Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza

Many ages ago (okay more like 4 years) I was a music reviewer. I reviewed all sorts of black metal, dark ambient, and dungeon synth and even afforded myself a tiny smidgen of popularity. I was good at what I did. I didn't just say "this music was bad" these riffs were heavy and killer" I went deeper and analyzed the music, the sounds, the environment, and the atmosphere. I went deeper than most reviewers were willing to go. If you thought some of my RP posts could be long, you have no idea how long my reviews could get. I stopped when the scenes I was a part in got too divided and I was getting pulled in each direction and in part because I couldn't keep enduring all the awful music people would randomly send me.

Recently though, thanks to my own musings over things past and a conversation with @Zôrzimril, I've decided to revive the old name and logo and write my musical analysis here. Now I know a lot of you, okay most of you, aren't going to enjoy must of what I write about because black metal, dark ambient, and dungeon synth are very acquired tastes. Still, I hope you'll stick around and read about the music because I'll have the freedom to write about the music that I feel passionate about instead of fulfilling an agreement between myself and the band. If you stick around, I promise you will learn things and you might even find a band or a musical project that you love.

I will make this note here and now though, black metal has a lot of anti-Christian, Satanic themes and I am not going to shy away from those bands or projects for the sake of anyone here. I believe all these bands have something to offer, a story to tell, a perspective to share. I know a lot of people will not like that so as a compromise, I will be putting content warning labels on the reviews/analysis that deal with these bands.

I hope you are all ready for a journey!

In this hectic time, January is 'ages ago' so I think it's appropriate to say so for 'four years.' Oof.

I'm eager to read your thoughts and perspective. The world of musical analysis is one that has always existed on the fringes for me. I was aware of it, but never really looked in to see what it was about. Can't wait!

Sub'd for "Dungeon Synth"

fullsupportblob! Super pumped for you to get back to doing something for which you so clearly have great passion, and it's an honor that you'll be sharing your analyses with us here!

Look forward to some, Black Sabbath 13!

Thank you everyone so much for your interest in my crazy little project. I will endeavor not to disappoint. Normally I would respond to each and every one of you individually but for this first time out, I'm just gonna dive in and see where it takes us.
Summoning, if you ask any metalhead off the street, is the premiere Tolkien metal band. They are the ones that popularized the term despite having done nothing to ever promote themselves as such. They’ve been going since the early 90s, when the Second Wave of Black Metal hit the airways. Summoning, though, was far from the spotlight. They weren’t followed around by controversy, church burnings, murders, suicides, or bizarre stage activity. They developed in Austria and become one of the founding members of the “Austrian Black Metal Syndicate” a term most black metal fans have never even heard of. If you ask the same metalhead off the street what their favorite Summoning album is, it will not be “Lugburz” I am willing to stake my reputation on that.

Lugburz was Summoning’s first full length release, appearing in 1995 on Napalm Records. This is the first, and only, album that Summoning appears as a trio rather than a duo. For Lugburz, they had a drummer who goes by the pseudonym “Trifixion.” The rest of the band, the lineup recognizable by any fan today, is Silenius and Protector taking care of the guitars, vocals, and synth.

There’s a reason this release will never appear on anyone’s list of favorite Summoning albums: it’s boring. And when I mean boring, I don’t mean bad. By all measures of black metal, this is an amazing album. The guitars are fast and chaotic, the riffs are catchy and melodic, and the vocals are decent. However, if any one of you, being uninitiated into the wild hinterlands that is the black metal scene, were to put on another black metal album from 1991 to 1999, you would be very hard pressed to tell the difference. Lugburz was just another typical black metal release. Even if it was made very well, the production on Summoning albums has always been stellar while the rest of the black metal scene revels in very, very band production, it doesn’t stand out.

The first track, Grey Heavens, gives the listener a taste, just the faintest whiff of what could on the horizon. It’s a brilliant, if short, dungeon synth intro. There are two ways a black metal album will start. Either it will start with something akin to dungeon synth (though that term didn’t come around really until about 2014-15) or it will blast away into tremolo picking, blast beats, and screeching. Having listened to well over 2000 hours of black metal in my life, I can say with absolute certainty, the ones that start with the synthy, pseudo classical intro will be better. That is not to say the album will be good or that an album that doesn’t start off like that will be bad, it’s just a good wat to judge to vision of the artists. Grey Heavens is a damn good intro. It’s light and melodic with lots of aquatic samples added to the final mix, leading me to believe the track was supposed to be Gray Havens but got mislabeled somewhere and once it got it there was not a lot anyone could do. That’s neither here nor there though. The point is Grey Heavens is good. It sets the mood; it readies the listeners expectations.

