A bit of my musical background and the song Steam (Prometheus)

When I was a wee lad, oh, around the age of 11 or 12, my musical world was pretty much defined by my older brother. He was, after all, the arbiter of all that was cool. He introduced me to bands like Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Blue Oyster Cult, Rush, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Judas Priest, and others from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. On the basis of his say so, I went out and tracked down albums by these bands and absorbed them into my very psyche.

Eventually, he would move of to college and I ran afoul of bands like XTC, Bauhaus, The Cult, Siouxsie, Shriekback, Sisters of Mercy, The Mission and all the other bands of the early 80's. But this isn't about them, really. This is about that list in the previous paragraph.

That heavy guitar-oriented rock stayed in my style. It was kind of like the reptilian hind-brain of my musical self. Wherever my musical tastes took me, there was always that heaviness. Even as I descended into new-wave, I still had that inner metal head at the very roots.

Somewhere in the development of The Antikythera Mechanism Alyssa sent me a lyric about Prometheus. And we went back and forth on it a few times. I loved the words but none of the music that I came up with seemed right. I was thinking that I might have to hold off on those words and was kinda bummed about it.

That's when I happened to be in the local used CD shop and saw Black Sabbath's 1st album sitting right there on the counter. It was only five bucks and I'd not had a copy of it in years so I went ahead and got it. As I drove home I popped it into the CD player and my musical youth exploded into my head. I'd forgotten how much I loved that album. It was some serious blues rock. Iommi was on fire!

And that was when I knew what I had to do for Steam. I had to go back to my 12-year-old self and learn the song through his eyes. The result is a little more early Def Leppard than Sabbath. There's a hint of early Rush in there too. So yeah. That song is totally the song that I would have written if I'd known how to play guitar when i was 12.

And as far as the credit where credit is due goes: I don't play any of the guitar. Guitarist Adam Bratman plays that blistering solo in the middle while Jean-Paul Mayden lays down the rhythm. The bass is totally me, though. :)