11 October, 2022

Haunting, Nocturnal Notes

The blackness of the night was punctured by the occasional flash of lightning. A strong storm was rolling through but, as a teenager with headphones on, ensconced in my own little world, I barely registered the peal of thunder in the distance. The spectral voices were building in intensity...

During my junior year of high school I made a concerted attempt to get into the music of Iron Maiden. I undertook the venture with the help of a good friend who was into metal as well as other heavy music like punk and industrial. In small town Wisconsin during the late 1980s, this made him deeply unpopular. For my part, I had long hair, hailed from Chicago, and wore Jethro Tull t-shirts. This did little beyond generate suspicion of me. Ergo, the two outcasts became good friends.

We would coax one another into listening to music that we had no particular affection for and see what happened. This is not to say that we had no common ground in our listening habits, because we did, but there was plenty of room for discovery as well.

My friend managed to inveigle me into giving Iron Maiden a serious listen. I ended up borrowing a copy of their Seventh Son of a Seventh Son album and have no recollection of why it was chosen over, say, Powerslave or The Number of the Beast. At the time, in the summer or fall of 1988, Seventh Son was the latest Maiden album and I had no idea how similar or different it was compared to the Maiden songs with which I had a passing familiarity - "Run to the Hills" and "The Number of the Beast".

While it was still metal, the influence of my beloved progressive rock was obvious. Lyrically it seemed to be a nod towards the concept album with a story, however opaque, about a kid with psychic powers. There were synthesizers adding color to the seething drum beats and the thrashing guitars.

One night I threw the tape in my Walkman and listened to it in bed as I awaited the arms of Morpheus. Outside a bout of nasty weather was brewing and, before long, the first drops of rain began to fall.

The blackness of the night was punctured by the occasional flash of lightning. A strong storm was rolling through but, as a teenager with headphones on, ensconced in my own little world, I barely registered the peal of thunder in the distance. I found myself trying to piece together the story in the lyrics while being thoroughly engrossed in the music with its chugging bass lines and horror film dramatics.

I could hear that the storm had gained in intensity as side 1 ended and I flipped the tape over. Side 2 began with the album's title track, a nearly 10-minute epic. The song opens with a vaguely Wagnerian fanfare as cymbals crash and are joined by guitar and the strains of an otherworldly chorus. Eventually we settle into a skittering drum beat as menacing guitars imbue urgency into every chord.

After a few minutes the song slows and there is a short spoken interlude with minimal instrumentation wherein we learn more about our hero and his preternatural powers. Outside Thor had whipped up a true tempest as thunder howled and fierce gales endlessly rattled the exhaust fan in the bathroom. The neo-Mellotrony chorus returns and guitars churn underneath, like some hideous caged creature just waiting to be loosed. The spectral voices were building in intensity, swelling to a climax as a bolt of lightning split the gloom and the crack of thunder just overhead startled me when suddenly

KERPOW!!

What sounded like a mini-explosion came howling in from the bathroom. Taking off my headphones, I hesitantly went to investigate. There I discovered that the glass shower door had shattered into a million pieces. That was creepy.

I related this strange tale to my mother who, in turn, informed my father. The next day he interrogated me for a few minutes about the singularly odd incident and I think he came away convinced that I had been up to some kind of teenage chicanery despite my repeated protestations.


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