Well be thy one, and wisdom too. And grew, and joyed in my growth. From a word to a word, I was lead to a Wyrd. From a deed, to another deed.
I wish I had time to fully review this amazing album by Sabbat (official website HERE) (buy the album HERE). I wish I had time to speak of the extent to which it has, at times, affected me more than any other album. I wish I had time to speak at length about my long search for the book it was based on, and the experience of finally finding and reading that book some 12 years ago.
And oh, Nic Cage used this book as inspiration for his acting in Ghost Rider. (WTF?!)
I’ll at least try: This is perhaps my favorite thrash metal (speedmetal) album of all time, and it is definitely the album that I have spent the most cumulative effort to understand. The only album that ever made me read a book, something I am both weary and wary of. Musically, there are an amazing amount of good riffs on the album, some of which I would play on my guitar obsessively in high school. The songs do not adhere to any traditional structure — they often have multiple choruses and bridges. Really the only thing limiting their music in any way, shape, or form, is the somewhat narrow style definition of thrash metal itself, and the fact that all songs sound alike to an untrained non-brutal ear. It plays like 1 long song with an intro, intermission (an acoustic song, the only song ever sung by Sabbat), and outro. I used to play along with the outro; it’s classical guitar, and thus can’t be played with a pick, and that’s always a fun challenge. The book is quite amazing too. Later on in this post, I am going to attempt to analyze every song with respect to the album and the book. THIS IS A LONG POST.
THE ALBUM (SUMMARY)
It is a concept album, telling a spiritual story based on the novel The Way Of Wyrd by Bryan Bates (official book website HERE, and a thread by people who found the book via the Sabbat album can be found HERE), who is considered (by Wikipedia) to be England’s “foremost authority on Anglo Saxon Druidry, shamanism and mysteries”. It is best listened to while reading along with the lyrics, preferably with timed highlighting (EvilLyrics), because it is easy to get lost. There are a LOT of lyrics and a LOT of riffs in EVERY song. (Their previous album was called A History Of A Time To Come and is a concept album with a central theme, but no central narrative. Songs could be played in any order, whereas this album should be listened to sequentially.)
PERSONAL HISTORY
It hasn’t been non-stop, but I’ve been listening to this album since it was fairly new. I picked it up within a year of its release in 1989, based on liking the album cover, and listened to it heavily during the cassette and mp3 era, but not during the CD era, because it was basically unavailable on CD from ~1992-2002. My best friend Sam eventually figured out the story, and once the internet came around in 1994, I managed to find (crappy) lyrics online. Around 1996, Carolyn & I spent MANY, MANY, MANY hours in college listening to the album together, and editing the lyrics until they actually seemed to actually match what was said. The book was employed during some hard-to-decipher parts as well.
cover
I now own it on vinyl and cd, autographed by the 5 current members (4 originals):
NOW I GET TO SEE THEM IN CONCERT!!!!
[UPDATE: Read my review of the concert, with videos, HERE]
Tomorrow, at Jaxx! It looks like I will have another bandname to add to my list of concerts I never thought I’d see in my life. I can’t believe that in the space of 5-10 years, FOUR bands (S.O.D., Celtic Frost, Carnivore, Sabbat) that have been broken up for 15 years or more have all toured where I could catch a local show! Suddenly, I feel a bit less old. But then the Sabbat singer says, “Raise your hand if you were alive in 1989 when our album came out” on a live bootleg, and I realize some of the kids at the concert might not have been born back then. Ugh.
MONEY: The most I’ve ever cumulatively spent on a single album!
This album is also the album I’ve paid the most for. $8 for the cassette (no lyrics). $15 for the vinyl (which included lyrics) at Record Convergence. Then, I downloaded crappy mp3s made from a cassette, where the songs were split into separate tracks incorrectly. Then, I got a friend to make new mp3s from my cassette. Then, after many searches, CDs became wanted enough by fans that they sold for exorbitant prices on eBay. These high prices meant hardcore fans could still buy a copy, and I did: for *** $54 ***, which was the going rate 5 years ago. (A live 2005 show includes the Sabbat‘s singer saying, “160 quid? That’s fucking disgusting! Well, those people on eBay will be put out of business, because we are re-releasing the album!) Then, it was remastered and re-released in 2007 (re-release reviews from Kerrang!, Metal Hammer, and Terrorizer can be found HERE), but it still cost $25. (Their first album was re-released as well.) Count that up: That’s no less $102 spent on one album. It was released by Noise Records, who was my favorite record company in high school, releasing bands such as Coroner, Celtic Frost, Kreator. Unfortunately, Noise Records is basically defunct. The website has been reclaimed, and I made one order for them (Coroner CD) around 2000. When it arrived, it came with a receipt: The people at Noise Records had to go shopping in California record stores to find their own album so that they could sell it to me. Pathetic.
THE POLITICS
In the grand scheme of things, the album is politically about how the christians wiped out the pagans, and stole aspects of their religion to help subvert people into christianity. I think the religious movement that wiped out paganism is largely responsible for many of the world’s current problems, and wish the pagans had one. But all the politics is just subtext; the actual album and book basically tell a fictitious and magical story of a christian’s journey into newfound spirituality. And I’m pretty anti-spiritual, so the fact that I’m into this is pretty significant.
THE BOOK
(AND POSSIBLY A MOVIE?!?!?!?!?!!?!)
The book is an extremely interesting fictitious, magical, and spiritual journey. Of course, national library searches for that book failed in ~1992 and ~1994, and it wasn’t until ~1996 that a copy of this novel made its way to American libraries. Reading the book also helped me figure out some of the lyrics that weren’t in the inlay cards, like the ending “prayer” of the song Do Dark Horses Dream Of Nightmares?. Anyway, I just found out today that New Line Films (Lord Of The Rings) is working with Brian Bates to adapt this tale into a film. I could not be more stoked. The summary at at the official site HERE says: “This unusual story documents the physical and spiritual journey of a young man into the vast forests of pagan Anglo-Saxon England – the historical setting of Middle-Earth. Through his experiences the book reveals the teaching of a remarkable Western path to psychological and spiritual liberation; a way of being in the world that challenges many of our current notions of mind, body and spirit. Wat Brand is a Christian scribe sent on a mission deep into a pagan kingdom; a landscape full of alien terrors and mysterious forces. His guide, a sorcerer and mystic named Wulf, demonstrates awesome healing powers, and leads Brand through lessons in plant lore and runes, omens, fate and life force, and into direct encounters with the spirit world. Brand becomes an apprentice, seeks the help of a guardian spirit and eventually journeys to the spirit world to encounter the true nature of his own soul.”
THE STORY, AS TOLD BY THE SONGS IN THE ALBUM:
(this is the long part!)