Then the rest of the album hits and you’re left satisfied but never thrilled. Nothing about Lugburz as an album sets itself apart. It’s kinda just there. If I were given this album today and told it was written, recorded, and released in the last five years I would have called it unimaginative, uninspired, dull, lifeless, and formulaic. I would have said it was well made, but it gives me nothing. When the album is over I don’t feel that rush of excitement, that energy, that feeling of awestruck powerfulness that I want for an album.

The narrative progression, too, is sorely lacking on Lugburz. The titles sound cool and vaguely fantasy and evil but when you stop to look at them and really consider them, they fall apart. They don’t mean anything. Aside from a few Tolkien-esque phrases here and there, there’s nothing on this album that can be considered Tolkien Metal.

So do I recommend this album? For most of you readers, probably not. Black metal is hard to get into and Lugburz isn’t the most interesting album to use to take the plunge. It’s still good, I will recommend it after you’ve listened to some of their later work where they dip heavy into the epic and cavernous soundscapes they’re known for. But for now, I wouldn’t rush out to buy it.

I really appreciate how you've written this review with your current audience clearly in mind, hehe. Not only did I learn your opinion of the album, but I also learned a whole lot about black metal just by reading. Thank you for the edification!

Thank you for this fantastic intro to one of your passions! I will probably go hunt down the Grey Heavens track just out of curiosity at some point.

Agree 100% with that review, imho Summoning is a band that grows with each new release. Except for Oathbound, which will always be at the top :P

@San I'm glad! Black metal is a genre that's really, really misunderstood (even by the people that create it) so I'm happy to help others learn about what should be like.
@Sally You should, and I hope you like it. Summoning has some more fantastic ambient/synth tracks that start from there.
@Hoglorfen Another Summoning fan! I agree with everything you said, though Dol Guldur holds a very special place in my heart. Oathbound represents them at the peak of their creativity.

And now, without further ado... Minas Morgul

Sophomore albums can fall into two categories. They can either the album that a band finds their stride with, their sound if you will, or they can be a muddled mess of half formed ideas that the band can’t decide on. For Summoning, the second album was either going to set them apart from the massive amounts of the hum drum of black metal being created from a cookie cutter lay out or it was going to forever mire them in mediocrity and relegate them to a footnote. Lugburz was a fine album, but fine is not what Summoning wanted. They wanted to be set apart from the rest of their colleges. Would Minas Morgul be that album for them? Minas Morgul recently celebrated it’s 25th anniversary, which adds a layer of complexity to the review.

Does Minas Morgul succeed? The answer is complicated, unfortunately. That wasn’t a set up for a question that was going to go unanswered. Minas Morgul is like an awkward teenager. It’s halfway between being a child and an adult but doesn’t belong in either category. It’s a gangly mess of arms and legs that has tons of potential but can’t quite get out of its own way. For this release, they dropped their drummer, becoming the two piece they have remained for the last 25 years. From Minas Morgul onward, Silenus and Protector used programmed drums, specifically tom toms and kettle drums, to compliment their sound. This alone is one of the big things that separates and distinguishes Summoning as a band. Being a studio only band (they don’t and never will perform live) this allowed the two to expand their repertoire of instruments and experimentation. Unfortunately for Minas Morgul, there’s a little too much experimentation going on. Silenus and Protector use a lot of synth in this album. A lot of synth. It’s a proto dungeon synth album one could almost say. In 1995 the melding of keyboards with guitars, bass, and drum hadn’t really been achieved. Minas Morgul was a step in that direction, a bold and brave attempt, but in many ways it didn’t so much blend them as mush them together and wrap the whole thing in glue. Sometimes the synth is heavy within the song, dominating everything else, other times it creates a barely noticeable melody. To borrow from some experiences I’ve had with baking to make a metaphor, Summoning used too much flour in one song, then too much sugar, then not enough, then forgot the baking soda.

That being said, despite the flaws of Minas Morgul, this is a fantastic album. It is a marked improvement over Lugburz in both style and substance. With Minas Morgul, they ceased to be another run of the mill black metal band pumping out the same crap for the next twenty years (believe me, there are still bands trying to recreate the bad, lo-fi sounds of the Norwegian Black Metal scene and it’s so annoying). They began forging their own path. Indeed, the sounds that were born on Minas Morgul forged a pathway to a new subgenre within the genre: Atmospheric Black Metal. The sounds of atmospheric black metal are much more refined than the parent genre, richer and more vibrant. I believe in my previous incarnation of Resounding Footsteps I used the word cavernous over and over again to describe the sound. It’s lush, but raw; it has an echoing feeling that gives the listener a feeling of being surrounded.

