The 1970s were a golden age for fantasy dorks. Sure, you might've been pulverized after school on a regular basis, but even as your bruises were swelling, the line between cool and uncool already was blurring—Led Zeppelin was singing about the Misty Mountain, while Sabbath was paying homage to a certain gray wizard. And perhaps most fundamental to the evolution of nerd culture, Dungeons & Dragons was born.
Admittedly, D&D isn't always thought of as the most musical pastime, but that may change next week when rarities label Numero Group releases Wayfaring Strangers: Darkscorch Canticles, a collection of early-'70s, pre-metal underground hard rock, all inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien, Dungeons & Dragons, and the fantasy worlds they created. Did we say next week? Yes, but you can listen to it right now, ahead of its March 4 release, with this exclusive stream.
Numero has been releasing deep-cut archive compilations for more than a decade; Darkscorch has been four years in the making. It started, as many nerd quests often do, when the label's founders came across some old D&D fan art.
"Bands like Zeppelin and Sabbath making references to magic and Lord of the Rings was what got us thinking about it," co-founder Rob Sevier says. "We thought to ourselves, 'What kind of album would this [art] illustrate?' [Then we found] the Sonaura 45 ["Song of Sauron"], and realized that there really were lots of obscure hard rock records along these same lines. It didn't have to be a fantasy—we could make the project we were imagining."
Unless you're an unusually dedicated '70s rock fiend, chances are you haven't heard any of the underground bands on Darkscorch Canticles before. (If you need a recommendation on where to start, Wrath's "Warlord" is one of Sevier's—and our—favorites.) That's because, according to Sevier, the criteria for the album was pretty strict, so that Wayfaring Strangers would capture a previously unearthed moment in time. "[The acts had to] reside sonically in the early 1970s, and live in a world dominated by Zeppelin or Sabbath," he says. "There are some tracks from a few years later, but they were anachronisms, generally. Heavy metal is a whole can of worms, so we were trying to stay in a pre-metal territory. Partly this was our preference, but there's also no solid compilations [representing] this underground era."
The result is a collection of rare, awesomely lo-fi songs that run the gamut of epic fantasy themes, from sorcery to necromancy to the All-Knowing Eye himself.
It gets better: In May, Numero will release a D&D-meets-the-rock-gods tabletop RPG called Cities of Darkscorch, a game based on the ideas and artwork by amateur artist Robert "Rozz" Soden around the same time as the songs on Wayfaring Strangers were recorded. (If you can wait two months until the game's release, it comes complete with a double-LP version of the compilation.)
The game is exactly what you hoped it would be: like Metalocalypse come to life. According to the game's description, one to six players can roleplay as any of Wayfaring Strangers' 16 artists, "battling such forbidding quartets as Grimsword, Narcissus, Ass-Centaur, and 97 more, to collect city banners from such pits of hard rock competition as Afterdath, Wizard’s Wellspring, and Throk. Along the way players may augment their bands through the use of fate cards with new artwork from the demented minds of John McGavock McConnell and Eliza Childress. The ultimate goal is Numenor, victory, and a record contract penned in brimstone, VD, and pot smoke."
Best of all, you don't have to have a Dungeon Master to play the game. "RPGs tend to be difficult and involved,"says Sevier. "We wanted to do something that anyone could play and have fun with. We've all played it many times, as it required significant testing to work the kinks out. This is the first time we've created a game, but not the first time we've conceived of a game."
So for those about to rock—and roll—we salute you.