The Clerical Conspiracy:
Basically, the first song The Clerical Conspiracy details how the christians deliberately conspired to invade and destroy the pagans. The lyrics: “There is no way to fight a foe who strikes from the inside, / and once within we can begin to smite this pagan pride. / We shall take their graven images and grind them in the dirt, / for that men can live in paradise must be the Devil’s work.” Yes, as usual, the christians are all pissy about anyone (including themselves) having any sort of fun, and they want to assimilate the enemy into their own.
The chorus goes on: “The Clerical Conspiracy begins, we wash away your sins; we come to purify / To purge you of your liberty, absolve you of all sanity, the ‘truth’ you want to hear we shall provide.” Such words strike my heart closely as being an accurate depiction of the worst of what organized religion has to offer (which is, unfortunately, enough to make organized religion cumulatively evil; the Crusades, World War 2, and The War On Terror all demonstrate.) Their desire to purify reminds me of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry Of Vice & Virtue. “We shall greet them with a velvet glove, and crush them with an iron hand.” I think this speaks of the hypocracy of christianity (islam, too), whereby a religion can preach peace but cause wars at the same time.
I particularly like the 2nd chorus (a lot of these songs have multiple choruses that are repeated multiple times): “Christian soldiers armed with virtue / hearts afire with blind obsession / cannot see the difference ‘twixt / compassion and oppression.” However, main character Wat Brand goes on to tell us that this whole thing was a mistake. How could he have known what was to follow? “Those who had preceded me of pagan devils warned- With fearful tales of christian souls since martyred on their horns.” Finally, Wat Brand concludes: “And so soon would I learn what a fool I had been, / there is more than one side to a coin- life is not what it seems … It’s no more than a dream.”
Advent Of Insanity:
(only soft Sabbat song ever)
The second song, Advent Of Insanity details Wat Brand’s sea voyage to southern england. This is the “acoustic, soft” song of the album, and the only Sabbat song ever sung. The title and a few lines of the lyrics imply that this is where he begans to lose his sanity, but for the most part the song simply laments the fact that travelers [especially at sea] are pretty much in the hands of destiny. The softness of the song, coupled with the sounds of a sailing ship, it’s ropes taut, but still tightening and loosening, make you feel like you are on the ship. And it goes on for a bit after the song ends, creating an incredibly dramatic pause before the incredibly hard-hitting opening of Do Dark Horses Dream Of Nightmares?: “Standing on a strange shore- this desolate coastline, / it offers cold comfort. / Very little more than the sky for a blanket- / The earth for my bed.”
Do Dark Horses Dream Of Nightmares?
Do Dark Horses Dream Of Nightmares? is an absolutely incredible song. It covers chapter 2 of the novel, “A Forest Of Phantoms”. In the book, Wat Brand lands on shore, but has not yet found his guide, Wulf. Meeting up with someone in ancient England was not trivial. The meeting place was not a city, and there are no cellphones, GPS devices, or landmarks. Wat Brand had to wander the country side, hanging out at certain highly visible hilltops during certain times, and in the end, I think one of them saw the other’s torch from another hilltop during the night. I can’t remember [10+ yrs since reading the book], but I want to say he had to wander the countryside for several days. So this song captures the insanity and terror that Wat Brand experiences, trying to find his guide, while being tormented by spirits. “Childhood terrors return to me now, / from the rand stench of fear in the sweat on my brow. / Deceit and despair are to me kith and kin, / seduced into slumber- my nightmare begins.” There is a chorus “sung by” Woden, welcoming Wat Brand to his web, and it is not long before he is drowning in insanity and terror. The same insanity that started on the ship in the previous song Advent Of Insanity.
Then there is a 2nd chorus “sung by” Wat Brand, when he realizes all this is a test (as christians are wont to ascribe everything to god): “Now I see that this quest is a test of my fidelity – has God forsaken me? When madness sings his lullaby – a nightmare filled with unknown things – to cast aspersion on my sanity…” His dreams are invaded, he is in a foreign land, with a foreign religion, paganism, prevailing. He is filled with terror, and now his faith is being tested. It only gets worse for Wat Brand. “Shapeless forms surround me casting shadows in the night, / I feel their breath upon me- catch their faces in the light. / Somnambulistic hunters come to prey upon my fears – / as peals of psychopathic laughter echo in my ears.” He is going crazy, but not really. I’ve read the book, and the spirits he sees are real. In the end of the song, he futily evokes a prayer to try to make it stop, but of course this does not work, as one of the morals of the story is that God is not the Jehovah as christians see it. This prayer is not included in the lyric sheet, and a significant amount of energy was expended listening to it over and over. In the end, the only way to figure out those lyrics is to read the book: “Oh you wretched, perverse spirits, your power is seen and your might is made known. Now I command you in the name of the eternal Lord, who made you and flung you from the height of Heaven, to cease from this disturbance.” There is a middle part only in the book, but it is less interesting. Finally, in the next song, Wat Brand meets his guide Wulf.
The Best Of Enemies
The Best Of Enemies starts off with music-less dialog: “Who are you that walks across the graves of giants at this late hour?” Wat Brand meets Wulf. In the book, the words were slightly different: “May I ask who you are, walking by moonlight over the graves of giants?”. This entire song is “sung by” Wulf, representing the pagan point of view, and what is seen wrong with christianity, as well as guiding and warning Wat Brand of what he must face. This song covers Chapter 3 (Tales Of Pagan Power), Chapter 4 (Unleashing Life Force), and Chapter 6 (Living Like A Warrior).
The first sung lyrics are “Oh instrument of God force – Fed on ignorance and lies, / so blind and narrow-minded that you cannot compromise.” I think it’s a pretty accurate depiction of religious dogma (and not just christian). Wulf’s lyrics go on to talk about how Wat Brand has as strong a life-force as Wulf does (“the difference is what you hold captive, I set free”). These 2 men are indeed “the best” of their breed, as the song title implies — and that’s why they were both chosen for their tasks.
Wulf’s role is that of both an enemy and a guide. As an enemy, he explains that nobody really wants him there (“mistake your making / overlooking the fact that we might not want to be saved”). He mocks his christian faith: “These teachings that you deem so sacred / become words devoid of meaning, / when compared unto a faith / that preaches something worth believing”. And he does it more than once: “The values that you hold so dear…they hold no more sway here than the mutterings of fools” and “your devil seems so mild, a relic from the faerie-tales my mother told me as a child.” He also asks Wat Brand “Why do you carry your God like a weapon – a dagger drawn ready to strike at the heart of a foe / when you don’t really know the reason that you fight?”, a reference to the fact that in old times, priests would have daggers embedded in their crucifixes, for the purpose of killing people. Whether this was for self-defense or forced conversion is beyond me.
