And every once in a while one of you sends me a gift, which always blows my mind. Today in the mail I got this:
Awesome dude horrox sent me this Vargr-themed heavy metal CD! Hot damn this stuff is rad! And don't get me wrong here. This isn't a case of putting some shit on the cover because it looks cool. The lyrics namecheck the Spinward Marches, the Imperial Navy, and assloads of other Trav setting fluff. These Weird Lord Slough Feg guys are cool. I had heard of them because the one and only Erol Otus had done a couple covers for them a while back, but this is first time I got to experience the Slough Feg sound. And I like what I'm hearing. The strings are full of pomp and the vocals aren't all gravelly like so many metal acts I hear nowadays. What did Dave Hoover call that sound? The Grover Voice, maybe? Rather than do that, lead singer Mike Scalzi actually, you know, sings.Anyhoo, thanks again to horrox for the CD and the rest of you for making me love doing this blog thing. Don't ever stop being rad.
No metalhead, I, but I think I'd like to hear this.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I listened to the samples on their website. I don't know from metal, but...I'd buy this album.
ReplyDeleteCOOKIE MONSTER vocals, not Grover. I REALLY want to hear some dirge-y metal band doing a cover of "'C' is for cookie..." Now, THAT would rock.
ReplyDeleteHey Jeff, you're quite welcome - glad you liked the Slough Feg disc so much! Of course I figured that if anyone was going to like a heavy metal album inspired by Classic Traveller, chances are hopefully you would. And thanks for putting it on your blog - I don't think that Slough Feg have gotten much attention from Traveller players (or fantasy roleplaying gamers in general) for their efforts, yet. And by the way, just in case it wasn't obvious, it's concept album, each song part of a continuous narrative. And the story is really weird, though maybe not as weird as the Call of Cthulhu campaign I played in once that was run by Slough Feg vocalist/guitarist/mastermind Mike Scalzi, wherein the characters GAINED sanity points rather than lost them, when confronted with really pleasant extradimensional artifacts and entities. That seriously freaked us players out...
ReplyDeleteHere's what I wanna know -- how the hell do you say the band's name? 'Cause in my experience, the only people who should attempt to pronounce Gaelic words are native speakers, people who have studied the language extensively, and hardcore Changeling players, all of whom have an equal chance of doing it wrong to begin with.
ReplyDeleteI've been saying 'Sluff Fegg' but I have no reason to suspect that's correct. Little help, horrox?
ReplyDeleteI've heard this band's name mangled a fair bit, but the pronunciation that I hear the most (and the one that seems to be correct) is "Slow Fay".
ReplyDeleteThis is just from "common" usage, mind you. The band themselves are the final authority on this.
peace... Dave
And... oh yeah... Mr. Jarvis got it right. The drano-gargling vocals of most "metal" bands these days is commonly refered to as "Cookie Monster"-vocals.
ReplyDeleteTo be certain, the style is an acquired taste. At first, I absolutely despised it. Now, I'm used to it, but there are damn few singers that can do it in an appealing manner.
peace... Dave
If anyone's still wondering, I can tell you that the band themselves pronounce their name Slough (rhymes with how now brown cow) Feg (rhymes with egg). I doubt that's what their Irish fans say though.
ReplyDeleteThe user above is indeed correct.
ReplyDeleteSlough rhymes with cow and feg rhymes with egg.