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MY ⭐️ RATING: 4/5
Format: Kindle eBook
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Unfortunately, Death Metal doesn’t get much play in this sleepy, peaceful, actually kind of boring kingdom. Of course not. It’s tough inventing a genre on your own, and it doesn’t help when all the instruments you’ve tried up to this point don’t match the brutality necessary for a dark and heavy performance.
My coin only seems to be enough to get me to the next run-down village, and it’s dwindling fast.
To make matters worse, my newest lute is not normal. It never stays in tune, it’s barely holding together, and it keeps whispering to me. Over and over, demands for vengeance and murder echo in my head, with the promise that I’ll find the sound I need if I just listen to the voices.
So what’s a starving bard to do?
Performances of a Death Metal Bard is a brutal fantasy adventure inspired by The Witcher and Metalocalypse, merging the episodic travels of a musical elf with the darkness, blood, and raw riffs of the heaviest metal the kingdom has ever seen.
MY REVIEW
Once I started reading this, I instantly got Kings of the Wyld and Blood Rose vibes, but instead of 70’s and 80’s rock, this was for the mosh pit loving headbangers & metalheads of the world that also love fantasy books looking for a thrashing good time. I honestly didn’t know what to expect from this, because it’s such a unique type of story to write about, but it was something I was most definitely excited to try and am happy to report that it was highly enjoyable. Now, admittedly, I’m not a big listener of heavy metal, so I likely missed many of the easter eggs that Leigh dropped, but with that said, I do listen to a little, and I noticed a few, just not enough to pick up on everything.
Though this is based on heavy metal, in a sense, there’s something a bit grungy about the world. The way the villages are feels a bit like the same drabness and desaturation, the way Tim Burton presents 1840’s London in Sweeney Todd. On top of that Leigh does a great job of contrasting the darkness of the heavy metal vibes with the more lightheartedness theme of friendship. When you wrap that up with a slew of classic fantasy creatures like elves, goblins, trolls, ogres, shape shifters and dragons, plus a murderous possessed lute hellbent on revenge from an evil wizard and chock-full of goofy banter, you get a fun and somewhat dark adventure in a novella that could lead to a fantastic series.
“Greatness can’t be discovered until we are willing to level with being monstrous, until we stare our fiendish desires in the face and extend a hand. This instrument is the key, and I’ll be needing it back to continue my work.”
Now about the characters, I really liked Ozzymandius, aka Mandy, the ayatollah of heavy metal. What I liked most about her is her is that she reminds me of a mixture of other characters, she’s got a little bit of Eddie Munson from Stranger Things and a little bit of Cura the ink witch from Bloody Rose by Nicholas Eames. She’s misunderstood elf because her style of music is different than everyone else’s. Despite the villages all being off-put by her music and look, she’s still able to make a few friends a long the way that show her that there are good people that can see beyond her music and accept her for who she is, and show a brighter part of the dreary world. The possessed Lute is the funniest character and made me giggle more that once, kinda reminded me of the hand from the 90’s film, Idle Hands as well as the signing sword is Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames.
I do hope that Leigh decides to use this as a springboard for a series, because I’m definitely going to need a lot more of Mandy, Lute and their new band of heroes on another epic quest… maybe someone needs to find a new pick for their lyre, so they can write a tribute for the greatest song in the world… (for those that don’t get this, it’s a reference to Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny.)
Wolfmantula.com 