#space 1992

he said🧙🏽‍♂️👓

Hi everyone. I thought I might write a few words about what goes into the process of making a Gloryhammer album, from my perspective as arranger/orchestrator, and also point out a few of the little details that might have passed you by when listening casually. This is just an introduction but if you find it interesting, then maybe I’ll write a few more little posts about it. If you don’t find it interesting, I probably will anyway. Anyway, one of the many fun aspects of having a narrative underlying Gloryhammer’s music is the opportunity to use musical themes to link the lyrical subject matter with the rest of the composition. When I came to the band, ‘Tales from the Kingdom of Fife’ was half written already, and although I ended up contributing most of the orchestral arrangements, a second album gave me a chance to explore the idea further since we already had some thematic material to work with.

The only proper attempt at using leitmotifs I had made on ‘Tales...’ was in  ‘The Epic Rage of Furious Thunder’, which made sense as it was the climax of the story so far and also contained references to previous songs: Swiftly across the sapphire sky The magic dragon flies

As Tom sings ‘magic dragon’, the first few notes of the chorus melody are heard - ‘ma-gic dra-gon’

Angus McFife is atop his back Hear the battlecry!

‘is atop his back’ is accompanied by the melody from ‘of the land of Fife’ from ‘Angus McFife’

Down below, the Knights of Crail Have rallied to the cause

The mention of the Knights of Crail is immediately followed by parallel fifths going down a tone and back again, just as it is at the end of the chorus of ‘Hail to Crail’

The hammer of glory is their guide A great majestic force

Finally, in the second half of this phrase, the melody that would be sung ‘for the Hammer of Glory’ from the chorus of ‘Quest for the Hammer of Glory’ is heard in the background. The orchestral parts aren’t as clear on the first album as on Space 1992, but you may be able to make a few of these out. The other obvious thematic reference is the very end of the song, where the melody of Angus McFife is heard on acoustic guitar as the track fades.

That was more or less as far as it went on the first album. The idea of having orchestral arrangements was a last-minute addition, so there wasn’t much time to put that kind of thought into it, or much material to draw on. When the time came to write the follow-up, I was determined to incorporate more of this idea to create a more immersive experience...my feeling is that even if people don’t consciously notice, it will register on some level. Even if not, it’s another level of detail to reward the attentive listener, and I can have some fun pretending I’m a real composer. ‘Infernus Ad Astra’ features a lot of themes from the first album, as well as introducing new ones that will appear later on. I thought an intro track was a good place to explore this concept to the fullest, and one aspect of this was how it works in a live context. I had found that ‘Anstruther’s Dark Prophecy’ had a structure that worked very well in a live setting...after a mysterious opening few bars, followed by the big loud part to get everyone’s attention, the section where the pace picks up was divided into groups of eight bars, with a key change at the beginning of each one. This meant that if a band member walked onstage at the beginning of each 8-bar segment, everyone would be onstage by the time ‘The Unicorn Invasion of Dundee’ started. It felt like a little announcement for each character’s arrival, and this soon settled into a regular order - Jim, Paul, Chris, and Tom at the end.

With this in mind, I decided to use a similar structure for the new intro, but actively work relevant themes into each section, using relevant material from both albums to herald the arrival of each character.

Section 1: Ralathor & Setting the Scene

 0.00 - The track opens with Ralathor’s theme, since I am first onstage. First heard in Beneath Cowdenbeath (beginning at 1.03) I never actually intended as a theme when I first wrote it. Since Ralathor is the Mysterious Hermit of Cowdenbeath, and he helps the heroes find their way through the dwarven tunnels, I thought it made sense to associate his character with this simple 5-note motif. In this intro, since we’re in space, it appears in the style of the opening of the Star Trek theme, followed by a nod to the famous timpani part from Richard Strauss’s ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’, as heard in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Section 2: Main Theme

0.18 - the main body of the track begins in earnest, with the theme that later reappears in the introduction to ‘Apocalypse 1992‘. The rhythmic ostinato that forms the basis of this section was inspired in part by the famous battle music from Final Fantasy VII, and also partly by Bal Sagoth’s ‘The Awakening of the Stars’ both of which use a similar repeating dotted rhythm as a starting point. At 0.30 a reference to the chorus melody from ‘Heroes (Of Dundee)’ is played by woodwinds and solo horn.

Section 3: The Hootsman