Is there anything more rock’n’roll than The Lord Of The Rings? Across J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium – and the multiple films, series and games which have sprung from it – there are black-clad warlords, light-devouring spiders, feuding wizards and fire beasts the size of a house. It’s no wonder, then, that bands since the dawn of heavy music have been fascinated with Middle-Earth.
As Amazon’s series The Rings Of Power once again hits Prime, hear Metal Hammer’s playlist of the coolest tracks to tip their hats to Tolkien. From Amon Amarth to Black Sabbath, it’s a broad array of badassery.
Led Zeppelin – Ramble On (Led Zeppelin II, 1969)
Ramble On is sonically closer to something you might hear on a late-60s Rolling Stones record than Led Zeppelin’s usual fare. It’s the third verse where it all goes ring-shaped” “Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor/I met a girl so fair/But Gollum, and the evil one/Crept up and slipped away with her.” It’s not the only song in Zeppelin’s cache to doff its cap to Tolkien either; Misty Mountain Hop is pretty on the nose about it, while The Battle Of Evermore references Ringwraiths.
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Black Sabbath – The Wizard (Black Sabbath, 1970)
Even though Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut is often hailed as the nexus point for heavy metal as we know it, The Wizard was more a bluesy jam than anything else. Not that you can tell explicitly by the lyrics, but the track was inspired by Gandalf himself, as bassist Geezer Butler confirmed in an interview with Metal Sludge in 2005. “I was reading The Lord Of The Rings at the time,” he recalled, “and I just based the lyrics on that. Gandalf.”
Rush – Rivendell (Fly By Night, 1975)
There’s an awful lot of prog inspired by Tolkien – we dare say almost as much as metal. So if we’re picking one from the bunch and moving on, it has to be the Canadian kings, Rush. Avowed Tolkien fan Neil Peart wasn’t above slipping references to The Lord Of The Rings into his work, whilst also using the songs to explore wider topics. Most explicit is Rivendell: a gentle, folk-style song that reimagined the home of the elves as a utopian paradise.
Sacrilege – Shadow From Mordor (Behind The Realms Of Madness, 1985)
Influential on the likes of Bolt Thrower and Napalm Death, early crust/grindcore innovators Sacrilege generally sang about the ills of this world, with poverty, environmental destruction and annihilation all frequent lyrical topics on their debut album. Shadow From Mordor used the titular hotbed of evil as an allegory for those themes, even slipping in a cheeky reference to Durin’s Bane, AKA the Balrog: “Like Durin’s Bane, rising up from the deep/There is evil at work while the people do sleep.”
Orange Goblin – Saruman’s Wish (Frequencies From Planet Ten, 1997)
It’s almost all in the name for Orange Goblin’s Saruman’s Wish, as beyond the white wizard popping up in the title, you could entirely miss the Tolkien reference. It wasn’t the only song on the stoner icons’ debut named for The Lord Of The Rings, however: instrumental Lothlorian took its name from the forest which housed a race of elves. According to frontman Ben Ward, the “Goblin” in “Orange Goblin” is also a hat-tip towards the world of Middle-Earth.
Blind Guardian – Into The Storm (Nightfall On Middle-Earth, 1998)
Blind Guardian are the absolute gold standard when it comes to metal bands singing about Tolkien. Their 1998 opus, Nightfall On Middle-Earth, is a concept album based entirely around The Silmarillion. Into The Storm summarises everything brilliantly OTT about the German power metallers: massive riffs and more cheese than a gorgonzola avalanche. The lyrics explore the confrontation between the characters Melkor and Ungoliant, thousands of years before the events of The Lord Of The Rings.
Amon Amarth – Amon Amarth (Once Sent From The Golden Hall, 1998)
Even the band that sings almost exclusively about Vikings couldn’t resist paying homage to Tolkien. Taking their name from the Sindarin (Elven) language for Mount Doom, Amon Amarth’s self-titled track more explicitly references the same volcano. This being Amon Amarth, though, they couldn’t resist sticking a few Vikings in. “Intestines cover the field, the defenders are weak in this brutal war!” snarls Johan Hegg. “The northmen have power and guts! A bloodshed like no one has seen here before!”
Reverend Bizarre – Cirith Ungol (In The Rectory Of The Bizarre Reverend, 2002)
Named after the fortress from which Sam retrieves a paralysed Frodo during The Return Of The King, Finnish doom merchants Reverend Bizarre afford Cirith Ungol the perfect level of dread for a fortress filled with orcs right on Sauron’s doorstep. The final song on their 2002 debut is unsurprisingly packed with references to Tolkien’s world, but it’s the reading of the inscription on the One Ring in its native Black Speech at the end that really drives the Middle-Earth lore home.
Cradle Of Filth – An Enemy Led The Tempest (Damnation And A Day, 2003)
At first glance, the lyrics to Cradle Of Filth’s An Enemy Led The Tempest are pretty straightforward: it’s about the fall of Lucifer, right? Only, it’s the mention of a Balrog in“Enraged, he raved in Balrog howl/Upon the storm firstborn of sin” that throws a curveball into the mix. Dani Filth uses his literary knowledge to suggest the song could as easily be about Morgoth, Middle-Earth’s own variant of Satan, as the fallen angel of Christianity.
3 Inches Of Blood – Destroy The Orcs (Advance And Vanquish, 2004)
3 Inches Of Blood were so passionate about slaying orcs that they recorded Destroy The Orcs twice. First released on the band’s 2002 debut, a much better quality version of the song came out on its 2004 follow-up, Advance And Vanquish: all galloping Iron Maiden riffs and glass shattering shrieks. It wasn’t as explicit with its LOTR-isms as many other Middle-Earth themed metal songs – in fact, the lyrics are almost entirely and expressly about destroying the orcs – but it still owed its inspiration to Tolkien’s creations.
Shadows wasn’t so much Sabaton taking a break from narrating the history of global warfare as a glimpse at what could have been. The first song Joakim Brodén wrote for the band, Shadows is about as explicitly Tolkein inspired as they come, its opening lyrics “Facing the wind as they ride through the sky/Shadows Of Mordor, black horses they fly!” It was also a vision of a very embryonic form of Sabaton that hadn’t quite figured out their craft yet, but still had a kernel of magic hidden away.
Battlelore – Orcrist (The Return Of The Shadow, 2022)
Battlelore are to fantasy fiction what Sabaton are to songs about battles, or Amon Amarth are to Vikings. So how did they announce their return after a decade away? With an album based almost entirely around Tolkien, of course! Orcrist – named for Thorin II Oakenshield’s sword in The Hobbit – takes the cake when it comes to Middle-Earth worship, combining epic symphonic metal chops with a spoken-word passage lifted directly from The Hobbit itself.
