Jester Race Wikipedia

[Gums]

Interesting notes on Wikipedia:

• Logo by Glenn Ljungström - didn't realize this
  
  
• Photos by Kenneth Johansson - another Johansson. John Per Kenneth Johansson (2 May 1956 – 31 July 2021 was a Swedish Centre Party politician who was the governor of Värmland County between 2012 and 2018. He was a member of the Riksdag, from 1998 to 2012.
  
  
• Kaspar Dahlqvist − keyboards on "Wayfaerer" - looks like this guy played keyboards in other metal bands as well.
  
  
• Gelotte also provided some lead and acoustic guitars for the album. - what acoustic guitars did he play?
  
  
• A video for the song "Artifacts of the Black Rain" was also released. - Actually, I don't think I've seen this before.

Japanese edition - totally different track order (wonder why they did that?)
1."Dead Eternity"
2."The Jester Race"
3."Graveland"Strömblad,
4."Moonshield"
5."The Jester's Dance"
6."December Flower"
7."Artifacts of the Black Rain"
8."Dead God in Me"
9."Wayfaerer"
10."Lord Hypnos"
11."Dead Eternity (Demo)"
12."The Inborn Lifeless (Demo)"

 

[DE4life]

The Artifacts video is just the live footage from Koln '96 spliced with some random dude running in a forest, but yeah, it exists.

 

[Gums]

That intro is just hilarious. A lady is bottle-feeding a baby. But wait.. it's actually a creepy looking doll!

 

[DE4life]

Yeah I really have no idea what the concept is meant to be, lol. I'm sure they had some kind of meaning behind it, but it's way too obscure to make any sense of.

 

[The Grayfox]

Actually, I think I prefer that Japanese tracklisting, surprisingly.

 

[Gums]

Actually, I think I prefer that Japanese tracklisting, surprisingly.

I'm not sure. I'm happy with the original order. Although I guess when its an album full of bangers, any order can work. I wonder why they decided to switch things up here. People in Japan are really fond of certain tracks, so they put them at the beginning?

 

[The Grayfox]

As much as I love TJR, I've always kind of thought the tracklisting is weird. It opens with a mid-tempo song and goes into an instrumental. It's certainly a choice. With this, you get a nice heavy, fast opener and then right into what I believe to be the best IF song of all time, the title track. Either way, masterpiece of an album.

 

[Gums]

Point taken. I always liked hearing the sweet sounds of the moonshield intro right off the bat.. but you're right, it is odd having a mid-tempo song at the beginning, and then a short instrumental. Those first two tracks could have been used more strategically to switch things up. But yeah.. minor details in the grand scheme.