's in those pills
You forget all earthly things

You swallow your pill you wanna feel free
A trip to a world made of games
You do it again yet it's never the same
But a junkie's not something to be

Starlight fallin' in deep through your eyes
Starlight shinnin' down for your soul to rise

Now there's a needle lying in front of you
I'm frightened of those things
But I know what you'll do
You need it to escape from the night

You ride on through heaven you don't feel no pain
You ride on and ride on again and again
On the needle that brings you the light
You feel the mind-blowin' stuff
Flow through your veins
You take off and fly to the sun
But when you get too near your wings will be burnt
You'll die in the flames and you'll fall

Thematically this is a “Winners Don't Use Drugs” screed. Or is it? We'll talk about the overarching theme later on, but I have to say that child Helm was totally on board because I was – and remain for the most part – phobic about drug use in general and and recreational drug taking in particular. Preach it, Helloween. I don't need those pills to find the meaning of life. I just need the metal. Right? Right?

Anyway, the nascent beauty of Helloween can be noticed in the bridge (“You swallow your pill and you wanna feel free...”). That's the European influence coming in, as Metallica wouldn't do that, and if the did in order to emulate their NWOBHM gods, they would chop it up into smaller, more staccato phrases and repeat it endlessly to show us how smart their little off-kilter melody is. Like a retarded Mercyful Fate, perhaps. Well, like a retarded Mercyful Fate with a Cliff Burton desperately trying to re-orchestrate the mess, let's say. Instead, Helloween's sense of melody overflows. They've got so much they tack it on to ends of prases everywhere. They try to play thrash here and can't keep it straight, their inner Scorpion longs to get out and play us a rock symphony. Wherever one guitarist plays palm muted single string backup, the harmony guitarist (usually Mr. Weikath) would elaborate (and NOT improvise) these long flowing melodies on top. Sometimes connecting with the vocal melody, sometimes countering it. Often, these melodies would be, ghasp! Shock! Quelel Horreur! Major in key. Hetfield is frowning and giving you the finger.

Truly, there's something magnetic for me, still, at the juxtaposition between the rough vocal delivery and the confident vocal melody here. I still sing along to this record whenever I play it and it's not because I've got this fucking range but because the rough delivery is inviting for us lessers to join in. This is key. Likewise, the rough, punkish basic riffing here and the overlaid melodies, well, I don't try to play along to them but I still have this erroneous feeling that if I tried, I could. Power metal wasn't always this cold thing that Stratovarious-and-onwards bands make it sound like. This is rough and diy-ish in the best NWOBHM tradition, still. Sure, the solos soar with a potency that cannot easily be matched even by the most willing air-guitarist, but it's not the technique that's on display, it's anearnest desire to use these machines to elevate the listener. We NEED all these notes. We NEED to play this fast. Why? Because we're reaching for somewhere where you can only go when you think, bereft of any irony or knowingness, that “more is more” instead of whatever that crutch of a cliché would have most believe.

This is not the best song in this record, by far (it's not the worst either) but what can still be gleaned is that there's a new statement about Heavy Metal here. Perhaps not fully formed, but something's going on. The extensive solo section that doesn't just lick and lick lazily over one established past riff but instead builds “new parts as needed” to extend towards a direction is testament. Sure, even in the '70s some great bands would build these elaborate solo sections (Wishbone Ash comes to mind) but it wasn't all the time, and it certainly was a point into itself. Here Helloween can barely contain themselves, there's not a single song in this record that doesn't, when given an opportunity to solo, become an elaborate mock-orchestra suit for a moment. Even the punky opener. The light is getting brighter. Mr. Hansen and Mr. Weikath arrogantly trade solos, they want me to know whom is playing which, as my soul is washed by their inspiration's light. Seriously, in the booklet it clearly spells what personnel is performing what lead section. And after all these years, I can tell just by listening to their particular tones and inflections which is which.

Starlight ends quickly because Helloween didn't yet know how to write an epic, or know that they could if they tried. But put it next to openers by other metal bands of the time (especially thrash metal bands, don't forget this is 1985, most of what was vital in thrash metal had already occurred) and see how there's a different focus to that stuff. We'll talk about this more, as there truly is only one thematic point to the whole album, repeated again and again. And that point is integral to this record's enduring potency.  

Walls of Jericho - An Introduction

Helloween's "Walls of Jericho" is a very important Heavy Metal record for many reasons. For one, it arguably is the starting point of the modern definition of power metal. There have been many 'power metals' since the early eighties and there has been even more confusion as to what the genre stands for, especially in contrast to what is now called the 'traditional heavy metal' genre. Helloween, though I'm sure they didn't expect to, helped clear the waters with the release of their debut but even more so with their follow up albums "Keeper of the Seven Keys", part one and two. 