As I said before, Wulf’s role is that of both an enemy and a guide. So as a guide, they discuss The Way Of The Warrior, and the fact that people in pagan England did not at all fear death. In the book, I believe this is where Wat Brand watched a bar fight — to the death — and was a bit traumatized by the fact that nobody wanted to stop it. Wulf provides various warnings to Wat as well: “These spirits aren’t your enemies – but neither are they friends, / do not dare insult them lest all nature you offend.” As the song closes, Wulf laments “Perhaps one day mankind will see the error of it’s ways, / and in it’s future glimpse reflections of our yesterdays”, a reference to Dreamweaver‘s subtitle: Reflections Of Our Yesterdays. Wat should have listened, because things are about to get much worse for him.
How Have The Mighty Fallen
SIDE B: Finally, you flip the cassette (if it’s the 1990s), and get to side 2, with the song How Have The Mighty Fallen?, clocking in at over 8 minutes (most of the songs are about 6 minutes). This song parallels chapter 8, “The Wyrd Sisters“, and chapter 9, “The Spirits Steal My Soul”. I may have had a brush with the Wyrd Sisters once, but it was too unbelievable even for myself. Suffice to say, you don’t want to mess with those three. They are troublemakers. Wat Brand really should have listened, but Wulf was not really being helpful in the traditional, christian sense of the word. The Wyrd Sisters appear to him as a swarm of bees in Chapter 8, stinging him repeatedly. In the album, it seems that he has been poisoned and strangled to death, with the prime suspect being his guide (and spiritual enemy) Wulf. I’m not quite sure what happens in the book, but the lyrics where he die go like this: “Icy fingers grasping madly get a grip upon my throat – / and slowly squeeze the life out of me / on my dying words I choke, / a frantic prayer in desperation / cannot hope to make me whole, / a moment’s lapse of concentration / and the spirits free my soul / Drugs and potions surge within me – / slowly paralyze and kill me, / terrified I stumble blindly / Into the unknown.” And that’s death. A blind stumble.
At this point, he should be in heaven, right? That would make sense, if this book was written from a christian perspective. But it was not. In the framework of the Way Of Wyrd novel, there is a god/gods, but (s)he is not Jehovah. So no — he did not go to heaven. The story’s only halfway through, and the rest of it pretty much all takes place in the spirit world. In the book, his soul is stolen, but the album just makes it sound like he dies. It’s a matter of editing the story to fit the format it is in; much like adapting a book to a movie, you must sacrifice subtle plot elements in the name of keeping the story cohesive.
How Have The Mighty Fallen? is perhaps one of the most fatalistic songs on the album, because at the beginning, during his “death”, as far as Wat Brand is concerned, he is completely fucked and not at all happy with the situation. Near the beginning of the song, the lyrics remarks “The fetters that bound me are broken / by words that were best left unspoken / for now I am shackled to sadness / by chains that are tempered with madness.” No doubt that may be what it feels like to literally have your soul ripped from you, while still being conscious of this fact. (I would like to ask the children from The Golden Compass, who underwent “intercision”, if these lyrics captured how they felt. Then again, they were still in the real world, and not the dream world.)
Not having your soul is not pleasant. In fact, it is downright creepy. It goes a bit like this: “Once light hearted I departed – on my quest hope courted me, / now a new love is my true love / and her name is misery. / Eyes as dark as midnight-ravens / gems that filled my mind with awe, / enthrall my heart – distract me / from her milk-white hands / stained red with gore.” Wat Brand watches his life-force die, and wanders in mad confusion. Being dead/soulless, he finally sees things as they really are: “The latch has now been lifted on an ever open door, / and peering through I see things as I never have before.”
Anyway, it is around this time (in the album, and in Chapter 12 of the book “The Dwarf Of The Underworld”) that his soul is literally rebuilt in spirit-world forges, as the shroud of his remaining consciousness float up to the ceiling of the room, watching. In the book, this is described as “ringing out rhythmically like hammers on metal in some gigantic smithy.” In the song How Have The Mighty Fallen?, the lyrics describe his soul being rebuilt as such: “The hammer and the anvil meet / in synchronicity they chime / a sound so simple and complete / it needs no melody or rhyme. / Reforging all that I once was / they make me into something new / no longer trapped within this world / but transient and passing through.” The lyrics really help me imagine what it must feel like to be in Wat Brand’s predicament.
Wildfire
Next up is the 2nd-to-last real song on the album (I haven’t been counting the intro and outro tracks), entitled Wildfire. This song roughly parallels the end of Chapter 11, “The Cauldron Of Power”. This is perhaps the song that I have the least understanding of. Wat Brand’s soul has been rebuilt, and he went back to his earthly body, resurrected. But Wat Brand and his soul are still not together! In the book, he only had about 12 hours of “shadow soul” before he would cease to exist; they had to act fast to get his soul back.
The title of the song, Wildfire, is a mystery. I am guessing that it is about the fire of his soul, soaring on the flames of what I can only ascertain is the spiritual awakening Wat Brand (or anyone) must have experienced upon having a firsthand glimpsed of the underworld. This is knowledge that no mortal consciousness is supposed to have, and such knowledge can be maddening: “Awakened from my troubled sleep – / where dreams once lost as nightmares creep, / to steal my soul and suffocate what sanity remains. / My anger mute – my anguish blind / within this sad fragmented mind / your eyes the spark to light the fire / that burns away my pain.”
He then goes on to great anger over the whole experience, especially in Wulf’s betrayal, and causing him to lose his soul. Most people don’t take to kindly to being killed. I don’t. I can only assume these lyrics are directed at Wulf: “Protected by reality- / yet you still fear the beast in me, / your reckless tongue could be the key, / you’ll be
the first to die if it breaks free. / The first to die!” It sounds like Wulf is protected by pagan sorcery and/or his knowledge of the underworld, and Wat Brand is quite willing to kill him if given a chance. “Wildfire – Hallucinations fill my mind / with a love so strong that it is blind. / A dream of such intensity, / it verges on insanity.”
The irony of this is that it’s just another example of christian intolerance, because Wulf was right, Wat Brand was wrong, god is as pagans see it, not christians (in the framework of The Way Of Wyrd book). So Wulf was actually doing Wat Brand a big favor by allowing him the opportunity to collect enough evidence to see the truth. And Wulf was also serving his people by undermining the christian incursion planned so carefully in the first song, The Clerical Conspiracy. Plus, Wat Brand now needs Wulf to help him reclaim his soul.
Well played, Wulf. Sour apples, Wat. You don’t need to kill the guy. He was trying to do you a favor!
But Wat Brand is no run-of-the-mill person, he has a strong life-force, as pointed out before. He possesses the passion, fury, and “fire” to think things out critically, and to eventually come to terms with the fact that Wulf was right. He’s still mad at Wulf… Y’know, the murder… But he acquiesces nonetheless: “How could you be such a fool, / to dare to break the golden rule? / Yet in the light of day I see / that you were right – / the fool is me… / The fool is me!”
