Symphony of enchanted lands

Right, I know that some people don’t like having music when they play, but those people are wrong so let’s just ignore them.

This part of the blog could be called something like “Best game session albums of all time (40+ edition) but I chose to go with album titles for each post instead, because these names are just too amazing to not headline.

Today I’m gonna write about Symphony of Enchanted Lands and why it is glorious for gaming.

It’s an album by Rhapsody, a band that for some reason had to change it’s name to Rhapsody in Fire, but that’s a mouthful so I’m just gonna keep calling them Rhapsody forever. It’s an Italian band, and the most famous person in it is probably Luca Turilli, who has a wide range, and has done both fantasy and mech albums. But onto the music!

For starters, just look at this cover:

The cover is just ripped straight off the cover of an old D&D module, someone was just like screw it let’s just go with this art style the target audience is going to love it.

And honestly, the cover is just the start. The entire album is just a high level adventure, with dragons, magic swords, fantastic kingdoms, all accompanied by the most symphonic of speedy guitars.

We start off with the intro, EPICUS FUROR. A classic intro. The kind that you have on old Metallica albums, just to lull your parents into a false sense of security “Oh little Johnny is listening to some nice classical music with dragons, just leave him to it”. Then it just goes faster and faster and higher and higher and louder and louder until you CRASH straight into:

EMERALD SWORD! GUITARS! DRUMS! FAST GUITARS! You are on a dragon soaring through the skies, the violin sounding stuff comes in and your curly hair streaks behind you, as you wave your magic sword. I HONOR MY SWORD! JUSTICE FOR ALL! Imagine yourself as a 15 year old, alone in your room, drowning in weird dice and occult books, hearing this, and your body just fills with pure JOY! FOR THE KING FOR THE LAND FOR THE MOUNTAINS, FOR THE GREEN VALLEYS WHERE DRAGONS FLY! Did I mention that I about 15 when I heard this for the first time?

And what better after swearing allegiance to the king and going on a quest for the emerald sword? Listening to the WISDOM OF THE KINGS! It starts out slow, because a patriarchal system based on weird ass blood magic is cool in the beginning, but then it gets right back into the crazy. Anyway the kings sure are wise and their wisdom guides you on your way. They also sing about holy dragon’s keepers of time, and all I see now is a dragon hiding in a grandfather clock. Hold on, need to write and adventure. One of the weaker songs, gets a bit boring, but there is dragon riding and blue skies, so it still stands the test of time.

Ok, we’re two songs in, time for an interlude! HEROES OF THE LOST VALLEY is basically some ren faire music and exposition. TOTALLY VITAL for the full album experience. Totally. But the exposition, just add something about blood, muscle and steel, and you have half a ManOWar album:

“Yes, mighty warrior…
What you hear now are the suffering voices of all the heroes that crossed these lands before you
They ended their quest tragically but their thirst for victory is still alive
And breathes through these ancient rocks corroded by the fury of the wind
Their pride now rides with you…”

After this short pep talk, it’s on to ETERNAL GLORY! Guess what? It’s time for some fast music again. The verse slows down considerably on this song though, so we know it’s an important part of the story, nothing is to be missed on this infinite journey! Why is the journey to the sword infinite? Unclear, but it’s probably good that the dragons are keepers of time. But wait, does that actually matter if the journey is infinite? I don’t know, physics was never my strong suit. Honestly though, this song is a bit too slow in parts. Play it on 2x or something.

BEYOND THE GATES OF INFINITY has a magical mystical title, and as such starts off with magical mystical sounds and wolves howling. Then it’s just pounding drums over speedy guitars until we land in the verse, which is suddenly very ballad-y. But then it picks up again, because you never know what tempo to expect on this album! There are curses, traps, and something about being filled up with shit, but our hero is a hero in the service of the land, the kings, the dragons, so he presses on, he must reach the emerald sword! And then there is more weird animal sounds, and then the song ends.

Suddenly, wild ballad appears! WINGS OF DESTINY is a nationalistic hymn, Fabio Lione’s voice just drips in righteous heroism as thoughts of his native fantasy realm passes before his eyes. On closer reflection of the lyrics, this might be the equivalent of a LOTR walking scene.

Finally, we arrive at THE DARK TOWER OF ABYSS! It’s a bad place. We know this, since it’s both dark and abyssal. There are dragons flying, undead rising, demons and no sun in sight, so let’s head for the moon, where the bad stuff lives. The song is full of choirs, so once again we know it’s a bad place.

But our hero heroes on, RIDING THE WINDS OF ETERNITY. Gone are the omnious choirs, gone are the undead, gone are the demons. Now we’re back to insanely fast Luca Turilli guitars, wind blowing in curly hair, gaining strength from pagan nature gods, so we can ride on and keep question for the emerald sword.

And then. The final. 13 minutes and 16 seconds. The hero has arrived. His trusty dragon steed is dead. But he fought for the enchanted lands. This is explained through a tearful narration. SYMPHONY OF ENCHANTED LANDS is split up into four parts, with the narration being the first. Then it’s hymn of the warrior time, with a defiant yell of a verse, a bit like spoken word over a church organ that just blares out epicness. Drums and trumpets signal us into part three, Rex Tremende. It’s a full on fantasy guitar fest, you’ll question yourself if it’s a guitar or a hurdy-gurdy. The hero is angry, and goes around smiting foes. And then it goes into a lamentation in the second verse, which slows everything down to a crawl, as every listener raises their face to the sky, tears falling down their cheeks, thinking of the horrible thing the hero has gone through. Aaaaand then the music goes back to being happy again. You can fit a lot of feelings into 13 minutes. It goes on like this, and then we get the fantastic outro:

“Go, mighty warrior… The kings of enchanted lands are awaiting your victory!
Ride on the wings of wisdom, ride beyond the middle valleys to defeat the
Master of chaos in the name of cosmic justice. Peace and love forever!”

Honestly though, this is a really crappy album to play while gaming, I spend all my time air drumming and screaming along with the songs. 10/10 will play every time.