In the Realm of Asgærd

Asgærd may be the first band in the history of rock to make use of a grapheme. What’s that, you ask? According to the dictionary, a grapheme is a “unit of a writing system consisting of all the written symbols or sequences of written symbols that are used to represent a single phoneme.” In short: The a and the e are attached. It’s a difficult, somewhat obnoxious linguistic unit—it took me 30 minutes to try and figure out how to replicate the symbol for this review—but I suppose it’s no more pompous or self-serving than an album called In the Realm of Asgærd. First released in 1972 on the Moody Blues’ own Threshold label, Asgærd’s lone lp is progressive-tinged hard rock, a fanciful record with mythical references to “gods of all mankind” and “children of a new born age.” If the band’s fantasy-based lyrical content seems from another planet, the ‘70s-styled guitar heroics and high, glass-shattering vocal harmonies are no less otherworldly. The title track explores Norse mythology (“Thor, the god of thunder/hammer held on high/searching Asgærd’s realm for love/as the world goes passing by”), while “Starquest's” goal is interplanetary: “Racing into to outer space/forget about the human race.” Even the occult is dissected in a cover version of Bulldog Breed’s creepy “Austen Osmanspare.” Both In the Realm of Asgærd and Threshold Records proved unsuccessful. The band dissolved shortly after In the Realm’s… release; the label issued records by relative unknowns like Providence and Trapeze, neither of which scored commercially.

Notes: Here is the title track to Asgærd’s In the Realm of Asgærd: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CottHRbUQ0g.