But we'll get to all of that. "Walls of Jericho" is important for metal, but it's really important to me, personally. What I'm going to do in covering this very important item, then, is going to be different. Well, it's not like Poetry of Subculture has so far had a stable approach to discussing records, but in my head I'm deviating even further from my usual deviance here.

You see, this was in a strange way my first real Heavy Metal record. Before it I had only listened to Metallica. When I mean only, I am being very literal. I got into Heavy Metal at age 11 or so by having my father buy me "Master of Puppets". We were in a record shop, shopping for him and my older brother and he urged me to pick something up for myself as well, and I was drawn to the inexplicable malice of the combo of band & record name and that cover.

I didn't even own a CD deck, I just had this little tape player. My brother dubbed the cd on tape and kept the original (like the pack rat he was and still is) and man, I lived on that tape. I learned English to understand that tape (also, for adventure games). The allure of it is difficult to define because it is difficult to access; I no longer feel as I did for "Master of Puppets". You can see that in that it's not even in my Master List of personal HM favorites. But "Walls of Jericho" is.

For the next year and a half or so I managed to accumulate the full Metallica discography, all on tape, through my brother's English teacher. She had been very kind to give me these tapes, which I got in no particular order and rather slowly. I do not know if it was wisdom or just boredom that made her tickle out the dosage on Metallica, but it took close to a full year to get all the stuff from her. If I close my eyes I can still remember her handwritten song lists on the back of the tape. It's due to her that I still can't immediately recognize "Metal Militia" readily, as it didn't fit on the "Kill 'Em All" tape. It's her fault Dyer's Eve ends just after the first verse for similar reasons. Even today the rest of that song sounds so off to me.  Inno – cence! Torn from me with – out a shelteeerr! So off-key and annoying.

"Load" had just come out if you'd like to date this process. It should tell you a lot that I couldn't understand any difference, stylistically, between "Load" and "Master of Puppets". I remember very clearly that I didn't like it as much, but I couldn't tell you why. Boy, I can tell you now, but let's not.

For almost my first two years into metal, I wasn't really listening to metal (and certainly I had no concept of the full range of Heavy Metal out there), I was listening to Metallica. But I did have a taste of adventure and lots of alone time, so I decided to investigate further. I wanted to be a metalhead. I started reading Metal Hammer GR - a magazine of some repute then, mandatory reading for nascent metalheads. Not so much now, I started imagining myself with long hair, you know. I think this is a very common metalhead experience. It's been sixteen years. I turned 28 a few days ago. My hair is real fuckin' long.

My older brother had a friend who was selling "Walls of Jericho" for whatever reason. I think he was getting out of metal, or at least perhaps he didn't like the record. Man, I remember at least two older dudes getting out of metal at around that time. The second guy's story was hilarious. He claimed to have met the devil in his bedroom one night, hovering over his Venom and Obituary cds, which he threw out immediately the next morning. The kicker is that he went and picked them out of the trash later one because he figured, hey, might as well make some drachmas reselling them. God won't mind. I remember feeling equally scared and jealous at this nocturnal meeting with the Daystar. The fear has dissipated over the years, but the allure burns like a black flame.

I must have read something on Metal Hammer about how Helloween were a great band and you know, that's all it took at that point. To help you understand, I bought the Metal Hammer magazines out of a very meager allowance and I always felt guilty bringing it home, what with this King Diamond devilface on the cover and all these photographs inside of clearly villainous personalities. "Master of Puppets", with its rather diversionary cover was one thing, the magazines were another. Later on I would get my dad to buy me new CDs at the record store every few weeks, but early on I felt the type of guilt associated with Heavy Metal that I think is imperative to be acquainted with to understand why this music has such a hold on those that it enthralls. So I read about much, much more than I listened to new Heavy Metal records. Do you see how from there there is a line leading us directly here, me with a blog about Heavy Metal and you reading about it?

I bought the record used, for very little money. The person that sold it later on died of cancer. Unfortunate. I always remember this guy because I always remember "Walls of Jericho" and how I fell in love with it, how I learned what Heavy Metal was and furthermore imagined what it could be through it.

What I'm going to try to do is discuss every single song on the record from two vantages. One is the one of the modern Helm, with all his encyclopedic knowledge of metal music, the one you know from Poetry of Subculture. The other vantage I will try to summon is of the 12 year old Helm, the one who doesn't even know there's a difference between bass guitar and electric, the one who has no idea what 'double bass' is. It's not the only way to service how I feel about "Walls of Jericho", but it's really one of the most interesting ones.

