Growing up as a ruthless barbarian in a desolate and cruel world born made Conan the toughest around. He is the wet dream of every orthodox power metal fan and the unspoken desire of funderground war metal addicts. This is a list of the 10 underground metal songs that this head crusher chose for us:
10. Blood – Sodomize the Weak
Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.
9. Atrocity – Hold Out (To The End)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD1_hxikP2E
Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that two stood against many. That’s what’s important! Valor pleases you, Crom… so grant me one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!
8. Cirith Ungol – Master of the Pit
The riddle… of steel.
7. Iron Maiden- The Duelist
For us, there is no spring. Just the wind that smells fresh before the storm.
6. Bathory – To Enter Your Mountain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMHMqY6z_U4
He is strong! If I die, I have to go before him, and he will ask me, “What is the riddle of steel?” If I don’t know it, he will cast me out of Valhalla and laugh at me. That’s Crom, strong on his mountain!
5. Manowar – Pleasure Slave
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA-tNjnecog
They’re all sluts! He’s dead already!
4. Rhapsody – Steelgods Of The Last Apocalypse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO0Rwal55rQ
Crom laughs at your four winds. He laughs from his mountain.
3. Kreator – Carrion
Does it always smell like this? How does the wind ever get in here?
2. Candlemass – Demons Gate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCegBrwvB7Q
CONAN: You killed my mother! You killed my father, you killed my people! You took my father’s sword!
1. Immortal – As the Eternity Opens
Adieu!
Tags: clickbait, conan, conan the barbarian, conan the destroyer, filler, humor, mainstream metal, riddle of steel, underground metal
Manowar – All Men Play On 10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcWCjkpo_y0
Kreator? Atrocity? Manowar? I always thought Conan would be interested in the nuanced compositional styles of Ulver and the folk-tinged electronica bite of mid period Tiamat.
What daring! What arrogance! I salute you!
I think the Howard Conan is much more interesting than Arnold’s Conan though. The big idea behind the original character is that he’s always the most insightful guy in the room in spite of (because of) his lack of civilized education, while Arnold comes across more as a dumb brute who only says Warry the Warrior stuff. Howard made him simplistic in a poetic way:
“Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content”.
You forgot Thulsa Doom’s flesh that wields the steel lecture.
Crom – The Cocaine Wars 1974-1989
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPbbIc12Yc4
Food. I have not eaten in days.
And who says you will?
I like this change of pace of examining music at the track level. Brett Stevens seems to think anyone who singles out individual tracks is insane or a prole. I understand the importance of listening to whole albums but sometimes focusing on tracks can reveal nuances that can’t be described at the album level.
Plus it’s much easier to give someone a taste of good music if you give them a carefully chosen sample track rather than suggesting they commit to listening to an entire album first.
Are you sure about that? I’ve been reading DMU for a couple of years and I don’t recall seeing that opinion from any of its writers. I’m fairly sure I’ve seen numerous articles in which Brett has highlighted individual tracks from different artists. Here’s one such recent article of his that springs to mind: https://www.deathmetal.org/review/smoking-with-tolkien-capstan-original-navy-cut/
Saw that, seemed like an exception though I enjoyed that article, and the tracks, very much.
Nobody here is examining music at a track-by-track level. It’s just that some are mentioned as examples, that’s all. This article in particular is just a fun way of blowing off steam. We will continue emphasizing the importance of whole-work listening.
I suppose you are correct, this was more fun than a critical examination. Though it seems you have written at least one article examining an individual track before, and it was very good. Again I think it explained subtleties that could not easily be conveyed in a whole album review.
https://www.deathmetal.org/article/on-chapel-of-ghouls-and-the-sonata-form/