Chris Comper records as Prinz Grizzley from a house his grandfather built by hand in the Austrian Alps, outside the village of Egg in the Bregenz Forest, and he is raising three kids there. That address shapes how “Reign on, queen of mountains (A price to pay)” hands out blame.
The song runs at a sprint, banjo and mandolin flatpicked fast enough to clear a barn floor, and for its first half the harm belongs to other people. They strip the mountain down to bone. Her sons and daughters blast and burn their own green home. The chorus even borrows the forgiveness Jesus asks for from the cross in the Gospel of Luke, pardoning the vandals because they have no idea what they’re doing as they tear her heart out. Comper has said the song is about what the West wrecks in its hunt for minerals, gold, coal and oil, and those early verses keep the miners at a safe grammatical distance, in the third person.
The third verse walks Comper into the crowd. The pronouns turn to let’s and our, and the plan becomes raising children who leave nature alone and lifting the chains off the mountain. The final chorus hardens the stakes: every hand is on her now, and if she keeps bleeding, so will the people doing the cutting. Then the song drops the royal title and the third person in a single breath. “Oh mother we broke the rules,” Comper sings, and the queen becomes a parent while the vandals become her kids, the singer among them. The subtitle promised a price to pay, and by the last line the song knows exactly whose account it goes on. At this tempo, it sounds ready to pay up.
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