Realizing the truth — realizing that he was a christian fool — only exacerbates Wat Brand’s soulless insanity. It was bad enough in the beginning of the song, but by the end of the song he is nothing short of nervous wreck, panicking in a frenetic bout of the purest terror known to man, a living hell: “I seek a release from this web of deceit – / now my terror is growing. / There is no escape from my fate – it’s too late – / all my fears are showing. / I’m running from something that just isn’t there – / the panic is real, / and you must be blind for my words cannot hide the heartache I feel … Please God help me now.” (God doesn’t help him. Not the christian god, anyway.) And that’s how the song ends: Please God Help Me Now.
Mythistory
(the end)
Finally, we get to Mythistory, the climax of the story and final “real” song of the album. This parallels Chapter 13, “In Search Of The Guardians”. Face with soulless insanity and spiritual holocaust, Wat Brand must now finally act on what he has learned, and he must act soon. But it seems quite futile without a soul: “I’m standing at the crossroads of my life / nothing to lose. / Each path leads to oblivion, / whichever one I choose.”
But Wat Brand perseveres, and seeks out the Wyrd Sisters again. He finds them, and begs for his soul: “Sisters of servitude- / fearful and fair, / Who herald good fortune / and mete out despair. / Take pity upon me / and give back my soul, / so that I who am ’empty’ / may once more be ‘whole’.” The sisters respond, the only time they ever speak on the album (and there is a production effect of multiple voices to empasize this): “Mortal be silent – take heed as we speak, / not lightly will we return that which you seek. / True wisdom walks hand-in-hand with adversity, / knowledge exists on the brink of uncertainty.”
And I always listen to the Wyrd Sisters when they speak — their words were quite profound. True wisdom probably does indeed walk hand-in-hand with adversity. I don’t see how anyone could achieve true wisdom without some adversity, trials, and tribulations to teach them lessons that would ultimately impart them with wisdom that they would not have otherwise encountered. Sometimes something has to slap you in the face before you learn a goddamn thing, and adversity — and losing — help us grow far more than complacency and victory. The second part of what they said — that knowledge exists on the brink of uncertainty — is an even deeper statement that probably defies my abilities to decode. But I can certainly understand that everything we know, everything we find out — be it science, philosophy, religion, or even art — only opens up new questions. So all knowledge is surrounded by unknowns, and more questions. Perhaps the biggest question of all is what is the meaning of life, and what ultimately happens when we die? And perhaps the truest knowledge of all is that which comes from those who have peered over the precipice — and come back.
Once the Wyrd Sisters have spoken, Wat Brand sees the form of the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. She awakens feelings which his christianity had required him to suppress: “The moment that I saw her face / my lust I could not hide. / She knew me as no other – / viewed me through a lover’s eyes.” This is analogous to the beginning of Chapter 14, “A Sorcerer’s Soul”. Her beauty was more than skin deep — she knew him like no other. The lyrics go on to express this even further, as Wat Brand finally gives in to temptation: “A vision of sensual delight / pervades my senses – and ignites / new feelings that I can’t define, / desire for this succubus sublime. / Sister, mother, virgin, whore – / she is all these and yet still more / that I could hope to understand, / she takes my heart – / I take her hand …”
Walking into temptation, forsaking his christian sensibilities, and his virginity, Wat Brand willingly takes the hand of… a hot chick. He justifies it as such: “And can you blame me? / Is it such a crime? / To crave for one small piece / of heaven that I can call mine?” Love is heaven indeed, and why should he be denied it? “All my life I have yearned; how my spirit has burned / to taste of the fruit that my tonsure forbade. / Yet here was a beauty so pure she could truly / outshine any star that the Lord God has made.” BAM! SACRILEGE POINTS! FROM THE MOUTH OF A PRIEST!
But he still has no soul. He repeats his plea to the Wyrd Sisters to return it. “Sisters of servitude, fearful and fair…” It is then that “The Fairest Of Them All” (as described in the lyrics) speaks. That is, the beautiful woman he just met speaks. There is a two-voiced production here; a male and female voice at the same time. “Brand look no further – / for that which was lost / can be found in me if your / distrust becomes troth. / I will bestow you with riches untold, / for I am your ‘harvest-home’ – I am your soul.” M. Night Shyamalan would be proud — What a twist! The woman was his soul! I hope my soul is a hot chick I can lust after! That’s definitely a lot less gay of a way to interact with yourself than the gay handjob that is called “masturbation”. :) Seriously, though… It was like this in the book too. He finds his soul, and it’s a hot chick. It really does remind me of The Golden Compass in the sense that your soul can actually be external to your body, with its own consciousness and will. But nobody in The Golden Compass was lucky enough (unless they were into bestiality) to have a soul that they were sexually attracted to!
The book concludes at some point after this, with Wat Brand realizing that the true god is not the christian god. However, this is not a rejection of his faith; Wat Brand actually realizes that he had been worshiping this god all along, but simply had an incredibly narrow-minded view about what god was. Now he had more information, and could make a new decision about what to believe.
The lyrics of the album are a bit unclear as to what happens to him, but basically — He has no desire to return to where he came from. It sounds geographical, but I think the comment was spiritual. And she still comes to him: “Many a cold Winter’s night she has come to me – / easing my sorrows and soothing my fears, / in the dreams of this old man, a soft voice still comforts me, / made young once more by the words that I hear.”
And with that, we hear his soul say the same words that she said when he first took her hand: “Come walk with me / through the vale of eternity, / for you must know / ere you go I will go with thee…” A very dramatic fade, followed by the acoustic classical guitar Outro, Happily Never After. Later, at the Sabbat concert, someone asked Martin Walkyier about that woman’s voice, and apparently she was the receptionist at the recording studio!
Mood: ready for the Sabbat show Saturday
Music: Sabbat – The Beginning Of The End (Intro) / The Clerical Conspiracy
Other quotes:
When living your life
like an arrow in flight
you must always accept
that the end is in sight,
be grateful at least
for the fact that you knew
you came to death –
he did not come for you.
And:
From the beginning
when hoar-frost and flame collided –
the birth of the world to proclaim,
your lives have been guided –
decided by fate,
unaltered by changes that
you try to make.
The world keeps on turning –
men still live and die,
though many have questions
so few even try,
search for the answers
that you have found here –
unaware of the threads in the
web that is wyrd.”
And:
Drawn to these spirits like moths to a flame –
when there is no risk then there can be no gain.
April 18, 2008 at 7:50 PM
Longest. Review. Ever. It’s even 12 pages in 1920×1080.
