Giddy the fuck up!!!

Just a normal lake, like all the other 187 888 lakes in this country. Shades of green for hope, a touch of blue for happiness – or blues if you like, but this is a metal blog for fuck's sake. It looks kind of nice, but only because it’s a nice picture. Places like this are as ugly or beautiful as the eye of the beholder manages to see it.

So with a little bit of talent or luck you can shoot a great picture that is praised in TNT magazine or you get an image that ends up waiting recycling.

Not the same with the mountain. Any picture about this mountain would be interesting to say the least. With its smoking peak and fiery inside it could be an awesome and frightening site. I’m not sure if it is close to the aforementioned lake or not as I don’t actually know where it is. I believe there are no other mountains like this although there could be thousands of them, all that in the blink of an eye. It’s easy when you’re imagining things.

The lake is real nevertheless. If it were to find similarities in the two places the first thing that comes to mind would be this narrow, triangle shaped platform that can be perceived as a runway.

This one leads to water while the other leads to fire but they are both ending points. Or starting points, bridges to another dimension, if you want to put your mind to it and if you have the courage to go all the way. Otherwise they are just part of the landscape.

The lake and the mountain bore peacefully everything nature throw at them as part of their nature. Then everything changed.

                  Evil crept in the picture, slowly, smoothly, unnoticed at first. Step by step it made his presence felt more and more. It all culminated when took a physical form and forged powerful artifacts in the mountain, artifacts that would bring more evil to the world.

                         As the mood was growing darker the sky has grown darker as well over the lake. Something wild was taking over. It wasn’t the fish who got in trouble though when evil made his presence here. Three teenagers were murdered on the shore of the lake at dawn and a fourth one was left in agony. The criminal or criminals were never caught.

The lake ceased to be just a lake like all the other 187 888. It got stained forever. Or at least until it fades from human memory. It’s harder to stain a big body of water with blood than with oil but this place showed that is possible. It’s a lot cheaper as well. The stories begun, legends were born and the lake froze in an arctic sleep..

It became a doomed place. Which is interesting, because that is actually the name of the mountain. Mount Doom. The lake’s real name is Bodom, but I guess – hope – you know that already. Its dubious fame made it appealing to a group of teenagers who, some four decades later, were searching for a band name. They had the mind-blowing idea to search in the phone book, which, as we know, it’s full of names. I’m glad though that they chose a name not a phone number. So when they came across the name of the lake – I’m guessing again: does the lake have a phone number? – they decided to incorporate the name of the lake in the name of the band.

The mountain was doomed as well, by name and by nature. It was created for that. The reason for its existence is that a genius man at the beginning of the 20^th century constructed a couple of languages and he thought: why not create a world for these languages to exist? Using this excuse he created Middle Earth and thought up a story just good enough to dazzle the whole world and to monopolize the special effects category at the Oscars from the start of this century. One of the constructed languages is Sindarin and the name of the mountain in that speech is Amon Amarth. This was appealing for some Swedish guys who made it their band name.

After taking in consideration many variations of names with the word Bodom the guys from Finland finally settled with Children of Bodom but their music was no child’s play, thus they became a leading name in metal. Now, more than a decade later they managed a feat that even Mohamed failed to achieve: they made the mountain come to them. Come with them to be more precise as they invited Amon Amarth to play with them a couple of shows on the European leg of their Ugly world tour. This metal storm is expected to hit London in the early evening hours of April 9^th and it’s expected to last… well who knows. For starters the Swedish band Machinae Supremacy will try to get the mood right. They had the crazy idea to incorporate a SidStation into their music, so they music sounds like a computer game 20 years ago, sadly their only original feature was the Sid sound so their music doesn’t really stand out without it and even with it it’s not that good. They will be followed – just to keep the balance of Swedes and Fins even for the night – by a folk metal band from Finland, Ensiferum. Yes, another Finnish folk metal band, I could say: Tu quoque, Ensiferum, fili me, just to stay in tone with the spirit of the day.

After these two bands the mountain and the lake will have its way with everyone at HMV Forum, but, from my humble point of view though the most important thing is this:

It seems that finally we can kick start our metal life in London with a gig that promises to be a real treat. Had to wait a bit to get the tickets so I’ll better make sure and store them in a safe place, don’t want to lose them, I’ll even hired guards to protect it:

guardians from Diabolus Dei on Vimeo.