THE DOOM THAT CAME TO BEDROCK

I like all types of music today, but when I was young, I was deep into heavy metal. I played guitar, joined a band, got hooked on Iron Maiden, Ozzy and Megadeth. One of the songs that resonated with me most when I first found heavy metal music (which would have been sometime around 7th or 8th grade--in the vicinity of 1989 or 1990), was the song Black Sabbath. It was instant love. I adored the way it built atmosphere, the haunting tritones (which at the time, I didn't understand), and that crushing riff midway through. It was really that more uptempo riff that got me the most. It is a riff I think all guitar players should learn because it helps build rhythm and groove. Tony Iommi is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, riff makers in music, and that one to me is definitive. After I heard that, I wasn't the same musically ever again. It helped pave the way for a future interest in something called doom metal. 

Because I played guitar in a heavy metal band, and because we wanted to write as many of our own songs as possible, I tried not to be too narrow about the metal music I listened to. Metal can be tribal, and it isn't unheard of for fans to limit themselves, especially back then, to a particular niche within the genre (for example I had friends who only listened to Death Metal or only listened to Thrash Metal). But my love of metal was shaped by a lot of different bands, and chief among them, and in direct competition with Black Sabbath for me, was Iron Maiden. They were melodic, uptempo and in many ways quite opposite of the thrash and death that followed (I remember many of my bandmates finding them 'too light' for instance). But I did favor bands with a theatrical streak: Iron Maiden, Queen, King Diamond, etc. 

Back then, it was pre-internet and information about bands was not always consistent or widely available. You often had to pick albums based on the cover alone. Which was another reason not to narrow your taste too much because if you picked something, and it wasn't the genre or subgenre you thought it was, you were stuck with it. This is how I learned to love the Lizzy Borden Album: Visual Lies for example (which turned out to be a good thing because I learned a lot listening to it). And this process is how I found an album called Beyond the Crimson Horizon, by Solitude Aeturnus. At the time, I was interested inmysticism and still very religious. While I listened to a lot of death metal and even occasional black metal, because of my upbringing, some of the content was a little uncomfortable for me. I would still listen, but I was hoping to find bands who were more interested in the things I was interested in. The cover and the song titles, seemed a little more in line with my way of thinking. 

 

I bought Beyond the Crimson Horizon and listened when I got home. I was a very focused music listener. I remember the first track, Seeds of the Desolate, struck me in a similar way to that original Black Sabbath song. The vocals were clean and grand, but still had an edge to them, the guitar was astounding, and the lyrics seemed almost biblical. I didn't understand that this album belonged to a genre of music called Doom Metal (which traces its lineage directly to Black Sabbath) but I knew I wanted to find more of this band's music and more bands like them. Unfortunately for me at the time, they only had one other album, Into the Depths of Sorrow.

Over the next several weeks I looked for bands mentioned in the album sleeve. Unfortunately I no longer have that sleeve, but I believe this led me pretty directly to Count Raven, Saint Vitus, and Cathedral (though it is possible I simply discovered Cathedral in a way similar to how I discovered Beyond the Crimson Horizon). When I showed the album to my singer, he was equally excited by it and told me it reminded him of a band called Candlemass. Within a few minutes he put in a Candlemass tape called Tales of Creation and I was equally blown away. The first song he played was At the Edge of Heaven. Again, we didn't have the vocabulary yet to call it Doom (though this was a term at the time, we just didn't know about it), but the operatic vocals and the slow, heavy riffs, was just everything we wanted in music at the time. With Candlemass there seemed to be a classical influence as well, which appealed to me because I was learning a lot of Bach at that time. 

 

Slowly we came to know this was a whole genre of music, and all these bands were part of it. I picked up all the bands I could that were mentioned in the sleeves. Sometimes it was impossible to find them, or you would have to order them special. But I did manage to obtain Saint Vitus (who I quite liked) and Count Raven (who I was less enthusiastic about as the singer sounded too identical to Ozzy Osbourne). I also discovered Cathedral, through their first album, Forest of Equilibrium. 

 

Cathedral was a unique band, particularly on that debut album (they would change their style in later records). They were slow. Really, truly slow. To this day I haven't heard anyone play as slow as cathedral without boring me. But Cathedral wasn't boring. There was a lot more going on with the guitar than it sounded like (something I painfully discovered when I attempted to learn to play their music). And they used a lot of interesting harmonies. This album had a very big influence on how I played. I never played as slow as they did, but the way I used power chords, and the types of power chords I played, started to resemble Cathedral. 

My drummer's sister introduced us to My Dying Bride with their album As the Flower Withers. The song Sear Me had me, the singer and the drummer in awe. Up to that point, power chords had kind of taken over in metal (in Doom Metal too), and to us it seemed like that would just escalate, as things got heavier, and heavier, but a bit like the British New Wave, bands like My Dying Bride showed me that there were other ways for genres to grow. They still used power chords, but in many ways, at least on key parts of that album, they took a backseat to melodic riffs, and counter point. And they had a violin (which not something we expected at that time). Make no mistake, this was still a very heavy album: it had death growls, rolling power chords and aggressive drums, but these were spread among a lot of other things. 

 

Paradise Lost was even more of a surprise when I first heard them. My drummer introduced me to their album Gothic. They were almost rock, and had a real interesting sound, including a female backup singer. They were not afraid to go light, even a bit poppy while still retaining a sound that would bristle against gentle ears. Genres are much more codified now, but at the time, I heard them labeled death rock, but we just called them doom. Paradise Lost was for me, again a lesson in growing a genre. 

  

Keep in mind a lot of these albums were released around the same time. Gothic came out in '91, Beyond the Crimson Horizon came out in '92, etc. I am not trying to paint the chronology of their release but talk about the order in which I discovered them myself. It also leaves out important bands I was less aware of until later. For example, while I had heard of the band Trouble, who had a big influence on Solitude Aeturnus (and by some accounts Metallica as well), I wasn't able to get any of their albums till much, much later. 

The reason I bring all this up on the blog, is I've become very aware of how much this music has influenced my GM prep and game design. Also my experience of discovering the genre has influenced how I approach developing lines and growing concepts. It wasn't just Doom Metal of Course. Lots of metal and other music have big influence on me. There are a number of things in Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate influenced by Dio for example. And the starlit inkstone adventure for Strange Tales was inspired by his line "Don't write in starlight because the words may come out real". 

I never listen to music when I write. I think that is a habit that leads to errors (at least for me). But I always listen to music before I write. And that often gets me into the right frame of mind for whatever I am working on. 

Music is always a big influence, and it isn't just music from heavier genres. When we made Sertorious I was influenced by all kinds of music, including pop. For me what is important with music is it moves me emotionally and inspires further ideas.