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[miko2]

Today's Song: House of Heroes by Battlelore

Battlelore is my favorite Tolkien metal band. You might think that there is only one, but a few other bands have made all-Tolkien inspired cds. The difference where Battlelore is concerned is that this is all they do, and they've now released four full-length cds of music about Middle-Earth.

House of Heroes is the first song on their new cd Evernight and the first single. It's also one of the best songs they've done so far -- they just keep getting better and better. In some ways they're actually a pretty traditional band -- theirs is the classic "beauty & beast" twin vocal attack that so many of the early goth metal bands employed, welded to music and lyrics that are more like viking metal -- but then again, nobody else really mixes goth metal and viking metal quite like this, and these days Battlelore is one of the best at either genre.

What I like about this song is just the melody itself, the soaring music which really does sound like it belongs as a part of an epic fantasy story. I believe the song itself is about Aragorn visiting the tomb of the dead to ask for their help in the coming battle:

The man and the ghost, will meet again,
In the night when it snows, never quiet, never cold

Hear their calling, lost lords to cast the ride, white spears in their hands, pointing towards the sky

The ancient echoes, from the weilded jaws, the bones and the scales, the forgotten lore

The calm of the night, lighting the flame
In the night when they haunt, the curtain shall fall

Heroes and fools, all together, all the same, statues of the restless
Gallery of the drowned and the pale

The man and the ghost, will meet again, on the marshes of the old, though silent when it snows

You can hear this song in the video above, or hear just the music at their myspace page You can hear a clip at their web site too.



Yesterday's song: Fall On Me by R.E.M. (I had to backdate the entry on this one, I was too busy yesterday cooking and working on my story for writer's night, and I wrote that long post about City of Heroes that I'd been wanting to write for a couple of days...)