Geddy Lee's Battle Songs

Plus El Pony Pisador & Tesseract’s Sci Fi Novels for Prog Metal Fans

Geddy Lee provides a detailed description of recording Rush’s “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” in his autobiography My Effin’ Life. He explains how he and Alex Lifeson experimented with their instruments to “create the personalities of the two beasts” and represent the attacks of each. Fans of 70’s prog rock who understand the war gaming origins of D&D might appreciate this quote from Geddy, which places “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” in the context of other “battle songs” from their peers:

“We didn’t consciously think of this at the time, but I realize now that the song is part of a grand tradition of rock and roll battle songs. From that era, ELP’s “Tarkus,” King Crimson’s “Lizard,” and “Achilles Last Stand” on Zeppelin’s Presence are just three that spring to mind.”

The word “battle” plays a further role in the Rush’s history, as the three members of the band played on a song with Max Webster in 1980 called “Battle Scar.” The tone and theme of the song’s lyrics by Pye Dubois¹, however, are quite different from “By-Tor” and the other songs mentioned above.

My favorite battle-themed song is probably “Veteran of the Psychic Wars” by Blue Öyster Cult. The following live version has an amazing Buck Dharma guitar solo:

Feel free to share any of your battle song favorites.

There’s another quote from Geddy's autobiography that might resonate with Critical Hit Parader readers. When discussing critical support for the band in the UK, Geddy shares a heading in a 1977 Geoff Barton review of Caress of Steel that suggested that Rush might be “underrated scions of sword and sorcery rock.”

El Pony Pisador

I got turned onto the band El Pony Pisador from a recent Critical Conditions newsletter by Wayne Robins. The band is from Barcelona, and their name has a J.R.R. Tolkien derived origin. In this FolkWorks interview, band member Martí Selga explains the meaning of the band’s name and how they connect Catalonian folk and Irish music:

“[It] all started because we were young and we were huge fans of The Lord of the Rings movie. There’s the Hobbit tavern, the Prancing Pony – our name is El Pony Pisador, that means the prancing pony in Spanish. We enjoy tavern music, meant to dance, traditional, so we started learning this kind of tunes and found out that the most similar to the music we listened to in the movies were Irish music. So we took it from there, and then we also found out about sea chanteys, and we started singing – the five of us – singing a cappella, doing harmonies. We loved that. Our purpose has been to learn the different folk and root music of different parts of the world we most enjoy or are curious about.”

Consider playing the following the next time your fantasy RPG characters visit a tavern:

Tesseract’s Sci Fi Novels for Prog Metal Fans

In a Metal Hammer article, Tesseract bassist Amos Williams identifies “6 mind-bending sci-fi novels every prog metal fan should read.” His selections included works by James SA Corey, Cixin Liu, Iain M. Banks, Ann Leckie, and George Orwell. The band’s love of sci-fi comes through in their music, but they have a thoughtful approach that I think differentiates them from other sc-fi-influenced prog metal bands. Williams explained some of the thinking that goes into their story-focused approach in this Prog article:

“What are we? Prog metal? Tech metal? That sort of band is expected to do that sort of thing. It’s always felt difficult for me because it never really concentrated on the human; it concentrated on the platform or the staging. I’ve avoided that but, to go really geeky, a lot of the things we see within our genre are all setting and no story. Perhaps, to cause conflict among the geeks, we’re more like Star Trek: all story and no real setting, if that makes sense. I’ve just outed myself as a proper geek.”

The band has further demonstrated their sci-fi bonafides through their involvement in the VR + Desktop game War of Being, which I covered in a Critical Hit Parader newsletter article from last year.

1. Pye Dubois would of course later provide lyric contributions to the Rush songs “Tom Sawyer,” “Force Ten,” “Between Sun and Moon,” and “Test for Echo.”