II.
Kromrod the Fierce wiped the blood from his massive broadsword. The chill fog of the Northern Wastes cleared the fetid dungeon air from his senses. He adjusted his loin cloth and stepped down the stony embankment.
There was a dwelling ahead – a crude yurt made of skins and hempen rope. A woman peered out of the doorway at the swarthy barbarian. Her eyes were as dark as her hair and her breasts as ample as a king’s banquet. The smell of sorcery and some sort of roasted meat was about her.
“Would you…like to…listen to some records…and warm yourself by my fire?” She asked in a slithering tone.
Kromrod grunted a reply, and pushed his way into the smokey darkness of the hut.
The woman presented the barbarian with a curved clay pipe and lit the bowl with a wave of her fingers.
“What is it you seek, barbarian?” she asked, crawling over to a box of crow skulls and LPs.
“I seek a standard.” Kromrod said, exhaling blue smoke from the hash pipe, “Two snakes, coming together, facing each other…but they’re like, one…” He drew heavily on the pipe again. “Like on a shield, or a banner, or the side of a van.”
“Or a bass drum head?” The woman whispered, putting the needle on the record and ripping off her flimsy silken kimono and throwing herself at Kromrod’s heavily muscular form…
Sometimes when I’m listening to the new Gates of Slumber record, I feel like I’m watching an epic sword and sorcery film play out in my mind. Or an especially spirited round of D&D back in the day.
The cover of the power trio’s fourth epic-length album, Hymns of Blood and Thunder, features an obsidian-armored warrior, dealing the death stroke to some wretched goblinoids, while a scantily-clad sorceress babe looks on. Oh yeah, and there are some lightning bolts and crows too. (more…)
A famous occurrence found its way into Woody Allen’s film 
. The director has just explained all the artistic allusion and metaphor in his latest work, pouring over details and really attempting to make an artistic statement. Then comes time for the audience Q&A session. First question: when are you going to be funny again? I had this thought while listening to Porcupine Tree’s latest, 
.
and 
. The band started to get broader attention with their In Absentia CD, but for the past few albums, that has been the dominant descriptor of Porcupine Tree music. Indeed, when people describe the band, they call on 
, 
, 
and will surely add 
Robbie Robertson coined a phrase in an interview once, and it stuck with me. He said that even though he’d written many types of songs, the ones that always got to him and stayed with him were, if I recall correctly, “skin creepers.”