I just launched a new vlog called SWORD AND SORCERY HEAVY METAL where I talk about the connection between heavy metal music and sword-and-sorcery fiction.
https://youtu.be/mUB1rbT8JvM?si=XBWLySbLatLLgyhx

I haven't listened to a lot of your music but as a huge fan of classic S&S fiction like Conan and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, I will check that out. And you music as well.

Nice. Will have to check this out later today.

Hey! Thanks for taking a look.

Thanks M. Let me know what you think.

I look forward to seeing your Sword and Sorcery movie picks and maybe even learn about some bands I may have missed. My favorite movie of the genre is Excalibur.

Thanks for the feedback, Bronze Age! I'll do one on sword-and-sorcery movies soon.

Join me and Matthew Knight ( Cauldron Born / Eternal Winter ) as we discuss classic sword-and-sorcery fiction and heavy metal music on the new episode of SWORD AND SORCERY HEAVY METAL.
https://youtu.be/ot4IDVEOpD8?si=IWXXxe0IPxMib52m

I'm not much of a follower of traditions, but reading a tale by my favorite author, Robert E. Howard, while drinking a toast to the man on his birthday ( January 22, 1906 ) is to my liking. Tonight I'll be reading Howard's installment from " The Challenge From Beyond". The story is a round-robin that also includes installments written by C.L. Moore, H.P. Lovecraft, Abraham Merritt, and Frank Belknap Long. I have a bottle of Laphroaig 10 Year lined up for the occasion

Does anyone else here celebrate this tradition? If so, which story are you going to read and what are you drinking?

no traditions like that for me, but thats a good reminder to read some more of his obscure work sometime soon. Went through a big sword and sorcery phase a year or 2 ago and have been slacking lately.

and with slacking i mean ofcourse that im reading something else!

What have you been reading?

Manilla Road and Cirith Ungol got me into Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft and Michael Moorcock, late 90's early 00's, in particular the Conan and Elric stories. Metal as fuck. Everything's boxed up unfortunately. Enjoying the video's Howie, keep em coming.

Will do! Mark Shelton was an awesome guy. We had a good conversation about Howard and Lovecraft standing in front of the venue at Classic Metal Fest in 2001.

I don't have any traditions like that. I have Oban 14, Laphroaig 10 and Lagavulin 16 in the pantry though. The Laphroaig is kind of insane.

I am not a big reader but I have Elric of Melnibone and Stormbringer on Audible. I like the first one, I have not listened to Stormbringer yet. They offer a dramatization of Corum Book 1 Knight of the Swords that I am thinking about checking it out.

If you have any book covers with cool artwork it would be nice to see during your vids.

Book covers coming up next video!

ELRIC OF MELNIBONE is a classic. The other novels making up the Elric saga are great, too. STORMBRINGER was the first one he wrote, but the last book in the saga as it was initially presented. It has some seriously trippy elements.

Sword and Sorcery wise I did recently read the 2nd part of the Dreamquest saga and no 4 of The Chronicles of Ambar. However mostly been reading more fantasy with a twist like stories like The Invisible Library series and The Cemeteries of Amalo as well as some modern weird fiction. However most of all after reading some soviet scifi and Stanislaw Lem I feel like I might get into a big scifi phase again.

Hard science fiction or sword-and-planet/ space opera?

I list my top ten classic sword-and-sorcery novels on this week's episode of SWORD AND SORCERY HEAVY METAL. How many of these have you read?
https://youtu.be/bWz0SXc7_xQ?si=VyMNlu3AuD2BJyix

Another cool video Howie tho I wish you had expanded your thoughts on each one a bit more. However, you've made me hungry for this stuff and I have a list now to try and get through, if I can find em.

Hey! Thanks for the feedback. If you have questions about any of them just let me know.

Those Kane books are not easy to find for any reasonable price. Never read them myself but I did a search and whoa.

Howie, I was looking on Audible and I saw Robert E Howard's Conan the Cimmerian Barbarian that is an omnibus of Weird Tales 1-17 but then I also saw The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian that is said to be the first 13 stories in order that has Queen of the Black Coast and The Tower of the Elephant. I could not find a list of the stories for either book. If I got that Omnibus of Weird Tales or the other book would that include all of the stories that make up The Hour of the Dragon? Are these 2 books basically the same stories with one having four less stories? It is kind of confusing.

