Ennio Morricone - Red Sonja

Yet another long-out-of-print soundtrack that has been repackaged several times in packages of dubious quality and legality, Ennio Morricone's Red Sonja is a haunting piece of majestic oddness.  Combining the epic bombast required for the material with his usual penchant for strange sounds, nonsense vocals, and unusual instrumentation, Morricone deftly mixes with hordes of wind instruments with 80's synth pads, spooky choirs with thunderous junkyard timpani.  I'm not positive which version we have here, and we are bereft of song titles, but it hardly matters;  let the music entrance you, and pay no heed to the blade at your throat. 

I know my future. You have none.

Arkham Witch - On Crom's Mountain

At last, a new release from Arkham Witch!  I'm breaking my own no-new-releases rule once again here due to my excitement over this album.  Straddling the line between the old-school Lovecraftian doom of Simon Iff's other project Lamp of Thoth and the NWOBHM-informed approach of like-minded bands such as Christian Mistress, On Crom's Mountain isn't deep or particularly dark heavy metal.   Instead, it's a fairly upbeat, joyous drunken celebration of crusty rock n' roll, ragged and righteous.  Of course, there's the requisite Lovecraft/Howard lyrical leanings, along with some witch and viking-related material, and some more cryptic sentiments.  It's still gestating in my ears, as I've only listened to it a scant handful of times, but even now I must go crack another beer and loosen up the old neck muscles - It's tough to headbang and type at the same time.

Through Arkham madness, and lunacy

In gibbous frenzy - we are free!

Jag Panzer - Tyrants

This classic first EP from Jag Panzer contains a Nam-as-apocalypse anthem, two songs about the crushing power of heavy metal, a song about Conan battling iron statues come to hideous life, and another sword-and-sorcery romp about besieging a citadel.  The epic "When Metal Melts the Ice" is, without a doubt, one of the Most Metal Songs of All Time.  Musically, Jag Panzer would evolve into slick power metal, but this first release is raw, thrashy, and wildly over-the-top no-modifier metal from a time before sub-genres walked the earth.

I'm a vicious tiger Roaming across the land

Briton Rites - For Mircala

 

Greetings, dearies!  I have once again returned to the Swamp, and am back among you.  Today I have for you one of the great unheard doom albums of the last year, the debut album from Georgia's hirsute Briton Rites. Effortlessly evoking the dark history of doom metal without sounding artificially retro or atavistic, For Mircala is a loose concept album centered around vampirism and Lovecraftian dimensional bleedthrough.  I have a particular weakness for metal bands with literate and diverse sources, and these chaps certainly deliver on that front: the title cut is based on a pre-Dracula vampire novel; "The Right Hand of Doom" is grounded in a Robert E. Howard short story starring his demon-hunting Puritan, Solomon Kane; several other are grounded in Hammer Horror flicks and pulpy supernatural melodrama.  Musically, it owes a heavy debt to the doomier side of NWOBHM, like Witchfinder General of Pagan Altar, with killer vocals from Phil Swanson (of such Swamp favorites as Hour of 13, Seamount, and Atlantean Kodex) and guitars by Howie Bentley of legendary Georgia metal band Cauldron Born.  More importantly, every song is memorable, catchy, and tough - no pretty stuff here, just doom and blood and haze.

The doom evoked by the words he spoke, as the hand began to crawl

Equimanthorn - Nindinugga Nimshimshargal Enlillara

I've a nekronfession to kultivate, myswamptendersapplinga, imma try and maintainamagate some repromobation on the alchomuggahhohl: decanting the indefatigable - buttsinceHallowmoween yr hummblehost experimence ein liifamachange: sacred riitumal uv iinebrNATION slowly-liike serpenmetiine arounden that cerebellum. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Nindinugga Nimshimshargal Enlillara wgah'nagl fhtagn n'shit.
The Cold Mystic Winds Of Nanakanisurra (Dwelling South In The Crimson Desert: Roba El Khaliyeh)

Icarus - Marvel World of Icarus

It's official: the Swamp computing machine, always stubborn and ornery, has croaked its last ululation. Whilst I search for a replacement, have some crap! Icarus was a short lived prog group who chanced upon the brilliant idea of recording an album of odes to comic book heroes and (supposedly) brought this proposition to Marvel Comics. Depending on which version of the story you want to believe, either Marvel at first supported them and then quickly sqaushed the record when they heard how unlistenably awful it was, or had no knowledge all along and killed it for copyright reasons. Either way, this album was never released and Icarus vanished immediately thereafter. For prog rock, the music itself is extremely straightforward and uncerebral - each song is named after a specific character and proceeds to list his attributes and quirks and then the album moves on to the next song. Alarmingly, there is a persistent flute high in the mix that tootles away throughout the entire record without pause, making it extremely difficult to slog through. Lest you think this thematically inappropriate for the Swamp, there is a song about Conan as well.
Excelsior!

Ironsword - Overlords of Chaos

This will be last transmission until next week, horrid ones, so let's make it good one, shall we? I was saving this for a special occasion, but it seems the time has come. Portuguese barbarians Ironsword play traditionalist heavy metal based on the writings of Robert E. Howard, particularly that sweet spot where his Conan tales overlapped with the Cthulhu Mythos. This album gallops along at a brisk pace broken by the occasional doom trance, with gruff shouting instead of singing and ham-fisted gusto in place of subtlety. Obviously a product of the long metal tradition without sounding retro or forced, this album is the perfect soundtrack for the coming ice age.
Forward!