Here are some other reviews for this album:
http://music.ign.com/articles/821/821921p1.html (IGN: 8.5)
http://deathofgodreviews.blogspot.com/2006/11/sabbat-dreamweaver-review-coming-soon.html (blogger)
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B000008KCM/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1 (many Amazon reviews)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dreamweaver-Expanded-Remastered-Us-Sabbat/dp/B000OCY726 (more Amazon reviews attached to the re-release CD)
http://www.timeout.com/newyork/articles/music/28368/sabbat
http://www.metalcrypt.com/pages/reviews.php?revid=1860 (very short, didn’t like the book)
http://www.rockdetector.com/artist,7594.sm (Sabbat in general)
http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,157926,00.html (bad review, claims 1st album is better)
April 18, 2008 at 8:29 PM
1) I am seriously shocked that you wrote something this long–since once I posted a 3-page article and you said you didn’t read it because it was too long! haha! (don’t worry, I’m just amused)
2) Another mysterious facet of Clint emerges. I thought you weren’t interested in spiritual-themed things? Just the impression I got from online conversations you’ve had with others.
3) It sounds really awesome, actually like something I’d like. Is the singer of the melodious variety or is he more of a screamer?
4) You might like Dream Theater if you like stuff like this. They’re progressive metal, and they had a concept album about 6 years ago that was all about this guy’s journey back into another lifetime and about his reincarnation, and a murder mystery, etc.
April 19, 2008 at 3:23 PM
I really really like this album a lot. At first, I was never a fan of thrash metal, and when Clint got the lyrics and was listening to the album sequential, I was just doing my own thing and it was more in the background. I couldn’t understand the words in the faster songs. However, Advent Of Insanity was the one melodic song that I could get into. So when that song came on, I’d stop and listen to it. Before I knew it, the rest of the songs started clicking with me, and I started reading along with the lyrics with Clint. We spent hours just listening to the album sequentially reading along the lyrics and if we heard any discrepancies, we’d edit the lyrics to be accurate. Needless to say, I got hooked. Now I can understand the words without reading along, and I can barely remember what it was like not to be able to understand what they were saying.
This album was the album I was dancing to with headphones on in my grandma’s loft the only time Samhain hissed at me. I was standing on him.
When I listened to this album during my morning commute to Teleglobe, it was just the right length to last the entire commute (about 45 minutes). Loved it! It definitely made the commute more bearable.
April 20, 2008 at 5:39 PM
[…] a literal arms’ reach of our favorite artists! 11 songs were played; 5 of them from the Dreamweaver album (that I just posted a massive review of). Unfortunately for us, we missed most of the 1st […]
April 20, 2008 at 5:55 PM
1) It’s long, but I wrote it for me, and other fans of the album that desire a deeper understanding of it.
2) I am not into spirituality, but that is a bit different than being into spiritual-themed things. This story is a work of fiction, but it still caused me to think a lot, and experience some small amount of spirtuality (yuck) myself.
3) Screamer.
4) I don’t typically like progressive metal, though I do love Tiamat’s Wildhoney album, and Voivod, both mentioned in the progressive metal wikipedia page. But that’s it; the other bands mentioned there are not bands I like. I am currently in a moratorium for listening to new bands anyway — too much old material I passed on by, and several thousand songs of new material I still haven’t listened to. And I don’t think I could ever get into an album to that level again….
April 20, 2008 at 7:18 PM
I don’t think he’s *that* much of a screamer, but it is definitely on the screaming side until you listen to it alot.
April 24, 2008 at 9:12 AM
This kind of relates to this album’s theme…
Play “Holy War”, a brower-based game of Christianity & Paganism. Defend the Holy Land!:
http://www.holy-war.net/EN/World4/bin/HK01/HK01.1.index_start.php?action=test
July 22, 2008 at 9:05 PM
spot on clint. Brilliant.
July 28, 2008 at 2:27 PM
[…] Sabbat – several, including a full concert – live Sabbat was an impressive find considering the Dreamweaver album was $54 on Ebay when I got it (and $26 when it was remastered) (of course I have the vinyl, too) […]
September 5, 2008 at 11:38 PM
never in a million years, could I write something as in-depth as this! they should include a link to your review on the wikipedia page for this album. incredible!!!
September 5, 2008 at 11:42 PM
[…] Clint JCL review of Dreamweaver […]
September 6, 2008 at 8:53 AM
@#11: I edited the wikipage myself to include a link here :)
December 3, 2008 at 2:04 PM
Left as a YouTube comment: “I’m 34 too. Sabbat were the first metal band I ever heard, and still one of my favourites.
I’ve just been reading your Dreamweaver analysis. I found it via Wikipedia and it was just what I was looking for. Many thanks.”
December 14, 2008 at 3:48 AM
This is fuckin’ awesome! Thanks
January 8, 2009 at 8:39 AM
Hi,
nice to read your story. A lot of recognition. I allready was a Sabbatfan at the time of the History of a time to come album and saw them perform twice here in Holland in 1988 i guess. I bought Dreamweaver the day it was released and i even had carton advertorial board of the albumcover from the record shop hung on my wall for a long time (i might still have pics of that somewhere). I’m very fond of Martin Walkyier’s lyrics, thinking of him as a true poet. The lyrics om dreamweaver interested me so much that very quikly after the album was released i obtained a copy of brian bates’ways of wyrd from the nation Dutch library (it took about three weeks, but it was there).
Still to this day i listen to both albums regulary, and i can proclaim the lyrics to the clerical conspiracy (my favourite song), advent of insanity and the beginning of wild horses, by herat any time of day!
so it;s nice to know there are more people like me around the globe!
Cheers!
January 8, 2009 at 2:43 PM
Thanks Paul! There certainly are, because they aren’t all finding my blogpost — they’re out there somewhere. They crawled out of the woodwork at the Jaxx concert in Virginia, USA!
February 20, 2009 at 2:23 PM
[…] Sabbat – Dreamweaver (Reflections Of Our Yesterdays) – <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/clintjcl/2707623853/” title=”20080419 […]
April 16, 2009 at 10:07 PM
Awesome deconstruction! I’ve had this album on cd since the initial release… it’s playing on my iPod now and I’ll enjoy this music & story for years to come.
June 17, 2009 at 10:47 AM
TRACKBACK: foreign:
http://yumetal.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=27679&st=160&start=160
September 17, 2009 at 12:40 PM
I bought this album back when it first cane out. I did not listen to it till I had access to some San Pedro cactus! After three days of listening I decided to buy the book (which was incredibly difficult to find, no internet!) I now read the book every few years and every time I do, I discover something new that I hadn’t paid attention to before. …”I don’t think he’s that much of a screamer??” The man sounds like he gargles three times a day with shredded glass! He can however sing quite beautifully when he wants to… a time and a place man, a time and a place…!
November 21, 2009 at 7:04 PM
Wow, the book’s author, Brian Bates, has stumbled upon this and linked to it from his Facebook fan page at:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brian-Bates/197798509459
He linked it with the text:
”
Here is a link to a long and excellent review of Sabbat’s album based on The Way of Wyrd. The review links the music (each of the tracks one by one!) to incidents in the book. Thrash music may or not be to your taste, but the lyrics and the review are interesting nevertheless. This book has inspired many musicians – th…ere are several albums out there based on it. I think that perhaps the ideas and the passion of the wisdom can be carried by music in ways that can’t be by words alone – and vice versa.”
