Tag: 2017

Vikingbard Update

Some good news for a change! Work on the next album is going ahead smoothly so far. All the drum-tracks are finished, and now it’s a matter of getting the bass recorded. I decided to cut the outro and tack it onto the end of the last song. I still need a good intro, as well as a title, cover art, and a guest vocalist: i can’t “fake it in studio”, it has to be a real woman.

The Road to Nordlandsaga

Vikingbard is getting back into the swing of recording music, this time tackling the impossibly huge task of a three-part concept album, based on an original story set in the Viking Age. As with Return to Valhalla, it will be viking metal, but aiming for even bigger heights than before: more dual-guitar melodies, faster songs, more usage of the epic “strings” sounds from the keyboard, more musicianship, and guest vocalists. So far, four songs are in the works with anywhere between eight and ten planned for the final release.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that I’m hitting snag after snag, both physical and mental, on the road to writing and finishing work on this album. My old laptop lasted four years before it died a death from which it never recovered, and I’ve had this one for three years. My music projects are too complex to be saved on a tiny 16 gigabyte flash-drive. Now that I’m feeling better, I’m expected to be looking for work as a priority, and music is taking a back-seat. I can’t find a collaborator for the guest vocalist. I have no album art, and no way of making something (being worse at painting or drawing than I am at drumming, as “Stoner Pilgrimage” revealed), and no way of paying someone to make album art. I don’t even have an album title: Nordlandsaga is the running title, but that’s too close to Bathory’s Nordland to be used for the final name.

And then there’s the psychological aspect. When I first wrote the outline for Nordlandsaga, I was in college in 2010. I had bought into the lie that there was a difference between “moderate feminists” and “radical feminists”, and believed that, by working together, men and women could achieve greatness. My best friend at the time was a woman. I was also a poor musician in both musicianship and lacked the ability to write lyrics. The story of the album reflects a lot of that mentality that I had in 2010.

Fast-forward to the present day. I have some competence in musicianship and can definitely write lyrics. However, my atmosphere has changed. Many of the people I considered “friends” are no longer part of my life. Women have become antagonists in my life, and while I’m still technically “connected” with the person in question, we rarely speak and that only online. While the main element of the story of the album overall is still there and as strong as ever, the idea of men and women working together to achieve greatness is laughable. Both because of the true nature of feminism and in that I’m unable to find a collaborator for the guest vocals. However, that is an important part of the story of the album. I don’t know if I can recapture the same spirit that I had when I first planned out this concept album trilogy over seven years ago. I will most certainly try, as I am determined to release new music no later than the end of December 2017.

@jewishpolitics, you like the Marvel movies, but you also like Gal Gadot. let me ask you something that is a little too big for the ask-box.

okay, so it seems that, no matter what the DC films do, they get almost universally panned. i mean, i actually liked the Suicide Squad movie, but Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman were a mess. but in general, a lot of people seem to hate all of their films (yes, there was a big fan reaction in favor of Batman v. Superman, but overall it seemed to not be received well with the critics).

this year, we’re going forward with the Wonder Woman movie. now, giving it the benefit of the doubt and hoping that it won’t be objectively bad (like Tank Girl, Supergirl, Electra and Catwoman were), i feel that there’s going to be a great conundrum about this movie. on the one hand, the critics will most likely hate it because it’s not the jokey, campy, bright MCU. on the other hand, they will be tripping over themselves to say something positive about it, since it’s Wonder Woman’s first movie and they don’t want to appear “sexist” (you know, like with the disaster that was the Ghostbusters remake)

so here is my question to you: do you think that the Wonder Woman movie will be the first DCCU movie to be well-received, or do you think there will be confusion over whether to accept it or not, based on the fact that it’s not a Marvel movie, and a lot of fans and critics are spoiled on the tone of superhero movies of the MCU?