Image via Facebook / Lost Tribes of the Moon
Lost Tribes of the Moon
When reality becomes a nightmare, the nightmares of the creative imagination can be a comforting safe space for confronting our fears. So it was that the contemporary masters of nightmare, Clive Barker and Stephen King, became the inspiration for the new album by Milwaukee’s Lost Tribes of the Moon.
That album, Chapter II: Tales of Strife, Destiny, and Despair, “was created during a crazy time in the world. It was conceived and written at the height of the pandemic,” explains Jon Liedtke, the band’s composer, guitarist, synth player and—this is exciting!—theremin player. For lyrics and lead vocals, he turned to his onetime music teacher at MATC, Julie Brandenburg.
A composer of string quartets and electronic music as well as leader of alt-rock bands in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Brandenburg was pleased to collaborate with her friend and former student. “Jon is a great band leader. I enjoy taking a supporting role,” she says. “He gave me completed musical compositions and told me what his vision was for each song. I wrote lyrics that matched his inspiration.”
As signaled by one of the song titles, “A Chapter from the Book of Blood,” Barker provided much of Liedtke and Brandenburg’s inspiration—a creative source that predates the pandemic and meshes well with Liedtke’s doom metal disposition. The band’s name comes from a graphic novel adaptation of Barker’s film Nightbreed, where the story’s hidden tribe of mythological beings, shapeshifters and monsters were dubbed “the Lost Tribes of the Moon.” Other tracks, such as “Unleash the Berserkers” and “Midian Rising” also refer to Barker’s voluminous oeuvre, while the two-part composition “The Man in Black Fled Across the Desert” relates to Stephen King’s Dark Tower.
The recording that resulted from the Liedtke-Brandenburg collaboration is symphonic in sweep and grandeur like the metallic opera Richard Wagner never lived to compose. Brandenburg is a one-woman Valkyrie chorus, projecting powerfully but with intricate shades of emotion. Likewise, Liedtke isn’t playing guitar at high velocity for its own sake but conveys an orchestra of expression. Strife, Destiny, and Despair is an intense experience whose writing and recording “was a cathartic distraction from all the negativity,” Liedtke says.
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Where the band’s 2018 debut album echoed its live sound, “with this album I took a different turn,” Liedtke continues. “I incorporated auxiliary instruments (gongs, vibraphone, bougarabou) and different soundscapes. Since performing live was on indefinite hiatus, I wasn’t concerned with how to replicate it in a live scenario.”
Bassist Chris Ortiz, a veteran of edgy alt and metal bands, played on the Strife session and remains in the lineup. Drummer Jeremiah Messner has been replaced by John Gleisner. Concentrating on guitar, Liedtke turned keyboards over to Nicholas Elert and—a wonder!—even found a local theremin player, Daniel Kern. “The people I’m working with are all my first choices—they are my dream team,” Liedtke says.
The guitarist has enjoyed a prolific career beyond Lost Tribes of the Moon. His Frank Zappa tribute band, Gozortenplat, recently played at a German Zappa festival. He has also recorded and toured as the theremin player for the band Interama.
“I cannot deal with cliches,” Brandeburg says. Liedtke agrees. “I’m a big fan of heavy metal but a lot of metal has become a cliched thing that I consciously avoid.” Progressive metal is probably the most inclusive category for Lost Tribes, given his love of King Crimson, Yes and Peter Gabriel’s Genesis.
The lyrics for Strife, Destiny, and Despair insinuate contemporary reality into dark fantasy narratives. Brandenburg understands her Nightbreed source material as “an allegory of people being repressed, suffering indignities.” She wrote many of the album’s lyrics “at the time of the Black Lives Matter marches around my home. It’s an allegory about our world, where you have people who discriminate against other people for no reason.” She wrote in a time of anxiety and that time has not yet passed. Maybe a dose of Clive Barker, delivered with metallic fury, can help us wake from the nightmare?
Lost Tribes of the Moon will perform on Aug. 4 at Cactus Club on a bill with Chicago’s Immortal Bird and Denver’s Dreadnought; and at Jeff Hamilton’s public birthday party, Sept. 2, at the Miramar.
