This edition of Metal Maniacs features Greg Ravengrave, the multi-instrumentalist behind Mistwalker, drummer of Ratpiss, as well as numerous other projects, and the founder of Heavy NFLD.
Hey folks! After doing this project for a few months thanks to the inspiration of Winterhearth frontman and guitarist Andrew Marsh I figured it was finally time for me to sit down and write about my own series of inspirational and influential records that led me to become the musician I am today. For those of you who don’t know, my name is Greg, I’m the founder of Heavy NFLD and the guy who mainly writes for this blog. I write and record everything in the black metal project Mistwalker, play drums in the crust band Ratpiss, and have umpteen-thousand other side projects besides that which span a number of different genres. With that out of the way, let’s get into it!
The Sword – Age of Winters
When I was but a wee lad I was growing up in the town of Glovertown, which is about three hours outside of St. John’s, in the Gander area. I grew up in a pretty strict Christian conservative household where my family did everything in their power to shelter me from the outside world. In all honesty, it was pretty fucked. Thankfully we eventually got the internet. At this time in my life I was pretty heavy into gaming and I was obsessed with the PS2 video game Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction. One day I was browsing YouTube and found a trailer for the game’s sequel, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. The song used in that trailer? “Iron Swan” by The Sword. The heaviness, aggression and insanity of the instrumentation in that song was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. Coupled with visuals of vast swathes of Venezuelan jungle being burned to the ground and tanks and attack helicopters blowing shit up, it kicked my ass. From that moment I was hooked and needed more. Thankfully the rest of this record, including such classics as “Freya” and “Winter’s Wolves”, had plenty more megalithic riffage to offer my adolescent brain.
Slipknot – Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses
While The Sword was my gateway drug into metal, it wasn’t until Slipknot came across my ears that I delved fully into my nu metal cringelord phase. I first heard “Before I Forget” on Guitar Hero III as a teenager and, in all honesty, it didn’t quite click with me. However, when I eventually came across the song “Duality” on YouTube I was hooked. The rest of the album was like a drug, from the absurdly heavy and chaotic early tracks like “The Blister Exists” to the absolute banger that is “Pulse of the Maggots”, this album was exactly what my miserable, angst-filled teenage brain needed. Even the quieter, more solemn songs on this album, like “Circle”, “Vermilion”, and “Vermilion Part 2” hit me right in the feels. From this record I would eventually branch out into the rest of Slipknot’s discography and became a die-hard Maggot.
Judas Priest – Painkiller
Around the same time that Guitar Hero started to fall off as a franchise, Rock Band came in to absolutely dominate the rhythm game market, and me, along with many of my friends, became obsessed. Towards the end of high school we used to host Rock Band parties on a pretty regular basis, and I can even credit the game with being how I first learned how to play drums. When Rock Band 2 came out near the end of the 2000’s I ate up the amount of metal tracks that had been included on the game’s disc at release, including Judas Priest’s “Painkiller”. I was blown away by the sheer sonic assault of the drum into. I had never heard anything quite like it. I was obsessed and immediately went to listen to the rest of the record. I remember having the thought, “this is fucking metal, man”. For real, if an alien visited Earth and asked me to define heavy metal I would play this album. Every single song on this thing is an unabashed banger. This is one of the few records in existence I would say is an 11/10, and to this day it remains in fairly constant rotation on whatever device I’m using to listen to music.
Mastodon – Crack the Skye
Similarly to Judas Priest, I also discovered Mastodon through Rock Band 2 thanks to the inclusion of “Colony of Birchmen”. At the time, however, that song didn’t quite click with me. Luckily it was only about a year later when the band would drop one of the most critically lauded records of their career. Crack the Skye came to me at exactly the right moment in my life. It was dirty and dark but was incredibly complex. This album introduced me to progressive metal but also encouraged me to push my drumming skills to the next level. Brann Dailor is an absolute monster on this record and I spent many hours in the rec room of my parent’s house trying to nail this entire album behind the kit.
Between the Buried and Me – Colors
Yet another artist discovered through Rock Band 2, albeit this time through the game’s downloadable content. “Prequel to the Sequel” was my first exposure to progressive metal of this stripe. The guitar playing on that song is on another level and the sheer complexity of the track as it twists and morphs into so many different areas still boggles my mind to this day. When listening to the full record it’s clear that Colors is in a class all on its own when it comes to contemporary progressive metal. Aside from showing me just what was capable within the framework of the “metal” genre, this band also got me into harsh vocals. There was a long time where I didn’t like screaming, no matter if it was the ultra low gutturals of a band like Cannibal Corpse or the higher pitched snarl of metalcore bands, I wasn’t into it. I could only tolerate Slipknot because for some reason in my adolescent mind Corey Taylor’s yelling wasn’t the same as a straight up death metal scream (don’t ask how I justified that, because I wouldn’t remember). But once I got into Between the Buried and Me I really understood just why harsh vocals were so appealing to people, and from then on I was sold.
