Karl gives Steve the “You are going to announce this song to the audience and tell them what the hell it’s supposed be about” look. Not that any explaination has ever made sense, with all those Martian words…
The audience has been slow tonight. People seemed to want to dance rather than listen, which means they did get to play the acoustic ballad “When the Madness Came to Stay”, as well one or two songs in strange time signatures that it’s impossible to dance to.
The song begins with a long instrumental intro, with Karl playing an orchestral wash of keyboards while Ravila plays some very spooky electric violin. Then they switch instruments as the rhythm section cuts in, with Ravila taking over the keyboards and Karl playing that dark and menacing guitar riff, evoking primordial Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.
After two minutes, the band reach the point where the vocals come in. Steve starts singing, building up intensity bit by bit, at first what he is saying not audible, and then becoming moreso.
All the while, the master of the stretched-skin percussion let his sticks do the talking, providing the rhythm for Karl and Steve to wield their musical magic…
Karl puts the nightmares about squid to the back of his mind, and concentrates on the music. His instrumental break turned out to be one of those solos, unrecognisably different from the solo he played in this song the night before, or the version on the album.
He played, possibly literally, like a man possessed.
Karl didn’t so much play the guitar, as form a living conduit for the music to flow, seemingly from somewhere else. The notes and phrases sounded unlike any other guitar player on earth. Not quite the blues-based scales of Eric Clapton. Not quite the neo-classical shredding on Yngwie Malmsteen. Not quite the abrasive style of Robert Fripp. Bits of all of them, perhaps. But there was more.
Is sounded like it came from another dimension. Was it from Heaven or from Hell?
Or from somewhere else entirely?
He winds down to a hypnotically repetitive figure behind Steve’s vocals for the call and response chanting section.
Steve grins as he moves forward. This part… was fun.
Very much fun.
His voice sounds like it belongs to something out of a nightmare, the words as if they were being ripped from an unwilling throat. .
Ph’nglui Mglw’nfah Cthulhu R’lyeh Wgah’nagl Fhtagn
Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fthagn!
This time Karl doesn’t break into the old Black Sabbath riff he started playing the night before. Instead turns the reverb all the way up to Eleven as he repeats the previous four-note figure again and again. With Ravila playing a subtly different four-note figure equally reverbed electric violin, there’s a hypnotic wall of sound behind Steve’s unholy and alien chanting.
Sometimes it creeps the audience out, and they don’t respond.
Ph’nglui Mglw’nfah Cthulhu R’lyeh Wgah’nagl Fhtagn
Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fthagn!
Sometimes they pick up and repeat the chant. Then it creeps Karl out.
Ph’nglui Mglw’nfah Cthulhu R’lyeh Wgah’nagl Fhtagn
Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fthagn!
The above quote is an edited compilation of postings from Art in the Blood, AJ and myself.