I will start soon and carry on as time allows. Let's grow up together, strong and proud and very lonely, let's become metalheads all over again.  

Riffs Are Not Enough

As it's often said (and I endorse): If you don't have riffs, you can't play Heavy Metal.

Let us add to this the less stated "...but riffs are not enough to achieve greatness, either" to that.

I'll try to get to this in a lucid manner but I'm not making any promises, it's all pretty roundabout as usual.

So in idle discussion over metal music, I asked my close friend and house mate, Miltiadis, what his favorite riff in the whole wide Heavy Metal world was. He struggled to answer. I'm not sure if he even came back with a final suggestion, actually. What I do remember is my uneasy feeling in realizing that I too, do not have a specific Riff of Riffs in mind. What have I been doing all these years if I can't answer this basic question?

The riff that comes to mind initially when I think of metal music is one off of Death's "Symbolic" (the intro to "Crystal Mountain", in fact). But I do not consider that riff to be the best ever, just very infectious rhythmically. The safe choice would be to go with the intro riff to "Black Sabbath", but there's such dynamic tension between it and when it calms down in its ABAB-C structure that it's not fair to choose it on its own. It has historical merit to do so, but that'd be hypocritical to be the deciding factor.

So I mulled over it for some time more. Candlemass' "Demon's Gate"? Too dependent on its release with the bridge/verse part as well, I couldn't listen to the riff of Demon's Gate forever on repeat after all. Every time the riff exits for the song to go to the verse, it feels the correct time to do so. So it can't be the best riff ever. Perhaps something by Fates Warning?

That's when it hit me. The best riff ever is not by Fates Warning, but its archetypal form was suggested by Fates Warning. Let's listen to Cauldron Born's "Crusader", now.



The very first riff, yes. Listen to this finely crafted sculpture. Listen to it again and again. When it goes away, it's too soon. When it returns (at the very end of the song) the tension explodes in such a way that you might feel "surely the composer could have shoehorned that at least somewhere in the middle to ride it a few more times!". But Cauldron Born are too classy for that.

Let's look at the parts of the riff. There's three microhooks to this long-form riff. The first bit, in glorious impromptu guitar tablature is the following (excuse errors, I haven't extensively played along, this is what it sounds like to me and it gets the point across):

A semitone down from standard tuning

-------------------------------
-------------------------------
-------------------------------
-----9----7----9-------------9-
-----7----5----7-------------7-
0-0--7----5----7-----7-8-7-5-7-

This Phrygian opening (let's call it part A) is a strong enough riff in itself that lesser power metal bands would have repeated it ad infinitum by adding some insignificant coda at its second repetition to even it out, and called it a day. But the composer had something loftier in mind, and for his second variation (let's call it part B) he adds a triplet note run that sounds something like this, but I could - again - be wrong:

----------------- ---------------------------------
----------------- ---------------------------------
----------------- ---------------------------------
-----9----7----9- ---------------------------------
-----7----5----7- -8-7-5---------------------------
0-0--7----5----7- ---------8-7-5----4-5-7----5-4-1-

Which gives it a neoclassical feel similar to what Malmsteen would constantly do. It puts the riff off balance only to revitalize it by the return of the strong and dominant part A. Then for the end of the riff he offers:

----------------- --------
----------------- --------
----------------- --------
-----9----7----9- -10---5-
-----7----5----7- -8----3-
0-0--7----5----7- ------3-

Which makes sense well enough.

(I use a lot of inverted powerchord-fourth chords in my own music so I might be imagining them here and Cauldron Born could be playing straight-up two note power chords, it's hard to say with the sound and/or my ears. This is how it sounds most robust to me at least.)

So this riff, for me is an example of the perfectly sculpted riff. It's the sort of thing that in pop music, only Heavy Metal attempts to do, to get to the perfect logical and aesthetic end of the process of playing a short repeated pattern. It's a very revealing artifact of metalhead psyche, the 'perfect riff'. It reveals not only aspiration (towards something perfect, therefore, ageless, beyond death) but also more candidly, process. This is not the sort of riff someone jams out at practice with friends. This is the sort of riff someone sits in their lonely bedroom trying to get to, hours on hours putting it together and taking it apart in different ways before they're satisfied with its final form. Spending an age to become ageless. Inside riffs like this one can find Heavy Metal itself.

