Rock music has long had to face criticism levelled at it relating to the subject matter that it works with, lyrically speaking. Since Led Zeppelin Rambled On towards Mordor and Rush paid tribute to Rivendell, rock music has been accused of not living in the real world and indulging in child-like flights of fantasy.
Well, The Raven Age shows us that you can take quasi-mythological characters and otherworldly references and use them as the basis of music, which still sounds mature and sophisticated, blurring the lines between the real world and something beyond it. Music for the liminal fringes where worlds, both real and imagined, collide.
In many ways, a concept album, one based around the legend of the ravens leaving the Tower of London, Blood Omen is also a musical musing on the fall of old hierarchies and the restoration of power by a more deserving figure, here called The Raven King, an analogy for justice perhaps.
Parasite, the first single from the album, makes such sentiments clear, a grinding groove driving riotous riffs and blistering beats; this is heavy stuff, yet so deftly put together that for every ounce of muscle, there is the same quotient of melody, for every dash of anthemics, there are two of accessibility.
The Journey shows a band who knows when to ease off the gas slightly; here, they create a slow-burning, dynamically changeable cascade of soar crescendos and understated lows. And by the time we get to the final song, Tears of Stone, we have experienced a tsunami of heavy grooves and rock moves. The riffs are explosive, the beats relentless, the vocal deliveries incendiary, and the songs big, bold, brash and bombastic in the way that only the best rock songs can be.
Rush might have recreated a sonic Rivendell, but The Raven Age manage to blend mythology and heritage with political ideology. Led Zeppelin might have Rambled On, The Raven Age rock out, and that is a much more fun prospect!