I then went on to tell him how long (years) it took me to get a hold of the book, and he responded:
“Hi Clint, yes it was a very long blog! And as i said earlier, an excellent one. Glad you finally got hold of a copy of The Way of Wyrd, a testament to your persistence! The book’s pretty much been in continuous publication now for a couple of decades, but did fade out at a couple of stages and became harder to find. It’s now published in all English-speaking areas in an edition by Hay House.”
I’m awesome.
November 21, 2009 at 7:05 PM
And I responded: “I’m glad it’s much easier to find now! :) I think I actually linked to where you could buy it on my blog, so maybe you’ll get a few extra sales due to my review! haha! I hope so! Great to hear back from “the source” of something that I held in wonder before I even know it was based on a book :)”
January 7, 2010 at 4:18 PM
no religion in this world rewards you for killing a neighbour outside the context of self-defense. and even if its self defense, you’ll be under major investigation.
it’s the people that manage to twist the essence of these religious teachings to their own cause and greed..anyone can see this fact save those who wish to remain blind..
January 9, 2012 at 7:21 PM
Bullshit. The old testament is very specific about stoning people, and not just for self defense. Nice try, circus maximums, but easily refutable. Easily.
Then the whole thing where God flooded the earth and killed everybody. Definitely not in self defense.
February 11, 2010 at 6:25 PM
Hi, Clint!
Nice review, no problem reading the length of it, since the content is so captivating!
I have been similarly taken with the excellent music and lyrics of Sabbat since the first album came out, and have listened to that and ‘Dreamweaver’ regularly ever since.
When I found ‘History Of A Time To Come’ on LP at the local record store, I was at first a bit wary as I thought the frilly shirts they wore on the back cover photo made them look somewhat like glam rock people. I truly have never been more mistaken about anything else in my entire life.
On the strength of the album cover artwork and the intriguing track titles, I bought the album anyway. At first listen all doubts were gone, and an obsession of mine had been born.
I spent considerable time poring over Martin’s fascinating lyrics back in those days, immediately recognizing the work of a true poet. I still remember the bulk of the lyrics by heart. Martin’s vocabulary and knack for writing puns never fail to amuse me.
Alas, I never got to see them in concert back then, and time wore on. Sometimes I would complain bitterly about this on miscellaneous festival forum boards, but the opportunity never arose.
Until one day, when I learned that Sabbat had reunited, and was actually going to play in Oslo here in Norway. You can imagine who bought the ticket, and how quickly it was done!
I now have memories of one of the best gigs I have ever been to, plus pictures from it. I arrived early and caught their sound check, but also had a nice chat with the boys, and got both my old vinyl albums autographed, along with the remastered CDs, and a bloody great t-shirt. :-)
If I had missed this, I’d still be kicking myself, even in my sleep.
Cheers!
August 18, 2010 at 10:04 AM
My copy on vinyl has a giant wall-size poster containing the complete lyrics of the album included as a fold-out insert. It has the complete album cover painting on one side of the insert with a giant sized version of the cauldron spirit on the other side. The images are in grayscale and the lyrics are overlaid on top, divided into chapters and verses with chorus repeats, guitar solo spots and narration. The poster is about 4ft x 2ft and has lyrics both front and rear in very small font! lol…
Awesome band. By far the best progressive thrash-metal band in history. Heathen come a close second with their masterpiece ‘The Evolution Of Chaos’.
August 18, 2010 at 10:09 AM
Too bad the included lyrics aren’t 100% accurate! And they don’t include certain parts, either. I believe they were the baseline for the lyrics I edited — it took me several passes to really get them right. At least one part I had to refer to the book it was based on, because they weren’t in the sheet, and weren’t understandable.
Great album! Best concept album ever?
August 18, 2010 at 10:56 AM
It’s actually one of my all time favourite albums. I was a huge fan of german thrash metal band Kreator around that time and when I first heard Sabbat play at the berlin wall concerts with Kreator and all these other thrash bands (just after the fall of the berlin wall), I was hooked. It was the song ‘Funeral Pyre’ which got me hooked (and I still can’t find the song anywhere!). Sabbat wrote it especially for the concert, which was like a 3 week long celebration of live metal gigs with dozens of thrash metal bands, but Sabbat were one of the headliners along with Kreator and Sodom and a handful of others.
BTW: If you can find a copy of ‘Funeral Pyre’ by Sabbat, then post a link here! It’s a pretty rare song nowadays and I’ve only ever heard them play it once or twice!
August 18, 2010 at 10:59 AM
That song is called For Those Who Died, and is on their first studio album, A History Of A Time To Come, which has now been remastered.
With the right title, I think you’ll be able to snag it! :)
And yes – <3 Kreator. But not as much as Sabbat!
August 18, 2010 at 11:02 AM
It sounded very much like ‘For Those Who Died’ but had completely new riffs, instrumental sections and different lyrics. I think it was like a mix of two songs, but the song went for about 14 minutes.
August 18, 2010 at 11:06 AM
Sounds like it was just 2 songs to me :)
August 18, 2010 at 11:21 AM
They told the crowd that it was a song they wrote specially for Berlin. They started off with the first 5 minutes of ‘For Those Who Died’ then went on and played another 9 minutes of a song that isn’t on any of their studio albums or demos. It sounded more like the music from Dreamweaver, but the lyrics were focused mainly on the event and was like a sequel to ‘For Those Who Died’. After the song finished, they played this awesome 4 minute instrumental that also isn’t on any of their albums or demos and seemed to be something they wrote but never released.
Would love to get a copy of those concerts! :)
August 18, 2010 at 11:25 AM
The radio announced the last 3 Sabbat tracks as ‘For Those Who Died’, ‘Funeral Pyre’ and ‘Thankyou Berlin’.
Would love to see them live…
July 17, 2013 at 7:05 PM
Did you ever get those tracks?!? :)
August 18, 2010 at 11:37 AM
Well damn, that sounds awesome then!
August 18, 2010 at 11:28 AM
Any chance of Sabbat making a comeback? Would be huge news in the metal world. If those gods of progressive metal, Watchtower, can release their third album this year after 21 years of silence, then so can Sabbat!
Would love another thrash concept album.
August 18, 2010 at 11:38 AM
In a sense they came back with their reunion tour – and, apparently, songs I didn’t think existed that you just told me about! ;)
So yea – that would be really awesome. Let’s just hope it’s not another Mourning Has Broken; what a piece of shit that album was! :)
December 28, 2011 at 1:21 PM
A friend of mine ordered this album from Columbia House back in 1990 (it was a CD, I guess what was to become kind of a rare one, based on what you said about it being unavailable for so long). He thought it was a new Black Sabbath album when he ordered it, and he didn’t like it, so he gave it to me. I was instantly taken with it, mostly because of the obvious story it told and the fact that it was based on this book called The Way of Wyrd by Byran Bates. I wondered about that for years, but never really tried to research it. I did try to figure out the story on my own however, and kind of basically got the gist of it… that a Christian missionary had been sent to Southern England to convert pagans, and that he had wound up being converted, after being betrayed, murdered, enduring hell, learning some kind of lesson, and then granted leniency by the ‘sisters of servitude’.