Devin Townsend Project – Addicted
This was my introduction to Devin Townsend, an artist who has arguably had the most effect on my life as a musician, at least from a work ethic perspective. Addicted, like many of the other records on this list, came to me at the perfect moment in my life. It melded heavy guitars with a 100% pop aesthetic, fusing heaviness with absurdly catchy bubblegum melodies, and it was like a sonic version of crack to my ears. I couldn’t get enough of it. It was this album that made me realize that no matter how complex or impressive the musicianship on any given record is, what really matters to me as a musician is if your songs are memorable, and so I started putting a lot of focus into trying to craft catchy hooks over anything else. Granted, I wasn’t actually recording my own music at this point (around 2009/2010-ish), but it greatly influenced the music I did end up working on in the coming decade. Aside from that, the sheer amount of music that Townsend put out around this time wound up having more of an effect on me than the music itself did. How he was able to put out so much material so quickly, most of which was pretty damn good, astounded me, and I aspired to try and live up to that as much as possible with my own works.
SikTh – Death of a Dead Day
The first time I heard “Bland Street Bloom” by these UK tech metal legends I was blown away. If Between the Buried and Me opened my mind to what was capable of being played on guitar, and Devin Townsend showed me that prog and metal can still be catchy and poppy without sacrificing heaviness, SikTh showed me that you can maintain both of those qualities while also being insane. No doubt a huge influence on the djent scene that emerged in the 2010’s, none of the bands that followed in SikTh’s footsteps could ever really hold a candle to these guys. Sure, I love Meshuggah as much as the next guy, and they undoubtedly started the style, but SikTh has a special flavour that nobody could ever really match. As much as I love groups like Periphery and Tesseract and Born of Osiris, SikTh is the gold standard for technical and progressive metal, and this album is the pinnacle of that. To this day I’m still mesmerized by the guitar and drum work on this thing and I can only hope to one day be able to even come close to what is performed on this record.
Stolen Babies – There Be Squabbles Ahead
I was never quite a goth kid when I was in high school but I always kind of wanted to be. There was definitely an appeal to the aesthetic presented by what is considered typical “goth” media like The Nightmare Before Christmas or My Chemical Romance, but given the oppressive nature of high school in small town Newfoundland I never really went full tilt, so to speak. Musically I wouldn’t even end up getting into actual, honest to Satan, goth rock until recently. Back in high school I found myself drawn more to avant garde metal, which, in my opinion, is usually just a fancy way of saying carnival musical with distorted guitars. Stolen Babies were my entryway to that world, and to this day I don’t think any band has quite managed to capture the feeling that their debut record, There Be Squabbles Ahead, has. I remember hearing one song from these guys on YouTube and being unable to find the rest of the record anywhere, save on a torrent site, so I let the album download over the course of a week and when I finally got to listen to it I was enthralled by what I heard. It’s fair to say that this record has influenced my own music to a degree, especially when it comes to some of the Halloween-themed releases I’ve dropped as Mistwalker (namely Of Pumpkins and Pinecones). And yes, before you ask, I did end up buying the album. I own a CD copy of it at my parents’ place in Glovertown.
Amon Amarth – Twilight of the Thunder God
This one probably doesn’t come as much surprise to anyone. The band’s most popular and critically acclaimed record, Twilight of the Thunder God is remembered fondly for a reason. This album is another 11/10 for me. Every track on here is so flawless both with their songwriting capability and memorability. Every song on this album is memorable and stands apart from the others on the record with their own individual flavour and uniqueness. This was probably the first death metal record I ever full enjoyed, this or At the Gates’ Slaughter of the Soul. However, it was this album’s (and band’s) Viking themes that drew me. It was around this time (2011-2013) that I became very interested in Norse mythology and Viking history, and this record was my gateway to that. The riffs and the vocals are so powerful that nary a melodeath record has risen to accomplish what this album has. It was this record that led to me incorporating occasional themes of paganism and Norse myth in my own music when I officially started recording under the name of Mistwalker in 2013.
Darkthrone – F.O.A.D.
It was when I was in college (from 2012-2014) that I met my Kristopher Crane (from the projects Nemophilist and Acorn to Great Oak and also from the bands Impaled Upon the Mountains and Grimacing, which we formed together) who introduced me to black metal. I was aware of black metal before college but it never quite clicked with me. Once I was a bit older and felt a bit more depressed in my adult life I think that’s when I fully got it. The album that really did it for me was F.O.A.D. by Darkthrone, which Kris had introduced me to. Songs like “Canadian Metal”, “The Church of Real Metal”, and “Raised on Rock” just hit me right in the gut. To this day Darkthrone is the band that has inspired me the most as a musician, particularly in terms of style. Their mixture of black metal with old school heavy metal and crust punk (particularly their 2000’s era) and even the doom metal they’re doing these days is exactly the kind of music I want to create.
Honourable Mentions:
At the Gates – Slaughter of the Soul
Baroness – Red Album
The Black Dahlia Murder – Nocturnal
Darkthrone – Transilvanian Hunger
Diablo Swing Orchestra – The Butcher’s Ballroom
Equilibrium – Sagas
High on Fire – Death is this Communion
The Human Abstract – Digital Veil
Judas Priest – Screaming for Vengeance
Kylesa – Static Tensions
Mastodon – Leviathan
Periphery – Periphery
Slipknot – All Hope is Gone
Whitechapel – A New Era of Corruption
~ Akhenaten
HeavyNFLD 