Narratively speaking, the album is still all over the place. No matter where I look, I can’t really find a thread that leads from one song to the next. From what I can tell, this will be a thing with Summoning up and through their latest album, With Doom We Come. Everything is a mishmash of Tolkien references and cool medieval tropes. Not that any of that is bad, mind you. Summoning also use a lot more instrumental tracks on Minas Morgul than they do on any of their other albums, interspaced very strategically between the longer tracks (one tracks clocks in a ten minutes and another at nine) to give the listener some breathing room to digest the music. Yes, I said digest. Summoning can be a lot to take in, owing to the scope of the sounds they create so a multitude of instrumental tracks work.

There’s certainly no requirement for an album to have a narrative flow but it is something I look for in my music. Music, to me, is meant to take me out of my current world and place in another. Even if that world is exactly the same as the old one but with the edges sharpened, the aggressive tone ramped up, it’s still something different. Music is as much a transport as it is an enhancement. Doing one or the other is good, doing both is transcendent. Minas Morgul is a great listening experience.

One I highly recommend. You will be able to see the seeds planted that become mighty oaks twenty-five years down the line. The standout tracks on the album are the first two. The opening track, Soul Wandering, is a brilliant progression from Grey Heavens. It’s not just an old school synth track with some water added for atmosphere. It’s a synthetic orchestra of sound. It gets a little bombastic at the end but still fantastic, a great indicator of things to come. Lugburz, the next track (confusingly not on the album of the same name) is a surprisingly short seven minutes filled with layered melodies, and disparate instruments all working together. Going back to the cookie analogy, this is the perfect cookie, the flour, the sugar, the baking soda, it’s all here. This is what Summoning is capable of, this is the sound they need to be build on. Will they? Find out when I take a look at their next: Dol Guldur.

I love your baking metaphors here. (However, I do believe in your first paragraph you probably want the word colleagues, not colleges, correct?)

I will confess that I rarely sit down and listen to any album from start to finish so I hardly notice if there is a narrative or transition woven through from song to song, but I'm enjoying your perspective on these from both the aspects of the individual albums, and for the band's evolution over time as a whole.

I wholeheartedly agree with music needing to be a transport, though. When I'm searching for songs to include on my writing playlists, it's almost always about whether it helps me enter the world I'm writing for at the time, regardless of genre or style of music.

I’m going to interrupt my ongoing series on Summoning albums (I know I need to get back to that soon) to talk about something that’s happened in the metal world. I hesitate to talk about it here because I don’t want to use this thread as a blog where I talk about things unrelated to art and Tolkien or what have you and if the news weren’t so gut wrenching (to me at least) I would be content to write something on Twitter about it. However, I can’t. I have to unleash my feeling somewhere and Twitter is so clunky it would take away the impact I was hoping to make by saying it. Enough preamble though. Alexi “Wildchild” Laiho has died. Who is he and why is his passing so devastating to me? I’ll tell you.

Alexi was the founder, singer, and lead guitarist of a band called Children of Bodom (named after a famous murder scene in Finland). His style was a mix of black metal, power metal, thrash, heavy metal, classical, or anything else that suited his fancy at the time. To say that he was one of the best guitarists in the world of metal (arguably in the world of rock as a whole) is not an exaggeration. He was one of the most eclectic, versatile, and inventive musicians I’ve heard in a decade and a half of mainlining extreme music. His career with Children of Bodom started in 1997 and continued until 2019 when the band finally decided to hang up the drumsticks. During that time they put out 10 full length albums, and impressive feat. What was more impressive was that each album was unique and distinct but never strayed from the Children of Bodom sound that Alexi cultivated. Also during that time, the band managed to strange, off the wall things like this that shouldn't work, and don’t really, but were enormously entertaining.

What does this have to do with why I’m writing this today though? I first started listening to Children of Bodom when I was 18. In fact, Something Wild, their first album, was the first album I bought when I turned 18 and I could buy whatever the hell I wanted. I am a dour, serious person (to the surprise of many of you I’m sure) and the music I listen to has gone a long way to inform my personality. So, in a sea of ultra serious black metal bands, Children of Bodom stood out as an oddity. Children of Bodom were fun. They were irreverent, and they were all over the place. But they were talented. Naturally, I’m listening to them now as I write this and the music still holds up. It’s creative, fun, and energetic. Calling Alexi one of my early heroes would not be inaccurate.

