Ooooh a metal band named after a Tolkien thing, now we’re talking. Helms Deep is based out of Florida, and I don’t think they have songs about swamps, gators, or Bortles, but they do have a big metal sound, and a new album, Chasing the Dragon, featuring Flight of the Harpy. According to the Metal Encylopedia they don’t have themes. But right now I’m getting a lot of harpy. Oh and now I know why they seemed familiar, there’s a Helm’s Deep from Seattle and I’m pretty sure I saw them play with Red Fang at the Shakedown. They were pretty good times.

Like a good throwbacky metal song, we kick off with some chuggy guitars and a kickass falsetto scream. I enjoy that the vocals bounce between growls and falsetto, feels nice and raw-ish or something. The escalating dueling guitar melodies before dropping into the solo is a fun amp up. And some plinky plunky xylophoniness for a breakdown! It’s a pretty bombastic breakdown, gives off Phantom of the Opera vibes, before cutting back to the main riff coupled with some good falsetto. It’s also great to hear the bass up in the mix, really technical stuff toward the end too,

Unfortunately I couldn’t find music videos for them, hopefully they can crank one out because the lyrics have enough going on you could make a video about a harpy flying around at night, eating like… I donno… evil children or goats or something. Maybe some dude tries to fight the harpy but he can’t fight the flight of the harpy, due to her razor claws, so he loses, only for the harpy to keep eating stuff.

And I’d be remiss if I talked about harpies so much without referencing the Queen of the Harpies.