I also grabbed the The Broken Sword.

They are also under Conan The Conqueror.

I would go for THE COMING OF CONAN THE CIMMERIAN first. There are two more volumes that were published after that : THE CONQUERING SWORD OF CONAN. and THE BLOODY CROWN OF CONAN ( containing THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON novel ). If you have these three you will have every Conan story Howard wrote. These collections contain the unexpurgated texts just the way REH wrote them, plus synopses and unfinished fragments.

The version of THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON published under the title of CONAN THE CONQUEROR has been edited. The unedited versions are in THE BLOODY CROWN OF CONAN and the Berkeley edition I show on the screen in my video.

Yeah. Watching abebooks or ebay for the paperbacks is your best bet. There is a lot on ebay right now for a somewhat reasonable price, but they are beat up and it looks like one book is missing the cover.


https://www.abebooks.com/

Yeah, I'd probably go my least preferred route and get a kindle copy or something. I love old books but not going to pay those prices for falling apart copies.

Love the Kane novels. Thankfully a local library has a copy of Gods in Darkness, which has all the three in the same volume! I've since purchased Bloodstone via ebay.

Thanks for this, I've been interested to finally check out Conan tales and this seems like an organized way to do it. What was it that was expurgated from the original versions?

Its probably heresy but my primary image of Conan is from the early Savage Sword of Conan comic magazine with art by John Buscema. Before Arnold, and before I was reading the books in the 80's that was my intro to the world of Conan. Some pretty good adaptions of the stories in the early issues and the explosive Buscema art, along with his mastery of the female form.

I've not looked at the Kindle versions, but I've heard they were badly edited and had a lot of typos.

"Offensive references" and "inconsistencies" according to L. Sprague de Camp. He even changed the title of THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON to CONAN THE CONQUERER, so Howard's original texts have been tampered with quite a bit.

THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN was my gateway to the original Howard texts.

Cool. That it was a Marvel magazine rather than a regular comic was great as it didn't have the comic code stuff and could be a bit more gritty compared to the regular Conan comic book.

Graphic violence, T & A, and weird supernatural situations! Everything a teenage boy could want.

Join me and Petros Leptos, the vocalist for Cyprus heavy metal band, Solitary Sabred, as we discuss their new album TEMPLE OF THE SERPENT, the Greek true metal scene, sword and sorcery fiction, and more.
https://youtu.be/vVWaJYdIGZ4?si=Ti-oN_-IOQekNr7R

Thats what I did.



Most likely hard sci-fi, its been a long time since i've focused on hard sci-fi. I read a lot as kid but the first adult fiction that wasn't like Clive Cussler or Tom Clancy but something more serious/demanding/less commercial was hard sci-fi as a 14-15 year old or something like that. Got into Sword and Sorcery eventually in a round about way by getting into Lovecraft and then eventually picking up Robert E Howard and other classic pulp writers.
Space Opera has never done it for me like hard sci-fi or sword and sorcery has.

I'm mostly a sword-and-planet/space opera guy. What I do is really science fantasy. I have a sword-and-planet story appearing in CIRSOVA magazine next month.

Join me and Mark Dexter ( Marco Concoreggi ), the vocalist for heavy metal band, Dexter Ward as we talk about H.P. Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Dracula, Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter of Mars, Dracula, Conan vs. Kull, sword and sorcery novels vs. short fiction, sword and sorcery comic books, Battleroar, Hyrkanian Blades, USPM, Blades of Steel Festival 2024, Cauldron Born, and more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGc133vkaXk

https://echoesofcromrecords.com/
https://dexterward.bandcamp.com/
https://cauldronborn1.bandcamp.com/

Join me and Matthew Knight as we discuss the Solomon Kane story "The Hills of the Dead" by Robert E. Howard. We also discuss a number of other Robert E. Howard related topics such as Conan, Kull, Cormac Fitzgeoffrey, The Grey God Passes, and various other sword-and-sorcery authors and topics such as Michael Moorcock, C.L. Moore, Michael Shea, Clark Ashton Smith, Elric, Jirel of Joiry, Nifft the Lean, Sojan the Swordsman, and more. And we, of course, talk about how all of these great works have influenced and relate to our heavy metal bands, Eternal Winter, Cauldron Born, and Briton Rites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNlMnTIlBqk