Byron A. Roberts, mastermind behind the bombastic British metal band Bal-Sagoth, is one of the most talented individuals active in the sword and sorcery field today. Although it wasn’t until the past few years that his stories saw print, he’s been developing characters and concepts for quite some time. Just take a look at a booklet of a Bal-Sagoth CD and you’ll see that the lyrics are basically short stories themselves! His latest work is a collaboration with Matthew Knight and Howie K. Bentley, written round-robin style. Let’s learn more about one of the men behind Karnov: Phantom-Clad Rider of the Cosmic Ice.

Which came first, your love for heavy metal music or sword and sorcery fiction?
The sword & sorcery obsession definitely came first. I became fascinated by fantasy stories, mythology and comic books at a very young age. The Marvel comics adaptations of Conan from the 1970s became my gateway to discovering Howard’s prose stories. From there I also began seeking out other authors of sword & sorcery. Additionally, the work of artists such as Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo, Chris Achilleos, Sanjulián, Earl Norem and the Brothers Hildebrandt absolutely captivated me. The late 70s and early 80s were a great time for fantasy paperbacks, comics and movies. I read a lot of fantasy and science fiction prose when I was growing up. Then in my mid-teens or thereabouts, I discovered metal. To me, metal and sword & sorcery seemed intrinsically linked. Bands such as Iron Maiden, Manowar, Celtic Frost and Bathory dealt with fantasy oriented lyrical topics to varying degrees, and those were the kind of bands I was drawn to fundamentally. In the late 80s, I started thinking about actually forming a band which would fuse my passions of sword & sorcery and metal.

When was Bal-Sagoth formed? Was any of the lyrical content (characters, settings, etc.) already developed beforehand?
I first came up with the idea for Bal-Sagoth around 1989. A great deal of the lyrical material which would eventually find its way into the Bal-Sagoth songs was written around that time or earlier. Many of the Bal-Sagoth stories started out as prose pieces I’d written which I then adapted into a lyrical format. I created many of the recurring characters during that period, such as Caylen-Tor, Joachim Blokk, Lord Angsaar and Captain Caleb Blackthorne. The Bal-Sagoth lyrical universe was very much a distillation of the material I’d loved since childhood… novels, short stories, comics, movies, etc. I knew I wanted the lyrics of the band to be a vast, interconnected narrative concept… with each song thematically linked to a varying degree. I developed a detailed history for my lyrical universe, and also began drawing maps of the various countries and continents in which the stories would take place. I had a few names in mind for the band at first, but ultimately I decided to go with Bal-Sagoth, which is from the works of Robert E. Howard. I’d always loved that name and it seemed to suit the overall concept of the band perfectly. Plus, Howard is one of my primary literary influences. Of course, finding musicians who were willing to become a part of this project was far more difficult than actually conceiving it!

In Karnov, your parts came last. Was it challenging to write about characters you didn't create?
Working on Karnov was immensely enjoyable and it was an incredibly compelling project to embrace. I loved receiving the previous chapters by Matt and Howie and seeing what epic perils the character was facing. And it was great fun for me to then decide on how to wrap up the tales and bring everything to a suitably rousing conclusion. Each of us brings something unique to the mix with our styles and overall approach, and I really hope the fans have as much fun reading the book as we had writing it!

Which of these authors is your favorite, and why: Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, or Clark Ashton Smith?
That’s a fiendishly difficult question to answer! Each of those writers is an undisputed master of their craft. They have all provided immeasurable inspiration to countless artists over the decades. Such elements of grim and thrilling sword & sorcery and eldritch cosmic horror as crafted by those titans are arguably the bedrock upon which the genres as we know them today are built. No, I cannot choose. Not today.

Your vocabulary is immense. Why do you choose to write in such a florid style? How would you respond to those who criticize it?
Ha ha! Yes, I do sometimes get carried away with the adjectives. I fully acknowledge that. It stems from so many years of reading E.R. Burroughs, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith and even Shakespeare, I’ll wager. I confess that I do love the more archaic and obscure words. There’s always a delightfully arcane and outlandish adjective lurking somewhere, just waiting to be used in a sentence! I shall try and rein it in a little. Well, there are worse crimes than compelling a reader to reach for a dictionary, I suppose.

Earlier this year you released The Chronicles of Caylen-Tor. You told me that the first draft of one of the stories dates back to 1995! Were there any other Caylen adventures written in that time period that are yet to be revealed to the public? Are you working on any new ones?
The original outlines of the three stories from The Chronicles of Caylen-Tor all date from the early 1990s. The first one I actually completed was “The Battle of Blackhelm Vale”, which I later adapted into lyrical form for inclusion on the second Bal-Sagoth album Starfire Burning Upon the Ice-Veiled Throne of Ultima Thule, released in 1996. I then completed “The Siege of Gul-Azlaan”, which as well as being a Caylen-Tor story is also technically part of my Obsidian Crown saga. The besieged fortress aspect of that story was very much inspired by David Gemmell’s debut novel Legend, which I first read in 1985. Several years of revisions on both stories ensued before I began expanding on the outline for “The King Beneath the Mountain of Fire”, which I finally completed in prose form last year. As well as those three tales, there are also outlines for several more Caylen-Tor stories in my vault, which I am currently working on. One of them is a temporal crossover adventure in which Caylen encounters the Elizabethan privateer Captain Caleb Blackthorne, whose stories appear in the Swords of Steel trilogy. Over the years, fan feedback has indicated that Caylen-Tor is one of the favourite characters amongst the Bal-Sagoth supporters, and I love writing his adventures, so “The Second Chronicles of Caylen-Tor” is perhaps inevitable at some point! Additionally, there are also several Caylen-Tor miniatures in the works from the artisans at Barbaric Splendor, so it seems that his adventures are certainly far from over. DMR Books was certainly the perfect home for The Chronicles of Caylen-Tor, and it seems as if the book was always destined to be published by such a venerable pulp (and metal) oriented publishing house!

Name one newer and one older book you have read and enjoyed recently. (“Newer” meaning from the past year or so, and “older” meaning written before 1980.)
A newer tale would be Under a Dim Blue Sun by Howie Bentley… Nazi UFOs and snake-men together in one rousing yarn… what’s not to love?! Ha ha! An older book would be Star Hawks: Empire 99 by Ron Goulart and Gil Kane… a prose novel based on the classic Star Hawks comic strip. Great science fiction/space opera from the late 70s/early 80s.

Any final words?
Many thanks to anyone reading this who has enjoyed my stories and lyrics over the years. Your support has been amazing and I appreciate it unreservedly. Check out my sites www.bal-sagoth.net and www.byron-a-roberts.co.uk for news about forthcoming projects. All hail!