Cirith Ungol and Michael Whelan

Six weeks ago, Mike Bolam emailed me to suggest Cirith Ungol as a worthy band for Appendix LP consideration. I’ve been aware of them for decades, but for some reason never bought any of their albums. I respect Mike’s opinions on both music and games, so I picked up some Cirith Ungol vinyl. After a month or so of listening, I’m now completely a fan.

They are an American power metal band with some doom and 70’s hard rock proclivities. I love their epic arrangements, creative riffs, and proto-extreme vocals. For an overview of their music, I recommend the following video from Sea of Tranquility:

But let’s talk about the band from an Appendix LP standpoint. They have unimpeachable sword and sorcery bona fides, starting with their Tolkien band name. Guitarist Greg Lindstrom explains in this interview from It’s Psychedelic Baby magazine:

“We were all big “Lord of the Rings” fans, so as I remember all the names considered were from LOTR – Minas Tirith, Khazad-dûm, Barad-dûr… there may have been others.”

Beyond the band name, the band’s lyrics are inspired by several key Appendix N authors. Lindstrom provides details:

“Reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy in 7th and 8th grade really aroused a hunger in me to explore more fantasy and sword and sorcery fiction. I have read hundreds of books by hundreds of authors but my favorites are the Elric series by Michael Moorcock, the Dying Earth series by Jack Vance, the Thieves’ World series, and just about anything by Clark Ashton Smith. The song ‘Frost And Fire’ was inspired by Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser series. One of the stories was entitled “The Frost Monstreme”. I wanted to write a song about that and I thought we needed an element to combat the frost – ‘The Fire Divine’. So, the two opposites of the frost and the fire. I revisited that theme on the ‘Forever Black’ album with those two songs.”

Amazingly, the band was able to get permission to use a painting of Elric by Michael Whelan for their first album cover, which established a relationship with the legendary fantasy artist that continues to today. Drummer Rob Garven told the story of connecting with Whelan in the It’s Psychedelic Baby article:

“We had long been influenced by “Sword and Sorcery” literature and art. We were hoping to get the rights to use a Frank Frazetta’s painting called “Berserker,” which had appeared on the cover of a Conan novel for the cover of ‘Frost And Fire’. No sooner had we all agreed on what we wanted to use, that painting was released on a Molly Hatchet album, and we were left pondering what to use as cover art for ‘Frost And Fire’. I was reading Michael Moorcock’s book Stormbringer which was the final book (then) in the Elric of Meliniboné saga, which Greg had turned me on to. I remember looking at the cover and telling the band, “This would be the best album cover art ever.” I contacted DAW Books, who was the publisher of those series of books at the time, who put me in contact with Michael Whelan. He liked our music and agreed to let us use his painting for the cover. He has been one of the band’s best and most constant friends through the years, even coming out to see the band play in Brooklyn, New York! There is no doubt that being associated with an artist whose talent rivals the renaissance masters and having his masterpiece Stormbringer grace the cover of ‘Frost And Fire’ has forever made this album stand out from all others.

Wonderworks was a Michael Whelan art book that was published in 1979 and includes details about some of the pieces of art that were used for Cirith Ungol album covers.

The album Frost and Fire featured the painting Stormbringer, which originally served as the 1977 DAW cover of the Michael Moorcock book of the same name. Whelan told the story of creating the painting in Wonderworks: “I remember trying to get in the mood of painting for the last time the albino sorcerer king, Elric. I took a clothes rail out of a closet for my sword and ran around outside slashing at weeds and lunging at the breeze. I began to feel quite majestic and imagined myself atop the ruins of the end of the world. When I slipped into the pose that captured the feeling of the whole story, I knew that this sense of “freezing of action” was too important to lose; so, instead of setting up the pose for my camera and possibly losing its freshness, I rushed into my studio and drew it from memory.”

The painting The King of the Dead was used on the album of the same name. It first appeared as the 1977 DAW cover of Moorcock’s The Bane of the Black Sword.

The album One Foot in Hell has a painting called Urish’s Bane for the cover. The painting was first used for the 1976 DAW cover of The Vanishing Tower by Moorcock. Whelan said the following about the painting: “A fascinating book that gave me the fun of painting a “no-holds-barred” demon. In many ways I did this cover for me - dark - and I’m pleased it has received such a positive response from the readers.”

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If you decide to check out or revisit Cirith Ungol, do not ignore their most recent full-length album called Forever Black. It features another Whelan masterpiece for the cover and delivers an exceptional modern version of the classic Cirith Ungol sound.