Hearing about the considerable time and energy you spent trying to figure out the lyrics, and the fact that I’ve had lyrics to the entire album pretty much memorized all this time, makes me wish I could have helped out. But I see you got it all figured out in the end. I never knew what the prayer of desperation was at the end of ‘Do Dark Horses Dream of NIghtmares?’ until I read your blog, so thanks for that!
Oh. One more thing. My CD of this album accumulated a shit ton of scratches over the years, and a couple of months ago I tried to clean it up… first with the toothpaste trick. That didn’t work, and at the time my internet was shut off, so I had no way to look up the other tricks. I remembered two, I thought… one having to do with boiling the CD, and the other with microwaving it. I chose the easier route, and microwaved it. Well, as it turns out, what I had read about microwaving a CD wasn’t ‘how to fix it’ but ‘how to destroy it’. And WOW, what an interesting method of destruction! Suffice it to say that after a powerful flash of sparks and a smoke filled microwave, the CD was still whole, but looked as if it had shattered. Pretty cool, really, and a good way for it to go, after years of use and abuse.
December 28, 2011 at 1:24 PM
Ahahahaha, what a great story! I hope you ripped that CD before it was destroyed, but hey, at this point, I think it’s actually possible to find it again. Yay!
January 6, 2012 at 8:28 PM
I stressed out about not having that CD for a while, and not being able to listen to it. My interest waxes and wanes over the years… I’ll go years without hearing it, and then become obsessed with it again. When I tried to clean it, I was entering an ‘obsessed’ period. What with my internet being off, I was basically screwed at being able to find a copy, so when I finally got hooked up again, I found a torrent for it and queued it for download. It took three days, as there was only one guy seeding, but ‘thanks guy, who was seeding!’ I’d like to have the actual CD again though, the original and not just some burned mp3’s, as some of the songs run together from track to track, and there are gaps when just listening to the mp3’s. And I lost the foldout years ago that had all the lyrics and artwork and the photograph of the band. Plus, if I really like a band, I also like to buy at least some of their stuff. Funny though… I had my mom make copies of that CD foldout back in the early 90’s for a friend of mine (this was back before home computers and scanners and printers, and her work had a copy machine), and I cut em down and stapled em together and made a ‘bootleg’ foldout for a friend to go with the tape I made of the CD for him. I wonder if he still has it, I haven’t seen him in 12 years.
January 6, 2012 at 8:38 PM
I don’t consider the songs to run together, I think there’s an exact moment when one switches to the next. Unfortunately, not even the cd (?) gets it right, and all the torrented cassette/older versions I had got it blatantly wrong. It’s okay though, I fix things like that in processing before music makes its final resting place in my mp3 repository.
I like gaps between songs. Esp cause I listen in random usually. But it’s easy to get around that. Winamp has both internal settings and external plugins for gapless playbakc, for those who like it. The album art is all on wikipedia. I have a complete set of lyrics I edited myself, sometimes using the Way Of The Wyrd book to figure out what they were saying (the lyric sheet on the album is both incomplete and wrong in many places).
You may be able to actually buy it now that it’s back in print :)
January 6, 2012 at 11:33 PM
They don’t run together as songs in and of of themselves, but ‘Advent of Insanity’ has a few seconds of ‘Do Dark Horses Dream of Nightmares?’ – the part where brand describes the sky as his blanket and the earth as his bed – before getting on with the other 98% of the song on the next track. Also, ‘Do Dark Horses Dream of Nightmares?’ does the same thing by including the beginning of ‘The Best of Enemies’ – the part spoken by Wulf, inquiring as to what Brand was doing walking across the graves of giants – as the last few seconds of the song, This creates ‘broken pieces of the songs’ before the next track is accessed, and the result is that both songs start rather abruptly. It played cleanly on the CD, but the odd track change was noticeable when I’d jump from one track to the next. Why they did it that way is beyond me.
I’d heard that you can edit the gaps between songs, or particular songs, with certain music players like Winamp, but for a good long while now, and since I watch a lot of movies, I haven’t used anything except VLC for all of my media. I like Winamp and I used to use it, but I also like to keep things simple because I have a lazy streak… so I just CLICK REAL FAST after Advent of Insanity and Do Dark Horses Dream of Nightmares. Maybe all that hectic clicking just to get the next track going as quickly and with as little break between songs as possible is actually more work in the long run, but I’ll probably never actually dig into Winamp to set up that track gap option thing. Somehow, clicking furiously seems like less work than shifting the gears of my brain into ‘thinking and figuring shit out mode’. I wonder which burns more calories?
So, you actually saw Sabbat live? I saw a couple of videos on YouTube of them playing some live shows very recently, and that made me glad that they’re still alive and kicking. I never really knew that much about them, except having Dreamweaver memorized from beginning to end, and I’d wondered if they had stayed together or still played shows or had ever released anything new. I’ve never really been that into thrash metal, and Dreamweaver is the only album by Sabbat I’ve ever actually heard. There was a reference in the CD foldout to an album which came before, called Mythistory, and lately I’ve heard of another album called Mourning Has Broken, but from what I’ve gathered, it apparently isn’t that well liked.
Also… concerning the prayer at the end of ‘Do Dark Horses Dream of Nightmares?’ which to me had always sounded something like this:
“Oh you….(unintelligible)…in the name of the Eternal Lord….(unintelligible)…from the eyes of heaven, to cease from this disturbance.”
Based on just that, I was fairly certain that what was being uttered by Wat Brand was a prayer of desperation, offered as a last ditch effort to stave off his imminent terror and the ongoing torment inflicted on him by what I’d inferred to be Woden and his entourage of woodland imps and rascals. I always felt kind of sorry for Wat Brand because of that, what with him having been perfectly happy back home leading his cloistered life, probably in a monastery, bathing in the light of the Lord and doing whatever it is that scribes do. I also find it interesting to consider that the reason why God didn’t actually answer Wat Brand’s prayer – to command the wretched and perverse spirits to cease their tormenting of him – was because he wasn’t on God’s errand to begin with, since the Catholic Church wasn’t doing God’s will by using violence and coercion as a means to convert the pagans. So, thanks again for posting it, as a mystery going on 22 years for me has finally been solved!
Anywho. It’s good to know that the album is back in print. Have you listened to any other Sabbat? If you have, and based on Dreamweaver, do you think I’d like any of it? Because if so, maybe I’ll order some of their other stuff too, when I get around to purchasing Dreamweaver.
