Cirith Ungol

Cirith Ungol's epic tale in their own words:



".Rob [Garven, drums] and I met in 7th grade in 1969 and instantly became friends because we both loved Ferrari and J.R.R. Tolkien's the Lord of the Rings. In the summer of 1971, he and Jerry Fogle and Pat Galligan (who later joined punk band The Angry Samoans) decided to start a band to play Beatles songs, and I think the only reason they got me was that I had an amp. We called ourselves Titanic. Three guitars plugged into one 15 watt amp and Rob with just a snare drum and hi-hat trying to play Beatles songs. Rob and Jerry and I wanted to play heavier stuff like Cream and Mountain, so we left Titanic to sink, and the three of us formed Cirith Ungol in 1972, initially playing songs by Budgie, Thin Lizzy, Highway Robbery, Hard Stuff, etc. We set up a small studio in our practice room in 1977, and we did a lot of writing and recording between 1977-80. I have stacks of tapes from that period, and there are lots of songs that have not been released. In 1979, we recorded a dozen songs and released a cassette only album, which we sold at shows. A few of the songs from that album were remixed and released on Servants of Chaos." -Greg Lindstrom



"We played hundreds of shows, and had a band room where we played 3-4 nights a week and people would come over and hear us. We were a very powerful band live and blew away many of the bands we played with. The only part I enjoyed being in the band was playing and unfortunately out of the 22 years it was not what I got to do the most. Near the end were some of our best shows. Our roadies would dress up in robes and bring Tim out in a coffin. For 'King of the Dead' they would slowly raise it up and Tim would crawl out singing. I had these explosive devices on my cymbals which would shoot a balls of fire 20 feet in the air. We also had this stuffed head that had red LEDs for eyes that we would mount on my gong stand. We had a gigantic praying skeleton logo backdrop and sometimes the glowing Wheel of Fate logo off our album. At the end of the show we would always go crazy scraping guitar strings, smashing equipment, breaking cymbals and generally letting loose. We usually opened for 'bigger' bands so we usually got no sound check, no dressing rooms, bad sound and lights so we always would try to play as hard and heavy as we could and finish up with a bang. It made us hard and cold and we would always play very loud and kick ass!." -Rob Garven



"I think our unique sound came from the fact that we were heavily influenced by European bands such as Thin Lizzy, early Scorpions, Lucifer's Friend, Night Sun, etc. Unfortunately for us (although we wanted to be successful) our only real thought was to create good metal. Actually we sold quite a few albums but we were always on independent labels that had little or no money for tour support, advertising, airplay, etc." -Rob Garven



See blog for a brief Cirith Ungol bio by Perry Grayson