Art in any form influences us and that influence can seep through in a hundred different ways. I believe that Alexi and Children of Bodom made it okay for me to use my writing talents to be silly every now and then. I think there’s a direct line from Children of Bodom to Jorgy and Fleeg who thrive here on the Plaza.

Alexi was just 41 years old, I’m 32.

He isn’t my greatest musical influence, but he is one of my firsts. I didn’t always follow Children of Bodom religiously but it was music I could always through and be entertained. Heck, they were the only music DVD I owed for a very long time. I actually hate the idea of concerts (introverted and agoraphobic) but I could put on that DVD and get the full, bombastic, entertaining performance they put on.

I was devastated when I heard the news, even now, I’m trying to hold it together. Alexi was a once in a generation talent. The world of metal, and music as a whole, is less today. I am going to miss him.

Thank you allowing me to try and process my grief.

Wildchild wrote: ↑Mon Jan 04, 2021 7:41 pm Art in any form influences us and that influence can seep through in a hundred different ways.

This was a beautiful tribute. It's clear he had an incredible impact on you - and I'm sure the same is true for many others. Thank you for sharing with us what Alexi's music means to you - as you said above, art impacts us in a myriad of ways, so I think this was the perfect spot for you to post this. <3

Medieval black metal. It’s a misnomer, misused and misunderstood throughout the black metal community. What it should mean is black metal that utilizes not only the themes and atmospheres from the medieval period by the music itself as well. It should be translating the music, literature, and art of a thousand years ago into a form that is new and fresh and vibrant, despite so much content likely created around the Black Plague. Sadly, that’s not really what it is. At least not that I’ve seen. The metal community is vast and there are even corners that I have yet to explore. Medieval black metal does involve some themes, both religious and secular, from the period but often that’s not what makes an album or a band “medieval black metal”. A dark theme, a somewhat lo-fi quality, and a reverb turned up to eleven is really all it takes. Now all of this not to say some of the work with the medieval black metal label is inherently bad or boring or poorly conceived. Case in point: Dol Guldur, Summoning’s third full length album. Released by Napalm Records in January 1997, Dol Guldur stands as Summoning’s most commercially successful album. Once you listen to it a few times, it’s easy to see why. Full disclosure here, Dol Guldur is my favorite album by Summoning, in fact it’s one of my top ten albums of all time. I will “try” to be objective but be warned I am more than likely going to gush over this beast.

Dol Guldur sets a precedent for Summoning, conceptually and performatively: eight tracks, between eight and twelve minutes long, with a beautiful synth piece set at the beginning. They would follow this formula almost exactly until the most recent “With Doom We Come”. In the halcyon days of 1997, we had no idea who Peter Jackson was, we knew nothing of motion capture, and the idea of filming three epic length movies at once was not even a day dream of the craziest conspiracy theorist, in 1997 we were give Dol Guldur, an album of raw and angry black metal often juxtaposed again hauntingly beautiful synth pieces. Point and counterpoint. While Dol Guldur is raw and the production is what it began in the later years of the band’s discography (I challenge you to find a black metal album with top notch production in the mid-90s, go on I dare you), the production itself lends to the overall atmosphere, it adds a layer of storytelling, of authenticity, of immersion. Am I reaching? Maybe a little, there are times, especially on Kôr, where the production and the musical intention of the song clash. The song in question is about Eldamar and thus tried to be light, mysterious, and ethereal but the production added a layer of grime and rawness that didn’t make the song as effective as it could, and should, have been. However, that same production is on full display on Nightshade Forest, a song about… well Mirkwood, and the grime, rawness, and uneasiness add a layer to the experience. It’s not just about the music, it’s the feeling that music creates and how it stays with you. Lo-fi production in that moment was utterly perfect, creating one of the best songs you will ever hear in my not humble whatsoever opinion. This is also the first album in which Tolkien himself is credited with lyrics. In fact I’d say a good 75% of them are pulled directly from Lord of the Rings and adapted and mixed with some other very epic fantasy lyrics to become fully realized songs in the black metal sense (sadly there is no “tra-la-la-lally” anywhere present). Overall the repetitive riffs, motifs, and themes throughout the album gives it a very epic poetry feel. Tolkien would have no doubt hated it, as he would hate 99% of everything we do here, but I think he would have to admit that Summoning knows how to create a truly unique interpretation of his work and present it in a way that, while it would be noxious and seizure inducing to the professor, has a feel of the ancient sagas and Homeric poems.

