Since the Swedish band is going to visit our country on the 28th of October (opening for the amazing duo of Hammerfall and Refuge), I decided to write some things concerning their special case of a band. Born in 1989, Cederick Forsberg (friends call him just Ced) from Sandviken, Sweden made his first appearance in 2011 with a group called Rocka Rollas, a fine specimen of classic metal. Only it was not a group since Ced was the unique member, handling all duties!
Soon enough, like a musical chameleon, he started popping up as a contributor to many bands, all under the classic heavy metal banner but at the same time different. The band that made a real difference though and progressively overshadowed the rest was Blazon Stone. The year is 2013 and an album called Return to Port Royal hits the market. A pirate ship is depicted on the cover. No further explanation needed…
In 2013 Running Wild has just released the decent Resilient album after a very band studio comeback and is trying to sail towards glory again. The fans are thirsty for the good old Captain Rolf but his pirate ship is still very far from the golden years marked by Under Jolly Roger and ending with Rivalry. Ced, a hardcore RW fan himself, starts to build his own ship and rushes to the seas with no one but himself behind the helm. It was a carefully planned move, decided back in the day when the pirates from Hamburg announced that they would sail no more (a temporary state though).
So what is the case with Return to Port Royal? The thing is quite simple. Ced travels back in time, 1987 to be exact, and manages to decode the secret recipe for the creation of pirate metal. Not to copy but to recreate the trademark sound of the golden RW era using the authentic material! The Blazon Stone songs are not copies of existing ones but new tunes composed with the exact same methodology, with passion and respect towards Captain Rolf and his crew. You will feel the need to pinch yourself and realize that what you listen to is actually reality. The euphoric feeling during the listening of the album is easily converted to excitement. The Running Wild pirate vessel sails alone no more…
Ced didn’t encounter just excitement though, he was also greeted with some disrespect and skepticism. He wasn’t touched by it though. Blazon Stone moves upwards ever since and were recently upgraded as a full band that puts up some high energy live gigs! Now as an epilogue I would like to ask a simple question. If you knew that a favorite band of yours would never again be able to produce golden songs equal to its past, wouldn’t you prefer that something else would come and fill the void by presenting something of high fidelity and quality? The answer for me is quite obvious…
Kostas Kounadinis