Oh, and one more thing. That book, The Way of Wyrd… does it read like a novel? IS it a novel? I’d always kind of imagined it as reading in more of a poetically descriptive, academic style – kind of like The Silmarillion, or Beowulf, or The Divine Comedy – as opposed to being told with the modern style and immediacy of an ongoing story or adventure.
July 17, 2013 at 7:24 PM
Elias,
Sorry I forgot to reply to your comment 1.5 years ago. I’ll reply now…
1) Track changes.
* Yes, I disagree with a lot of track barriers, and as part of my music assimilation process I always open up every single song in a waveform editor and look for associated weirdness that I subjectively fix based on my own personal preferences.
I know for this album, I definitely cut up the songs differently. My version is the best version! :D
* Winamp has options for automatically trimming silence between songs. Built in. No need to edit the actual files. VLC is a great program, but Winamp has a more specialized purpose, and is far more of a mature, robust, full-featured product. Winamp in conjunction with Milkdrop visualizer in conjunction with EvilLyrics karaoke lyrics sent to milkdrop, all while logging tracks played to Last.FM for visual graphs of music listening habits at the end of the year….. (see some at http://www.flickr.com/photos/clintjcl/tags/lastfm ) …… VLC just can’t do that.
Winamp’s option is pretty easy to find. Googling where it is probably makes it even quicker.
2) Yup saw them live. It was awesome! You should check out History Of A Time To Come. It’s not quite as good as Dreamweaver, and is not a coherent concept album telling a single story. But the seeds of Dreamweaver are clearly evident, message and style wise.
DO NOT LISTEN TO MOURNING HAS BROKEN.
Mourning Has Broken: Not Even Once.
It is a different singer & style. Yuck.
3) You are right about the prayer. I got it from the book for my lyrics.txt file… It has the full text. Your analysis is excellent and impeccable. I hadn’t even caught on/realized/remembered the whole will-of-God and why God didn’t answer his prayers, actually. I thought it was more about God not existing. :) At least, not THAT god…
4) The book.. Yes, it reads like a novel, actually. It is a story as much as the album. It’s the companion piece. Everyone who loves this album should really get a copy. It’s not that Silmarillion-ish. It’s a definite narrative. There was a lot of research put into by Brian Bates, but it’s still a fictional story that could easily be turned into a movie…! It is an adventure, I’d say.
January 6, 2012 at 11:42 PM
Oh, and:
“I wish I had time to fully review this amazing album by Sabbat (official website HERE) (buy the album HERE). I wish I had time to speak of the extent to which it has, at times, affected me more than any other album. I wish I had time to speak at length about my long search for the book it was based on, and the experience of finally finding and reading that book some 12 years ago.”
I wish you had time to go into all of that stuff too. It’d be interesting to hear what you consider to be a full review, since what you posted seemed pretty dang full to me. I’d be interested to hear about the other things too.
January 9, 2012 at 7:22 PM
ROTFLMAO! Thanks for calling me out on my bullshit there. Yes indeed. This is the fullest review of any review I’ll ever write in my life. Why I alluded to it being only partial is beyond me. I think I was just getting caught up in how much I like it :)
January 6, 2012 at 11:47 PM
Oh, and, again… I realize I got the name of the second to the last song on Dreamweaver confused with the name of the previous album, A History Of A Time To Come. In the liner notes, the reference to that album is a ‘thank you’ from the band, to everyone who had been involved and helped out since ‘History’, which is the way they put it. That’s why I got discombobulated. Ok, I’ll stop spamming your blog now.
February 1, 2012 at 6:37 PM
Haha, I don’t mind :)
New update: Nic Cage used this book to inspire his acting in Ghost Rider. (WTF)
http://www.empireonline.com/interviews/interview.asp?IID=1444
June 12, 2016 at 8:39 PM
The age of the eBook is here, and I finally got it into my head to search for the book, ‘The Way of Wyrd’. I found it surprisingly easily.
It reads a lot like ‘The Teachings of Don Juan – A Yaqui Way of Knowledge’. Not Don Juan, the womanizer. This book is by Carlos Castaneda, and it’s extremely similar to ‘The Way if Wyrd’, in that a somewhat naive seeker of knowledge is pulled headlong into an awareness of ‘a separate reality’ – the spirit world, in other words – by a Yaqui Indian sorcerer. The two books are EXTREMELY similar in style and tone, but set in the 1960’s. It’s also a supposedly true account of the author’s personal experiences.
One thing I noticed gradually while reading ‘The Way of Wyrd’ is that the story is much gentler than Sabbat’s album version. Never in the book do I get the feeling that Wat Brand and Wulf are enemies; neither do I perceive any condescension from Wulf regarding Wat Brand’s Christian beliefs. Wulf is more like a father figure to Brand; sympathetic and genuinely caring about what happens to him. He even returns his lost crucifix to him at the end.
I was a little surprised by this difference in tone between the book and the album, having been conditioned for 25 years to perceive the story according to the music. I’m not upset though. The album is, of course, an interpretation of the book, and probably reflects a lot of the personal attitudes and beliefs of the musicians. This is just fine. It’s great, in fact. It’s thrash metal, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
One thing I never got around to mentioning four years ago; or clarifying, rather…
Yeah. The songs don’t run into each other, but a couple of the tracks do.
At the end of ‘Advent of Insanity’, the first part of ‘Do Dark Horses Dream of Nightmares?’ plays. Just the first part:
“Standing on a strange shore. This desolate coastline… it offers cold comfort. Very little more than the sky for a blanket… the Earth for my bed.”
Just those lyrics, and a few seconds of guitar sustain…
Then it immediately switches tracks and goes into “The threads upon the loom of life…”
A similar thing happens at the end of ‘Do Dark Horses Dream of Nightmares?’ Just the first part of ‘The Best of Enemies’:
(crickets chirping)
“Who are you that walks across the graves of Giants at this late hour?”
Just that, and then it immediately switches tracks to the guitar riff at the beginning of ‘The Best of Enemies’.
I’ve downloaded the album from two different sources, and the mp3’s and flac files are chopped up like that, too.
So, it seems purposeful… and when playing the original CD, it’s a smooth transition between tracks with no perceptible gap.
As to why they would do that… who knows? At the time, CDs were still a relatively recent phenomenon and overlapping tracks was kind of trendy back then, and mp3’s were still practically a decade away.
Then again, maybe they just wanted to irritate anyone who taped the CD. It’s definitely irritating to those of us in the far future, who are listening to digital versions of ‘Dreamweaver’ on pocket computers.
November 24, 2015 at 9:42 AM
At some point, this review was removed from the Wikipedia page, probably because me submitting it is “original research”. If anyone else wants to submit this…
June 12, 2016 at 8:43 PM
Hell, I’ll submit it. Just the link to the article, or the complete text? How would you like it done?
June 12, 2016 at 8:54 PM
Thanks! Probably just the link…. Too much, and the wiki-warriors come and scrub everything away! :) And thanks for the great comments!