This riff, the very first riff of the very first song of the very first Cauldron Born record, refers to a riff by Fates Warning, the very first one in the very first song of their record "Awaken the Guardian". Let's listen to that one:



Standard Tuning
-------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
-------------------------9-8---------------------
---5/7-------------------7-6---8--3p5p3----3-----
---3/5-5555--6-5-3---5---------6---------6---6-5-
-------------------------------6-----------------


Different key, different tempo, but certainly rhythm and feel similarities abound. You could say the initial inspiration was to perfect this riff by Fates Warning, a band that played 'together' much less than Cauldron Born, and whose song-writing at this point was much more democratic. Which isn't to say Fates Warning 'jammed' (not to find song ideas, to my knowledge) but that for Fates Warning, the riff of "The Sorceress" was complete enough, if anything it had been simplified from past iterations to let harmonic room for singer John Arch to add a separate voice on top. The whole *song* by Fates Warning is stronger than the whole song of Cauldron Born, mainly due to the strengths of John Arch.

Cauldron Born, a latter day, much more self-aware-as-such US Power Metal band would pile on complexity on complexity because they knew that on one side their listeners were by now used to the conceits of this sort of music (whereas Fates Warning were trailblazing) and on the other side, they wanted to compete, as it were. Cauldron Born have listened to (notoriously complex Texan techno-thrash band) Watchtower, after all. In the end what makes one song better than the other is how well the parts flow and how well the individual melody lines of guitars, bass and vocals cohere as a functional harmonic statement. I'd say that "Crusader" flows very well - I especially enjoy how after The Riff we get a series of chord fills that destabilize the tonal center and then the verse of the song, even though set to a more conservative US Power rhythm, is basically a very apt variation of The Riff. However they lose me on some of their Malmsteen runs here and there, and for a guitar wizard of great repute, the Cauldron Born guitarist seems to me to have bit off more than he could chew in some of them. Fates Warning seem very at ease on their "Sorceress" instead, never overplaying or putting on much of a show. The hooks in their riffs are hidden very well, there is required diligence to unearth them from their austere rhythms and boxy chords. There really isn't anything as hard to play in "Awaken the Guardian" as there is in "Born of the Cauldron", I don't think. Perhaps some of Aresti's more flashy solos come close. As a nascent progressive metal band, Fates Warning were not at that time interested in overt showmanship though they were interested in complexity, but one that mirrored the lyrical nuance that John Arch was delivering. There is no John Arch in Cauldron Born.

The lyrical matter that informs the compositions then is the deciding factor as to which song is best. I hesitate to discuss "The Sorceress" here, as that deserves its own article, and without excuses about perfect riffs to induce it at all, but suffice to say "Crusader", with its pulpy examination of the motives of a holy warrior, does not inspire as its progenitor enduringly does.

So in this roundabout way I've realized why my mind does not keep in storage 'perfect riffs' to readily deploy. Because as riffs are beautiful, structures of many riffs, many mini-hooks within each riff are more beautiful. And songs whose meaning is reflected in the architecture of these many-hooked multi-part riffs are the best, and the form towards which for a time, Heavy Metal proudly moved. These are what my mind keeps a finite recollection of.

Essentially, then, riffs are enough to play metal. But riffs are not enough to make the best Heavy Metal there ever was. Which leads to a comment on what appears to me to be an aesthetic bankruptcy of sorts on the part of modern listeners of extreme music (metal being only one of the substrands that belong to the wider tree) that manifests as a fixation with The Riff above all else. To this I want to suggest, perhaps with a degree of unwaranted arrogance, that, people, anyone can write one or two great riffs. Even per song, some times. The history of metal music has shown this, even really bad records sometimes have a couple of choice cuts, and there is almost no well-known metal band that doesn't have at least a few great riffs to show for themselves. A lot of the new metal that I'm exposed to seems to suffer from this fixation on riffs that Heavy Metal seemed to have grown beyond (but never out~) circa 1988. I shouldn't be surprised at this regression as the cultural climate at the moment favours easily digestible bits of ear candy, and what's does that better describe than a good riff?

What's useful in going back and listening to the whole history of metal music is not that 'old music was better', but that many questions that modern types of metal music seem to be asking have, as far as I can tell, been answered in many different ways sometimes decades ago. Parts of the puzzle are missing, but they're only acutely felt as missing when one realizes that there is a puzzle to begin with, one that's been manipulated by many minds for half a century almost. We don't have to reinvent 'song structure' and 'thematic progression' and 'letimotiff' now, just because we reinvented the riff through the warped projection of extreme metal.




On the subject, which are some of the best riffs / series of riffs / songs (in reverse order of importance, as you see) of your choice? Is one riff per song enough to call some of them your favorite ever? Is this the age-old Judas Priest versus Iron Maiden argument in disguise? What are your favorite Heavy Metal songs in which there is nothing much of note but just ONE great riff? Are there any great Heavy Metal songs you enjoy that do not even seem to have a very memorable & repeated guitar pattern?