Touched by the Crimson King is the second album of power metal

Power metal

Power metal is a style of heavy metal combining characteristics of traditional metal with speed metal, often within symphonic context. The term refers to two different but related styles: the first pioneered and largely practiced in North America with a harder sound similar to speed metal, and a...

/heavy metal

Heavy metal music

Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...

 band Demons and Wizards and was released in June 2005. The album contains a cover of Led Zeppelin's

Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...

 "Immigrant Song

Immigrant Song

"Immigrant Song" is a song by the English rock band Led Zeppelin. It was released as a single from their third album, Led Zeppelin III, in 1970.-Overview:...

." It was also released as a limited edition digipak in Europe with an alternate cover and four bonus tracks on a second disc. For the North American release, all fourteen songs appeared on one disc, which had the limited edition cover in the form of a sleeve around the jewel case.

Track listing

Music and lyrics written by Schaffer/Kürsch, except for "Immigrant Song" written by Page/Plant.

1. "Crimson King" – 5:47
2. "Beneath These Waves" – 5:12
3. "Terror Train" – 4:46
4. "Seize the Day" – 5:22
5. "The Gunslinger" – 5:15
6. "Love's Tragedy Asunder" – 5:28
7. "Wicked Witch" – 3:32
8. "Dorian" – 6:36
9. "Down Where I Am" – 4:54
10. "Immigrant Song
    Immigrant Song
    "Immigrant Song" is a song by the English rock band Led Zeppelin. It was released as a single from their third album, Led Zeppelin III, in 1970.-Overview:...
    
    " (Led Zeppelin
    Led Zeppelin
    Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...
    
     cover) – 2:28

(Limited Edition only)

1. Lunar Lament – 4:04
2. Wicked Witch (slow version) – 3:56
3. Spatial Architects – 5:46
4. Beneath These Waves (edit) – 3:41

Guest musicians

• Bobby Jarzombek
  Bobby Jarzombek
  Bobby "Wire" Jarzombek is a heavy metal/progressive metal drummer and best known for his work with Halford, Sebastian Bach and Riot. He has also recorded and toured with Fates Warning, Arch / Matheos, Iced Earth, Rob Rock, Spastic Ink, and Juggernaut, among others.-Biography:Bobby Jarzombek was...
  
   - drums and percussion
• Jim Morris - guitar solos and backing vocals
• Rubin Drake - bass and fretless bass guitar
• Howard Helm - piano and backing vocals
• Kathy Helm - backing vocals
• Tori Fuson - backing vocals
• Jesse Morris - backing vocals
• Krystyna Kolaczynski - cello

Lyrical content

• "Crimson King" is a reference the Crimson King
  Crimson King
  The Crimson King, also commonly known as Los', is a fictional character created by Stephen King. He is the antagonist in the novel Insomnia the main villain due to a plot twist in Black House and one of the main villains in the latter half of Stephen King's Dark Tower series.-Fictional...
  
  , the main antagonist of The Dark Tower series. The song also strongly references Randall Flagg
  Randall Flagg
  Randall Flagg is a fictional character created by Stephen King. Flagg has appeared in seven novels by King, sometimes as the main antagonist and others in a brief cameo. He often appears under different names; most are abbreviated by the initials R.F. There are exceptions to this rule; in The Dark...
  
  , one of the King's many servants. Hansi in an interview has also stated that the Crimson King is Satan
  Satan
  Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
  
  .
• "The Gunslinger" is referring to Roland of Gilead, the protagonist of the Dark Tower series. The song refers mainly to the plot of the final book of the series.
• "Terror Train" is a reference to Blaine the Mono
  Blaine the Mono
  Blaine the Mono is a fictional character appearing in the books The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands and The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass of Stephen King's Dark Tower series....
  
  , from the third and fourth novels of the Dark Tower series.
• "Beneath These Waves" is based on Herman Melville
  Herman Melville
  Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
  
  's Moby Dick.
• "Seize the Day" is based on Tolkien
  J. R. R. Tolkien
  John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
  
  's The Lord of the Rings
  The Lord of the Rings
  The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
  
  .
• "Love's Tragedy Asunder" is about a man whose wife is terminally ill, and he assists her suicide, and ends up killing himself.
• "Wicked Witch" is about the Wicked Witch of the West
  Wicked Witch of the West
  The Wicked Witch of the West is a fictional character and the most significant antagonist in L. Frank Baum's children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz...
  
   from L. Frank Baum
  L. Frank Baum
  Lyman Frank Baum was an American author of children's books, best known for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz...
  
  's The Wizard of Oz
  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children's novel written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. Originally published by the George M. Hill Company in Chicago on May 17, 1900, it has since been reprinted numerous times, most often under the name The Wizard of Oz, which is the name of...
  
  .
• "Dorian" is about Oscar Wilde
  Oscar Wilde
  Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
  
  's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray
  The Picture of Dorian Gray
  The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine...
  
  .
• “Down Where I Am” is about a baby born with Down’s Syndrome and the struggle of his father and the emotions going in and out of his mind.
• "Lunar Lament" is about the Maia
  Maia (Middle-earth)
  The Maiar are beings from J. R. R. Tolkien's high fantasy legendarium. They are lesser Ainur who entered Eä in the beginning of time. Tolkien uses the term Valar to refer both to all the Ainur who entered Eä, and specifically to the greatest among them, the fourteen Lords and Queens of the Valar...
  
   from Tolkien's The Silmarillion
  The Silmarillion
  The Silmarillion is a collection of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic works, edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher Tolkien in 1977, with assistance from Guy Gavriel Kay, who later became a noted fantasy writer. The Silmarillion, along with J. R. R...
  
  who travels across the sky driving the Moon Ship, following his love who guides the Sun Ship. When he approaches, her fire hurts him.