Far Out There: Character Soundtracks - Tabitha

Well, we talked about the musical tastes of Avatar last time, so this time around let’s discus one of her biggest fans, Tabitha! Between the giant boots and black gauntlets and general Hot Topic vibe she generates, you may have already guessed that Tabitha’s something of a metalhead. But, if you’ve been paying attention at all over these previous blog posts, you know it can be as simple as that. We have to pinpoint what KIND of metal Tabitha likes. Mall-kid emo metal? Screaming death metal? Rough, aggressive thrash? Bubblegum power metal? Slow, sludgy doom metal? Big, loud NWOBHM? Spinal Tap? None of the above! …well, not quite anyway, though one or two of them cut kind of close. Actually, Tabitha’s music of choice is the really foundational stuff: riff-heavy, jam-happy proto-metal of the Black Sabbath variety. Why? Well, as always, the REAL reason is just that that’s the kind of metal I like best, and none of my characters are gonna something I don’t, but I think I can still justify this on an in-universe basis too.

This is the sub-genre that gave us both Sabbath’s “Iron Man” and also Blue Oyster Cult’s “Godzilla,” both present on the playlist, obviously, and both songs that would be of prime interest to someone with a background in unconventional science. Explicitly science fiction narratives like these are a bit rare for the genre, most songs preferring to go in a more fantasy/horror direction, but that can still be seen as appealing to that unique mindset in its own way. And besides, we’ve seen hints that Tabitha may have soaked up a bit more of her Dad’s magic/alchemy/whatever nonsense than she’d care to admit. Heck, she grew up in the wreckage of a literal apocalypse, she’d probably find fantastical odes to demons and Norse gods and general doominess pretty entertaining. But more importantly, there’s the music. After all, horror and apocalyptic stuff can be sound all over the various strata of metal. What makes the specific, heavy power trio breed of early 70s bands Tabitha’s favorite? 

Well, morbid interest or no morbid interests, Tabitha just seems like to bouncy and cheerful a person to enjoy the more aggressive, screamy breeds of metal, and too hyper and energetic to sit still for the really slow, atmospheric stoner/doom stuff. But the really early stuff, from the days when nobody had really figured out how to sound all that different from Led Zepplin? Even at its most doom-laden, that stuff is still full of riffs and funky rhythms and, dare I say it, even CATCHY! Also, while I said Tabitha wouldn’t have the patience for slow, drawn-out stoner metal, that’s based more on the repetitive droning than sheer length. Indeed, someone who disappears into her lab for days at a time, totally lost in her latest project, would probably identify greatly with a genre which regularly gets lost in ten minute bass solos. Heck, there’s another thing right there. If we take Voting Incentives as canon in this instance, we’ve seen that Tabitha plays bass guitar, so of COURSE she’d like a genre where big fat bass riffs are the bedrock upon which all else is built!

So then, what actual songs are we looking at here? Well, before anything else, let me acknowledge that this playlist LOOKS a lot shorter than most of the others, despite having one of the longest run times. As I alluded to before, this is a genre that LOOOOOOVES it some extended solos, and that extra time piles up pretty quick. Anyway, it should go without saying that this is a pretty Black Sabbath-heavy set. Old-school proto-metal hearkens back to Sabbath about as religiously as zombie movies do to George Romero. It’s pretty obvious selections: “War Pigs,” “N.I.B.”, the aforementioned “Iron Man”, and of course “Black Sabbath” itself. Blue Oyster Cult’s “Godzilla” is in there as well, as is their “Cities On Flame With Rock And Roll.” From there we have “Forever My Queen” and “When The Screams Come” from Sabbath’s biggest American fanboys Pentagram, plus “Child of Darkness” and “Frozen Fear” by their phenomenally obscure offshoot Bedemon (which may end up being the most lo-fi recordings I ever feature on one of these playlists). Paradoxically more and less obscure at the same time are a few more 70s obscurities: “Pagan Altar” by the band of the same name and “Demon & Eleven Children” by Blues Creation, which also fulfills my need to cram at least one Japanese song into as many of these playlists as possible.

As with Trigger’s playlist, though, the vintage stuff is complimented my some selections from a vast, teeming sea of later day retro/revivalist acts. In fact, the whole stoner/doom metal scene is a hundred times more active and relevant than those modern psychedelic novelty acts. Thus, it’s a bit odd to think that I’ve only slipped two modern acts in with all the vintage ones. Rock Band favorites The Sword are represented by their signature song “Freya,” while the likeminded Early Man contribute the feel-good hit “Death Is The Answer To My Prayers.” I did try to balance out the eras better than this. Early drafts of Tabitha’s playlist tried their hardest to squeeze in either “Son Of Nothing” or “Funeralopolis” by stoner gods Electric Wizard, as both are vaguely scifi-themed and the later even features a really nifty sample from Beneath the Planet of the Apes. But alas, both ran into that “even more than the real thing” trend I mentioned in Trigger’s playlist, and cranked the classic Sabbath formula up (or down, as the case may be) to monolithically heavy extremes. That’s the whole point, obviously, but I just couldn’t picture Tabitha sitting still for something so sludgy and slow. That, and they just dragged out the issue of length even worse than it had already become, so older, shorter tracks ended up dominating the list. Oh well.

(Despite being so full of internationally known artists like Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult, this playlist still managed to necessitate a couple of really weird video choices. For one thing, the only full version of Early Man’s “Death Is The Answer To My Prayers” that I could find was the YouTube Music clip, which means it’s intensely georestricted. Alas, the only other posts I could find were either terribly quality live videos or an official music video that edited out nearly half the entire song, which is clearly unacceptable. Then again, maybe I should have gone with it, since that’s still more options than I could find for Blues Creation’s “Demon & Eleven Children.” Once again, I had to resort to the YouTube Music post for this song, but this time because it’s literally the ONLY version of the song I can find on YouTube period. This still baffles me. I mean, Blues Creation may not be a household name even in their home country, but they’re still a pretty major historical milestone as one of Japan’s first metal acts, and when you consider some of the absolute obscurities that HAVE been faithfully posted on YouTube, I can’t figure out how the title track of their most famous album has fallen off the site. And it’s not like their label scrubbed the whole site clean and there aren’t other Blues Creations videos, you can find a rip of the entire Demon & Eleven Children ALBUM quite easily. Yet somehow the title track just doesn’t seem to exist on its own. On a less frustrating, much more convenient note, I couldn’t help but laugh at how the “official” Bedemon video posts are basically fan videos with no georestriction whatsoever. Given that this “band” only existed in the form of bootlegged, fan-distributed demo tapes for decades, I think that’s kind of beautiful.)

Tabitha's Playlist