Legends of Valor

Lost in time – albums that were forgotten in the shuffle of time for one reason or another. Sometimes bands are far too late for their respective style and are dead on arrival while others are a little too early and don’t catch the tailwind that they needed to succeed. In the case of Skullview’s 1998 debut, Legends of Valor, it’s a little bit of both.

Skullview were fighting an uphill battle from their very inception. They play a style of epic heavy metal that leans heavily towards the more aggressive side of US power metal with similarities to bands like Tyrant, Manowar, and Cirith Ungol. The late 90s were an absolutely awful time to play in this style. It was the genre’s lowest point – there was almost no interest for this type of metal at the time and Skullview found themselves both a decade too late for the peak of classic metal and a decade too early for the retro-revival.

One look at this album’s cover is all you need to understand what you’re in store for with Legends of Valor. The grimdark, Frank Frazetta like artwork is a perfect portrayal of the dark and foreboding nature of this album. If bands like Eternal Champion and Heavy Load represent the brighter, uplifting side of epic metal then Skullview represents the evil, festering underbelly of the genre. “The Night of Metal Kill”, the album’s ambitious, eight minute opener, sets the tone perfectly for this excursion into the depths of epic metal.

What hits you immediately about the opener is the crushing, doom metal inspired riffs with one of the loudest, most skull-splitting bass guitars around. The monstrous bass is complimented by deep and organic drums, which are further emphasized in the mix. Tying it all together is frontman Mike “Earthquake” Quimby Lewis. With his aggressive vocal lines, high energy, and frequent use of falsetto, he certainly lives up to the nickname. At times he can overdo the highs, but overall he’s a charismatic vocalist who fits in perfectly with Skullview’s aggressive brand of epic metal.

The rest of the album varies in pace slightly compared to the opener, but generally sticks to the effective formula, leaving very little room for reprieve from the pounding metal madness. The chunky and mid-paced riffs, featuring frequent use of tremolo picking, are a departure from USPM norms. It’s a difficult comparison to make, but with its tremendous emphasis on low end and rhythm as well as its frequent use of tremolo picking, Legends of Valor reminds me of death metal legends Bolt Thrower in a USPM mold. It’s a refreshingly dark and aggressive take on epic metal that few have really attempted.

Debuting in 1998, Skullview somehow managed to simultaneously be both too late and too early for their time. Legends of Valor is a markedly unique and high quality album that got thrown to the wayside partly due to this unfortunate fact. Gloriously dark and epic, this album deserves to be celebrated rather than forgotten.

Album Rating: 90/100

Favorite Track: Watching Below from My Moonlight Throne

Originally written for RideIntoGlory.com

Forgotten hymns and ancient rhymes,
Standing proudly for all time.
Time-worn tales of hidden lore,
METAL to the very core!

My poor attempts to laud the efforts of the mighty Skullview aside, their 1998 debut effort Legends of Valor is certainly a monolith of an album, nearly epochal in status and something of a standard by which to judge modern epic/heavy metal. Alongside Virgin Steele and Cauldron Born, they helped save the mid-to-late 90s from complete and utter mediocrity, providing a few choice morsels to the epic/USPM-starved masses. Drawing influence from proven masters like Manilla Road, Tyrant (US), and Cirith Ungol, proving that one still can play relevant, unique, and utterly competent heavy metal in 1998. In fact, it's not too much of a stretch to say that Skullview more or less helped pioneer the emergence of epic heavy/doom metal in the last decade and a half or so; while they may not have been directly responsible for the wave of bands that followed, they certainly were one of the first to make their presence known. Bands like The Gates of Slumber and Twisted Tower Dire wouldn't make a mark on the scene for a few years to come, showing at least that Skullview were bold enough to delve into a subgenre that had been virtually dead for seven or eight years.

Of course, that subgenre would have remained dead if Legends of Valor hadn't been as competent a release as it is. The thing that stands out most immediately is the guitar tone. It's thick, ancient, and evil as fuck - probably one of the heaviest guitar tones I've ever heard on a traditional metal album. Rather than using programmed drums, a silky smooth gloss over everything, and processed vocals, Skullview manage to use the fact that they're playing in 1998 to their advantage. While the production may not be as rough as some of the albums out of the 80s, it's certainly tough and organic, something I can't say for very many heavy/power metal albums post-1992 or so. The drums are deep, strong and manly, the bass is audible but not overpowering; and of course as I've already mentioned the guitar tone is out of this world. Even greats like Omen or Manilla Road only wish they could've gotten such a guitar tone on one of their albums. I daresay this is one of the best productions I've ever heard on a metal album, and I don't say that lightly.

