When I was a four or five years old, I was absolutely terrified of my stepfather's record of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds. It was the interior paintings that freaked me out the most, with only hearing the pseudo-Beethoven strings that opens up the album being enough to drive me to tears and run away to my bedroom.� Much later as a teenager I finally checked out a copy of it from the library to finally confront my childhood fears. I knew it wouldn't be as terrifying as my� memories told me it would be, but I was quite disappointed in what I heard. It really didn't click for me. Richard Burton's narration was fine but the music, despite good leitmotifs, had nowhere near the oomph I was expecting (my apologies to any fans of the album out there).� Still, there was some untapped potential in these songs I felt...

Cut to 1998 and Australian band Alchemist, after realizing that it was the twentieth anniversary of Jeff Wayne's album, as well as being the centennial anniversary for the original novel, and decide to do their own much heavier take on the original album opener "The Eve of the War".

Maybe they had similar childhood experiences and wished to recreate the experience on their own terms, but this feels like the version I thought I heard as a child: Much more energetic and driving than the original. I realize that truly timeless great music should be self-explanatory...but I felt I needed to give a little context here. Besides, I figure some board members will like any music video that name drops Enemy From Space and throws in images from the original Invaders from Mars movie...



"It was at that point, that the Guignol became Grand". -- Devlin Waugh