Music Career
With his classically-trained bass voice, Lee sings on the The Wicker Man soundtrack, performing Paul Giovanni's psych folk composition, "The Tinker of Rye". He sings the closing credits song of the 1994 horror film Funny Man. His most notable musical work on film, however, appears in the superhero comedy/rock musical The Return of Captain Invincible (1983) in which Lee performs a song and dance number called "Name Your Poison", written by Richard O'Brien. Lee appears on Peter Knight and Bob Johnson's (from Steeleye Span) 1970s concept album The King of Elfland's Daughter. In the 1980s, during the height of Italo Disco, he provided vocals to Kathy Joe Daylor's song Little Witch.
He first came in touch with metal music by singing a duet with Fabio Lione, the lead vocalist of the Italian symphonic power metal band Rhapsody of Fire, on the single "The Magic of the Wizard's Dream" from the Symphony of Enchanted Lands II album. Later he appeared as a narrator on the band's four albums Symphony of Enchanted Lands II: The Dark Secret, Triumph or Agony, The Frozen Tears of Angels and From Chaos to Eternity as well as on the EP The Cold Embrace Of Fear - A Dark Romantic Symphony, portraying the Wizard King. He also worked with Manowar while they were recording a new version of their first album, Battle Hymns. The original voice was done by Orson Welles. The new album, Battle Hymns MMXI, was released on 26 November 2010.
In 2006, he bridged two disparate genres of music by performing a heavy metal variation of the Toreador Song from the opera Carmen with the band Inner Terrestrials. The song was featured on his album Revelation in 2007.
His first complete metal album was Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross, which was critically acclaimed and awarded with the "Spirit of Metal" award from the 2010 Metal Hammer Golden Gods ceremony. It was released on 15 March 2010. In June 2012, he released a music video for the song The Bloody Verdict of Verden.
On his 90th Birthday (27 May 2012) he announced the release of his new single Let Legend Mark Me As the King from his upcoming album Charlemagne: The Omens of Death, signifying his move onto "full on" heavy metal. That makes him the oldest performer in the history of the genre. The music was arranged by Richie Faulkner from the band Judas Priest and features World Guitar Idol Champion, Hedras Ramos.
In December 2012 he released an EP of heavy metal covers of Christmas songs called A Heavy Metal Christmas.
Read more about this topic: Birgit Kroencke
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