Dol Guldur is a gem, one that gets overlooked as time goes on, as music becomes more and more processed and mechanical (ironic given that more than half of the album itself is synth of programmed instruments). Dol Guldur is, in my opinion, the first album that can be truly called “Tolkien Metal”. Everything else created from then to now is an imitation, a reaction, or a facsimile of it. This is the prize, this is the infinity stone, this is the One Ring.

I'm going to interrupt the irregularly scheduled music analysis to bring about something I've noticed in the last few days about Spotify and its recommendation algorithm. For the last few days I've been trying to curate a couple of playlists for some of my characters here on the Plaza: Harnril and the Ryu Twins.

Harnril's playlist consists of Middle-Eastern influences from black metal bands like Melechesh and From the Vastlands and dark ambient soundscapes from Iranian artists (there is a huge underground scene in Tehran that I hope to get to talk about at some point but that neither here nor there) like Saint Abdullah, Alphaxone, and Xerxes the Dark. When I was about a third of the way through creating the playlist I took a look at Spotify's suggestions just to see what sort of music I could use to accompany what I'd already created. I was disappointed, but not shocked, to see all the suggestions were Western European metal bands and Nordic folk music. There is, of course, nothing wrong with those kind of bands and that kind of music. I am a pagan and Nordic folk music like Wardruna, Nytt Land, Danheim, and Forndom are very close to me. However, what on Sauron's black earth were they doing in a recommendation list with nothing but Middle-Eastern music? I decided to run an experiment. How many duduk tracks (a fantastic Armenian folk instrument everyone should be familiar with) would I need to add to the playlist before A) other duduk tracks were suggested and B) there were no more Western European suggestions. The answer to both questions was 8. 8 straight duduk tracks from 8 different albums and 8 different artists. Why did I need to add that many to erase the whiteness trying to encroach on Middle-Eastern culture?

Something very similar happened with the Ryu Twins. The characters are inspired by Korean culture so I wanted as much of that music in their playlist to represent who they were. Sadly, there isn't a lot of Korean black metal out there. In fact, there's not a lot of "Far East" black metal in the world. Zuriaake, Black Kirin, and Deep Mountains are the biggest names in that area. So I added two or three tracks from each of them, breaking my rule of "one artist per playlist until the playlist takes off". One of the biggest, and my favorite, Chinese black metal bands, Holyarrow (or 御矢 more accurately), isn't on Spotify and none of the music related to them is there either which is a major blow to the scene. Now I don't know why that is so I won't be condemning or congratulating, all I know about the situation is that it sucks. I added several Korean, Japanese, and Chinese folk tracks to the list to fill out the spaces and make sure it's not all just black metal. I only did that much because Spotify is terrible about having curated lists of folk music of any substantial length from this area of the world. So when I had about 12 tracks, I looked at the suggestions. What do you think I found waiting for me? Nordic folk and Western European black metal bands. Insert *pretends to be shocked GIF*. I finished the list on my own, using resources like Metal Archives and List.fm to find metal, folk, and ambient tracks to fill out the rest of the playlist. I didn't have the energy to experiment with playlist to see how long it would take to fix the recommendations. I shouldn't fredegar have to.

Non western music is ignored, suppressed, and erased by the likes of Spotify and it's creators. Sure, it will allow them on there, but there is no way in Hell it's going to promote or suggest them. I found the music I did because I knew certain bands and certain projects existed because I've spend years combing through music all over the world to find new styles, new artists, and new musical innovation. If I didn't have that background, I would have never had an idea where to begin. Layman music fans aren't going to know who From the Vastlands is, they aren't going to be fans of Djivan Gasparyan or Chthonic or Reza Solatipour. How are we going to learn and grown and expand as a species if we suppress so much of who we are? It's been awhile since I read it and I don't have the book in front of me for quotes, but "Algorithms of Oppression" goes into detail about how technology is being used to spread whiteness and normalize cultural appropriation. Tech is limited by the closemindedness of its creators. Unless we start saying "NO MORE" to stuff like this, it will never get any better.

I have been meaning to read Algorithms of Oppression for a while now, and it's been bumped up on my list after reading this thoughtful post. Seriously, good for you for (a) embracing such a wide variety of music that you can even see these kinds of problems and (b) thinking critically about the tech tools and systems that many of us use and participate in every day. Thank you for sharing this here!

@Marceline It's a great resource on just how broken our technology can get if we don't step up and say "this shire needs to change, now" I hope you're able to find it and it is of good use!

I may found some music very eeeeehhhhh, but I do pride myself on being able to find something good in all sorts of music and discovering new (to me) kinds of music always makes me feel like my world is expanding (you know, from the safety of Bjornheim).