Wheel of Time and Song of Ice and Fire featured in Blind Guardian's latest album

[Mikaze]

At The Edge of Time

Two songs each for both series.

Just listened to it in its entirely.

OMG

Track 10 - Wheel of Time

OMG

This actually makes me want to give that series another shot, it's so over the top.

Oh yeah and Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion as well.

Probably the biggest geekout I've had since realizing Within Temptation's "Hand of Sorrow" was based on Assassin's Apprentice.

*and yes, Wheel of Time is a longish song, appropriately enough.

[TriOmegaZero]

Damn.

[Face_P0lluti0n]

Same here. I never made it past book 6 of the Wheel of Time series, Blind Guardian makes it sound so awesome I seriously thought about starting back at book 1 (since it's been 6 or 7 years and an undergraduate college education ago since I stopped reading).

[feytharn]

Not to mention Tanelorn as the second BG song based on the Elrik novels...and Soulforged fron the Night at the Opera Album, based on Raistlin!

Seen Blind Guardian live Thursday Night...VanCanto as a weird but great support act. What a great show!

[Hydro]

Sweet!!

I read Winter's Heart shortly after it came out. At the time it was the last available book in the series, and I vowed not to pick the series back up again until all the books were out. Still waiting, of course.

I don't know about rereading the whole series (that's a lot of pages, a lot of them aren't as good as the rest, and there is a LOT of great fantasy out there that I haven't read yet), but Eye of the World is a great book and worth a second trip through IMO.

[Bill McGrath]

There's an Australian Black Metal band called, quite simply, Myrddraal. Their songs seem to be entirely based on the Wheel of Time. Part of the lyrics to this song are just:

Book 6 spoiler:

Mazrim Taim's orders at the Battle at Dumai's Wells

They're pretty low-production though, it's a pretty difficult style to like,

There's also a pretty recent thrash band called "Lich King", their myspace has a song called "Ice and Fire", and the lyrics are clearly based off George RR Martin's books.

I love the nerd/metal crossover!

[CapeCodRPGer]

Been done before. There are some Lord of the Rings refrences in a couple of led Zeplien songs.

[KaeYoss]

BG does it all the time. That and covering pop songs are their calling cards.

Beyond Wheel of Time and A Song of Ice and Fire, there are references to the Eternal Champion in Tanelorn.

A Night at the Opera had The Soulforged, a song about Raistlin from Dragonlance (back when they did the album, they had a poll where you could choose what they'd write a song about. I only remember one other choice - Drizzt from the Forgotten Realms).

A Twist in the Myth had Carry the Blessed Home, a reference to the Dark Tower series.

And on the single to ANATO, And then there was Silence, they had Harvest of Sorrow, a reference to Tolkien's Silmarillion (especially Túrin and his tragic story)

Nightfall in Middle Earth was a complete concept album about the Silmarillion.

Somewhere far beyond had Time what is time about Blade Runner, The Quest for Tanelorn (another eternal champion), the Bard's song - The Hobbit, Somewhere far Beyond about the Dark tower.

Tales of the Twilight World has Traveler in Time about Dune, Lord of the Rings, Tommyknockers.

Battalions of Fear has Majesty about Lord of the Rings.

And those are just the references I know about myself, referring to fiction. If you look them up on Wikipedia, you find plenty more references to other works, to myth and history, and so on.