My favorite Power Metal Band in the entirety of Dane County, Wisconsin The Lords of the Trident have once again...perhaps foolishly...accepted my invitation to discuss all the comings and goings of their existence.
If you haven't yet, get over to their website to purchase Shadows of the Past and you can thank me for that later.
This time I spoke with them about whatever came to mind really.
Make sure you've got enough arrows in your quiver and check it out below.
Glacially Musical: Thank you for taking some time for me today.
Lords of the Trident: Absolutely! Happy to be back!
GM: My first question goes back to the vinyl release of Shadows From The Past. And it's not the only one I've got like this, but why did you choose to release it as two 45 RPM 12" discs?
LOT: When it came time to look at formats and speeds, we realized that the whole album wouldn’t fit on a single 33RPM record - we’d have to do two.
33RPM has a maximum playtime of about 20 min per side, and that’s if you really make the audio quiet. We wanted the fidelity and the loudness of the album to be at maximum, and since we were going to have to make a double-vinyl anyway, we decided to cut it at 45RPM.
This allows for greater fidelity, greater volume, and better overall quality to the record.
GM: This isn't the first album by any stretch, but it was the first vinyl album. What was it like to hold your record for the first time?
LOT: It was a surreal experience. Vinyl is just so...big! The thing that stuck out to me right away was how absolutely breathtaking the artwork looked in a larger format.
GM: Switching gears a moment, from recent conversations, I know you're located in Madison, WI. What brought you there and what keeps you there?
LOT: The weather! No, just kidding. A lot of people think that a band needs to move to Nashville, Chicago, or New York to “make it big”, but in the age of the internet, this is really no longer the case. Since we’re situated in the middle of the country, it’s equally easy to reach Boston as it is to reach Seattle.
That being said, a majority of the population of the US lives more East than West, which is why we primarily tour east from Wisconsin. Additionally, we really enjoy the culture of the Midwest, and Madison, in particular, is an amazing city for music.
Everyone supports each other, and the city at large is vested in creating a good environment for live music to grow. We’re the home of companies like Sonic Foundry, Broadjam, and Frank Productions.
If we didn’t have the internet, we might be limited as to what we could do from Madison...but nowadays, that’s clearly no longer the case.
GM: My favorite moment on the album was The Party Has Arrived/Brothers of Cain. That sequence was beautiful. Did you guys play the strings?
LOT: Not this time! We actually conscripted a local quartet to play the parts. The Baron wrote all the parts, printed all the sheet music, and brought them into the studio.
The musicians hadn’t seen the score before the session, so what you hear on the record is one of the first times they’re playing this together. It’s raw and very cool to hear.
GM: The narrative structure of that song was quite strong and honestly that track gives me chills when I hear it. Do you think you could write a narrative through an entire album?
LOT: We’d talked about doing a concept album before, but we wanted to make sure that the concept was something that we could all really get behind.
The pacing, characters, and themes would have to be something that we’d be able to invest a lot of time and effort into crafting, otherwise, the album would seem hollow.
The basic rule is this: If we can’t write at least a 50-page short story about the concept, it’s not worth making into an album. So far, we haven’t come up with anything that strong, but I definitely foresee us making more multi-part songs.
GM: With as long as you've been writing these power metal anthems, do you find it hard to find new topics to write about?
LOT: You’d think so, but no! There’s always something new out there that’s inspiring us, and we’ve got five different creative minds coming up with topics for lyrics, so the process always seems easy.
The hard part is finding the right words and phrases that invoke the most emotion.
GM: How much more powerful can power metal be?
LOT: We’re on a quest to find that out!
GM: What are the five most important albums of all time?
LOT: Ha, that’s a loaded question! It’s going to differ from person to person, and whether you’re just talking about power metal, metal in general, or all music.
I’m by no means qualified to give an academic answer for any of those categories - I can only tell you what my favorite albums are. If we’re talking about the importance, I’d probably say one of the early Van Halen albums (for the guitar work), one of the early Black Sabbath albums, and probably Dio’s Holy Diver.