Of course, guitars alone don't qualify an album as a masterpiece, even with the monster tone found here - the vocals are equally, if not more, important. Thankfully, Mike "Earthquake" Quimby Lewis is more than competent; he's got a hell of a lot of charisma and character, and an absurdly good range. Past that, though, it becomes difficult to provide a point of reference for the sound of his voice; he doesn't really sound like anyone else I've ever heard. The closest comparison I can make is to combine Tim Baker of Cirith Ungol with a higher register shrieker, like Petros Leptos of Solitary Sabred, or maybe Bob Mitchell on Attacker's debut album. None of those comparisons really do Lewis justice; his maniacal, over-the-top, rough and arcane performance is just something like no other. On other albums it can get tiring, but here it just adds to the atmosphere, which is as strange, obscure, and arcane as Lewis's vocal performance. His voice doesn't really work too well with more straightforward songwriting (as evidenced in some songs on later albums), but here it really shines through beautifully.

The songwriting here is equally difficult to categorize, but despite changes in tempo and level of aggression, it tends to stick to a pretty consistent formula. Thick, dark, arcane, often brooding riffs build up against Lewis's unique delivery, changing occasionally but not often enough to really call the structures predominantly progressive. There are subtle differences, though, as songs like "Watching Below From My Moonlight Throne" are certainly more aggressive and more chaotic than songs like "Gleam of the Skull Part I", which has a mysterious, slightly more PM aesthetic. It's hard to pick out particular highlights here, as the whole album is pretty much untouchable, but "The Night of Metalkill" definitely sticks out with its utterly catchy, barbaric opening riff, "Gleam of the Skull" with its thick atmosphere and feel of descending into a forbidden realm, and "Blood on the Blade" with its Omen-esque layer of battle thirst and tight performance. The only song here that feels a tad forced is "Into the Walls of Knowledge", which feels a bit too repetitive at times and has a bit too much directionless aggression, but even this song is quite enjoyable. Overall, there's very little bad to be said of this album; with its thick atmosphere, monster production, stellar songwriting, and utterly unique performance from Lewis, it's hard to think this could have been written in the 1990s; its style suggest something from the mid-to-late 80s, and its atmosphere evokes something even older, perhaps before the dawn of modern history. This album falls alongside greats like Born of the Cauldron and Spiral Castle in its evocation of forbidden arcana and ancient lore, and stands as one of the greatest epic heavy metal albums ever to roam the earth.

It's a very great crime that bands of this nature are so unknown, along with their entire subgenre of epic, archaic True Metal for the ages, with lyrics about battles and dragons and evil wizards and all that other killer shit that you know you love. I suppose this is just due to the fact that nobody really likes this stuff outside of nerdy Magic the Gathering circles or whatever, but it sure makes for some damn good music, despite whether or not you'd take a fancy to the stuff they're singing about yourself. With that said, let us enter the dark, cavernous regions of the netherworld that is Skullview's Legends of Valor, which is populated with bats, dragons, elves and dwarves, permeated with a healthy stench of warlike decay that can only be called Heavy Metal in its purest form.

This album's basic sound is heavy, crunchy riffs, epic leads and high-pitched wailing vocals with a little bit of an edge to them, inviting comparisons between singer Quimby Lewis and (in)famous Cirith Ungol troll Tim Baker. The whole sound is just completely old-school and retro all the way, with obscure hooks and jagged melody lines making the whole thing sound like it was lifted out of some mystical, ancient ruins site. The sound is a very B-grade Heavy Metal one, possessing the stodgy, workmanlike devotion of a band like Omen or Vicious Rumors except with longer songs and less direct hooks. Not much here will stick in your head as particularly memorable except for the overall experience of it - where the songs lack in catchy choruses and hooky riffs, they make up for in palpable atmosphere and metallic, hostile guitar acrobatics that you will find yourself yearning for in the back of your mind again and again after this album stops playing. Oh, and the bass is audible and very present, adding a quirky, underground weight to songs like "Dreamland Terror" and "The Gleam of the Skull" that many popular bands miss out on.

There is something to be said about the balls on a band to release an 8-minute opening track on an album like this, where several bands that try this sort of thing would end up sounding over-saturated and boring, but Skullview are the real deal, True Metal masters all the way, and they plow through the gates with "The Night of Metal Kill," which packs a cool chorus that always reminds me of a lethargic beast prowling around a cave, searching for something small and pitiful to devour. This is probably the best song on this album, as the other songs seem to blend into a homogenous mass of epic riffs and leads that is about as pleasing as one of those can be. These songs are really more like little journeys than musical constructions, starting in one place and ending in another.

My favorite thing about this album is just the juvenile, vigorous pride it carries. This is, plain and simple, the essence of Heavy Metal. Nothing on here is really done wrong, and the whole thing just exudes confidence and a love for the bare bones of the genre that many bands just don't have in this day and age. These guys don't seem to have any perception of the movement of time, just trudging on and doing what they like, and any band that does that is worthy of respect. Skullview are not a band that will change your perception of the genre, but they do play some very admirable music, and checking it out would be a good move on your part.