What is the coolest thing that could ever happen to a person? Yes, that’s right! Finding out that a heavy-metal band in Siberia has written a song based on one of your short stories!
This has actually happened! Purely by chance, I came across a link on the Web that led me to an excellent heavy-metal band named Blacksword. Blacksword is Alex Avdeev (guitar), Serge Konev (singer), Ivan “the Viking” (bass and acoustic guitar), Artyom Omelenchuk (guitar), and Vyacheslav Aparin (drums). Alex in particular is a big fan of dark fantasy and sword-and-sorcery fiction, one result being that the Blacksword track “Sword Arm” is based on my novelette Engor’s Sword Arm, which Morgan Holmes published back in the mid 1990s.
Man, this makes me happy!
Go read the interview with Alex. He discusses the influence of American heavy metal on Blacksword, the state of metal in the world today, life in Siberia (cold), and the release of their upcoming CD (soon!), The Sword Accurst, which will be available from Echoes of Crom Records.
Echoes of Crom is the label begun by Howie Bentley, the mastermind behind the band Briton Rites, who is himself a big fan of dark fantasy and s&s, particularly Michael Moorcock, Clark Ashton Smith, and, I proudly note, The Sorcerer’s Shadow.
Folks, go to Blacksword’s site, listen to the tracks available there (including “Sword Arm”), and order their CD. This is the real stuff.