Tales of Darkness and Light Chapter II

I'm convinced that this band has to be Quebec's best-kept metal secret. In my thirteen years' worth of listening to metal it took a fellow from Greece to alert me to this band, at a time when I was looking for Québecois bands to play on my radio show. I was already quite a fan of Manilla Road and thought I knew a lot about Canadian metal, so when this helenite told me that his favourite band was called Thunder Rider, from Montreal and released a single album of "epic true metal" in the late 1980s, I was slightly bemused. I was able to track down that 1989 debut, and while it certainly impressed me with its occasionally dark sound, unusual (for the time) medieval flourishes and Mark Shelton-like vocals, the album was marred by an uninspiring production and woeful attempts at more "rocking" songs that simply seemed flaccid and limp compared to the band's epic fare. That's another review that I don't think I have the enthusiasm to write. In any case, I, and I'm sure most of the band's dozen or so (!) fans could certainly fe forgiven for thinking the band long-since buried and definitely very forgotten. So, imagine my surprise when I heard from a friend in 2005 or so that Thunder Rider had a new album out!

What does one think of when he hears the moniker "Thunder Rider"? Something primal, huge, possibly cliché and definitely metal. If he's a fan of the works of Robert E. Howard, he might even think of a very little-known (maybe as little-known as the band!) story involving native Americans and supernatural elements. And you know, this band, at their best, reminds me of Howard's writing in a lot of ways, if I may be permitted to make an analogy across the arts. Thunder Rider's music takes the idea of epic metal (in the original, 1980s context, that is, not the flowery Rhapsody-like interpretation of the concept) to just about the furthest extreme possible without being completely excessive. Everything on this second album, much moreso than on its 1989 predecessor, seems specifically calculated to fill the steely heart with feelings of glory and heroism and pride. I hate to use this notion in a review, but this release walks a very, very thin tightrope between seriously stirring and majestic music and pure cheese. Now I feel bad for writing this last sentence, because I take metal pretty seriously, and I also take Robert E. Howard's writing quite seriously .. but in the latter's case, I acknowledge that he could be excessive: typecast to a woeful degree at times, his plots dependent on the flimsiest of coincidences and his characters either cut from identical moulds or as thinly portrayed as rice-paper. But, what are you more likely to remember about "The Phoenix on the Sword"? Is it going to be the downright laughable idea that the Stygian magician just happens to be ordered by his master to go to the very house where his lost ring of power is kept by a fat, oblivious merchant .. or will it be the poignant opening chapter that discusses the anguishes of kingship for a man who tries to do right to his people, or the glorious bloodbath depicted at the story's climax with Conan standing tall, dripping with blood from multiple wounds while twenty of his enemies lie gutted all around him? If the humorous reliance on bizarre twists of fate, stereotyped characters and so on seriously get in the way of your enjoyment of the author's works, you have the wrong approach and Howard will probably never be for you. It's a safe bet that you won't really enjoy this album, either.

It seems as though Thunder Rider were fully aware of the criticisms that were leveled against their first album (well, I haven't actually read or heard any as such, but I assume many people must have thought about it as I did) and felt that perhaps these critics were correct. They took a long, long time to purge all the crap from their formula, but did they ever succeed! By making this statement, I'm not claiming that this is a real paragon of heavy metal (although perhaps in an ideological sense, it is), as my score will show, rather that this is the album that Thunder Rider probably always wanted to make, even back in 1989, and now, circumstances seem to have come together to make this actually happen in the 21st century. In a way it is unfortunate, since I could see this being hailed among the more epic works of bands like Manilla Road or Virgin Steele had it been released in the late 80s or even early 90s (incidentally, when Virgin Steele dropped a lot of the glam swill from their music), but I don't think Thunder Rider will make much of a splash outside of a very tight-knit circle today. Still, the few of us who discover this and appreciate this sort of grandiose music will find much to enjoy here.

The band definitely increased their penchant for atmospheric effects, too. This was one thing I really appreciated about the debut as I'd never heard anyone use keys quite like this in the 80s, and their predelection for medieval-styled melodies, which was just a hint back then, is very prevalent now. The production is a lot heavier (though still sounds almost like it could have been recorded over fifteen years ago), the vocals are exactly and eerily the same as they were at their best moments on "Chapter I" and there is an even heavier use of mood-setting soundscapes this time around, which reminds me of Bathory in their viking metal days. The intros to "Dark Castle" and "New Born" are actually kind of unsettling! Lyrically, this band reminds me of a lot of traditional doom metal in that it sings sincerely about the occult and evil ways, only instead of glorifying them it accentuates their depravity and wrongness. Thunder Rider do seem to revel in the dark side though, as much as Howard obviously enjoyed writing about war and bloody conflict though acknowledging its terrible injustice. There's definitely more than a hint of glee to some of these lyrics, and they also highlight that working as an agent of "The Light" may also have its more morbid connotations.

Most of these songs are actually quite short and thus do not overstay their welcome, despite the fact that chorus lines and harmonies occasionally sound very similar and after a time you can sort of envision exactly where they're going to go with their big, stolidly minor-keyed melodies and march-like rhythms. The longest track, "Day of the Damned", although containing a chorus that's very similar to opener "Thy Kingdom Come", is definitely one of the absolute highlights on the album as it is replete with mood changes, a fantastic solo, mellow sections with neat little piano flourishes and extremely passionate singing. It's remarkable how much vocalist John Blackwing sounds like Manilla Road's Mark Shelton, though with a slightly deeper and less nasal tone to his voice. He's quite the multi-instrumentalist, too, handling guitar, keyboard and even the occasional flute part.

This album is so huge and so full of pomp that I think the band felt compelled to show that they in fact had a sense of humour as striking as the grand music they set out to make. There's a hidden track at the end that features some guy plonking away on an acoustic guitar and singing in a little pitch-shifted voice about doughnuts and spaghetti or something. The thing is so incongruous that I bust out laughing as soon as it comes on and usually have to turn it off as it totally kills the atmosphere of the previous tracks. Still, I guess after such a heart-poundingly testosterone-infused musical journey they had to give themselves, if not the rest of us, a respite of sorts and I won't fault them for including this obvious bit of tomfoolery.

You should know by now whether this will be of any interest to you. If you enjoy Manilla Road, Battleroar, Adramelch, Doomsword, Dark Quarterer or even Virgin Steele but want something that concentrates solely on a very specific type of melody and atmosphere this should be right up your alley. The flagrant bulk and ostentation of the whole project may put some people off, but I'd take this over almost any 1980s sword and sorcery movie, without a second thought.