GM: What did I miss?
LOT: We just came out with YET ANOTHER album called Pull the Plug. This one’s an all-acoustic album that was 100% funded by our patreon backers.
It’s out now on digital services, but if you sign up for the Patreon, you’ll get it for free! https://patreon.com/
LOT: When it came time to look at formats and speeds, we realized that the whole album wouldn’t fit on a single 33RPM record - we’d have to do two.
33RPM has a maximum playtime of about 20 min per side, and that’s if you really make the audio quiet. We wanted the fidelity and the loudness of the album to be at maximum, and since we were going to have to make a double-vinyl anyway, we decided to cut it at 45RPM.
This allows for greater fidelity, greater volume, and better overall quality to the record.
GM: This isn't the first album by any stretch, but it was the first vinyl album. What was it like to hold your record for the first time?
LOT: It was a surreal experience. Vinyl is just so...big! The thing that stuck out to me right away was how absolutely breathtaking the artwork looked in a larger format.
GM: Switching gears a moment, from recent conversations, I know you're located in Madison, WI. What brought you there and what keeps you there?
LOT: The weather! No, just kidding. A lot of people think that a band needs to move to Nashville, Chicago, or New York to “make it big”, but in the age of the internet, this is really no longer the case. Since we’re situated in the middle of the country, it’s equally easy to reach Boston as it is to reach Seattle.
That being said, a majority of the population of the US lives more East than West, which is why we primarily tour east from Wisconsin. Additionally, we really enjoy the culture of the Midwest, and Madison, in particular, is an amazing city for music.
Everyone supports each other, and the city at large is vested in creating a good environment for live music to grow. We’re the home of companies like Sonic Foundry, Broadjam, and Frank Productions.
If we didn’t have the internet, we might be limited as to what we could do from Madison...but nowadays, that’s clearly no longer the case.
GM: My favorite moment on the album was The Party Has Arrived/Brothers of Cain. That sequence was beautiful. Did you guys play the strings?
LOT: Not this time! We actually conscripted a local quartet to play the parts. The Baron wrote all the parts, printed all the sheet music, and brought them into the studio.
The musicians hadn’t seen the score before the session, so what you hear on the record is one of the first times they’re playing this together. It’s raw and very cool to hear.
GM: The narrative structure of that song was quite strong and honestly that track gives me chills when I hear it. Do you think you could write a narrative through an entire album?
LOT: We’d talked about doing a concept album before, but we wanted to make sure that the concept was something that we could all really get behind.
The pacing, characters, and themes would have to be something that we’d be able to invest a lot of time and effort into crafting, otherwise, the album would seem hollow.
The basic rule is this: If we can’t write at least a 50-page short story about the concept, it’s not worth making into an album. So far, we haven’t come up with anything that strong, but I definitely foresee us making more multi-part songs.
GM: With as long as you've been writing these power metal anthems, do you find it hard to find new topics to write about?
LOT: You’d think so, but no! There’s always something new out there that’s inspiring us, and we’ve got five different creative minds coming up with topics for lyrics, so the process always seems easy.
The hard part is finding the right words and phrases that invoke the most emotion.
GM: How much more powerful can power metal be?
LOT: We’re on a quest to find that out!
GM: What are the five most important albums of all time?
LOT: Ha, that’s a loaded question! It’s going to differ from person to person, and whether you’re just talking about power metal, metal in general, or all music.
I’m by no means qualified to give an academic answer for any of those categories - I can only tell you what my favorite albums are. If we’re talking about the importance, I’d probably say one of the early Van Halen albums (for the guitar work), one of the early Black Sabbath albums, and probably Dio’s Holy Diver.
GM: What did I miss?
LOT: We just came out with YET ANOTHER album called Pull the Plug. This one’s an all-acoustic album that was 100% funded by our patreon backers.
It’s out now on digital services, but if you sign up for the Patreon, you’ll get it for free! https://patreon.com/
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