Year Of Metal #017: Cirith Ungol - King Of The Dead
Early on in Cirith Ungol’s 1984 power metal opus King Of The Dead, I’m worried. The band are named after some obscure Tolkein reference (I haven’t the stomach to look into it any further), and the album cover - while delightful - is heavily steeped in fantasy, a brave warrior fighting a skeleton king, or something. Either of those elements alone would be OK, but when combined, plus the operatic shrieks of Tim Baker on opener “Atom Smasher”, alarm bells are ringing.
Luckily the first track is, if not a stylistic outlier, certainly one of the weaker tracks. The bass is particularly off-putting - it’s a bit lumpy and muffled, front and centre, too, so you can’t ignore it. From “Black Machine” onward, though, this record is killer. Baker’s power vocals are far better here - he snaps into catchy phrases then falls back, a nice give and take with the crunching riffs. The solos start to come into their own here, too, Jerry Fogle’s lead lines rising up and up.
Even better is “Master Of The Pit”, a seven minute effort that’s just jam packed. I’ve seen Cirith Ungol described as an early doom act - that doesn’t always come across, but here the track’s built around a thudding doom backdrop, over which Fogle is free to go hog wild. His work’s like a crash course in heavy guitar possibilities. He taps, shreds, applies some brilliantly abrasive effects (there’s a cool passage with an octave pedal that feels far beyond most doom or power acts). The pacing and structure on all these solos is highly impressive - he always knows exactly where to find the peak, he’s forever building towards something.
They drive harder on “Death Of The Sun”, which ups the pace and the fuzz behind a particularly abrasive riff. Like Crimson Glory from a while back, much of the joy in Cirith Ungol’s music comes from a complete lack of interest in being cool. They self produced the album and it shows (in a mostly great way) - the tracks are unconventional, lurching, structurally complex. There’s clearly no one but them steering the ship.
They’re even allowed to entertain an almost parodically goofy metal idea, chucking in a cover Bach’s “Toccata In Dm” (the album dropped just three months after This Is Spinal Tap). It’s ludicrous in concept and execution but you can’t say it doesn’t sound good. The little descending guitar and bass passages are a joy.
They cap it all off in true metal fashion with a song called “Cirith Ungol”, a sort of summation of everything they’ve achieved these past 50 minutes. It has the glam leanings, the dirge-like plod, the carefully considered guitar explorations. A record this self assured and free should always be celebrated, especially when it comes out as good as this.
