'Fire & Blood' is a song that is rather unique in Countess' repertoire since it is the only song that has been played live in two different languages. In this post, Orlok looks back on the creation of this track.
"The song 'Fire & Blood' was written in May 1994. It was initially to be used for a project to be called The Ninth Wave (after the Manilla Road song) and originally it had lyrics by Opyros entitled 'Furor'. However, nothing came of said project so new lyrics were written for the song and it became a Countess song. We never rehearsed it back then, but decided to include it on 'The Return Of The Horned One' anyway since we really liked the song.
The original version from 1994
The response to 'Fire & Blood' was really good and when we got a new line-up together in March 1995 it was obvious we would include it in our live set. We continued playing it live the next couple of years. It quickly became a live favourite and was also included on the live album we recorded in 1996 and was eventually released in 2017.
The live version from 1996
In 1997, the song's lyrics were translated to German by Opyros, obviously entitled 'Feuer Und Blut'. I don't recall why the translation was made exactly, other than that we probably just figured it was a cool idea. Or perhaps we were inspired by the similar thing Manowar had done several years earlier with 'Heart Of Steel'.
Though the German translation dates back to 1997, it was never really used until a new version was recorded in 2008. That version has remained unreleased but when we started playing live again in 2014, we decided to include the German version in our set. A recording of the German version, from the 'Metal Magic' festival in Denmark, made its way onto 'Sermons Of The Infidel', the compilation of new versions of classic tracks that we released in 2014.In 2015, when we decided to do an 'old school' set at the Veneration Of The Dead festival with songs from the 1993-1997 era only, we for once reverted to the English version of the song."
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