in a totally friendly manner of speech, I'd venture your riddles wouldn't get solved by postgrad students with dissertations on Tolkien studies, either :/

There are several riddles that are just deliberately designed to look cryptic, although they aren't, e.g. if the task is to guess or choose a season, it's just a simple multiple choice thing (after all, there are only four seasons), and people who only know the movies only need to remember the dominant colours in a specific scene etc. (Which colours are dominant in the Rivendell scenes => season; who or what are Abaddon, Incubus and Pazuzu in our real world's mythologies? => answer => one riddle nearly solved.) Riddle No. 7 is just historical prog metal knowledge. Much of the rest is either puns, padding, or sneaky hints or obvious stuff, i.e. I really don't think that you need to be an expert on Middle-earth to find the solution. E.G. "ancient debris" or "architectural remnants" => roughly the same in other (very obvious) words => solution. You don't need to have read a single word by Tolkien to make a good guess and solve that one. The last riddle – that's a different matter – but the bonus clue somehow gives everything away... .)

Black Label Society

(and I was surprised that the band was not described earlier in this thread to be honest, - there were so many people who voted for them in the ''Album of the 2000s'' poll here...
Edit: oh.., it turned out that actually there was a riddle about Opeth earlier in this thread but only about one of their songs - "Demon of the Fall", and not about their name, and there was no the answer to that riddle before, - I apologize)

But I had to give additional directions for searching because the first one is too broad - there are many names of ancient fictional cities in historical fiction.
The additional clue+description are not very specific either - there are many names of ancient religious-related festivals, and there are a few groups of birds with long bills who feed on nectar, but that's all I could think of+was able to find tbh (At first, I wanted to mention the translation of ''Opet'' - this clue seemed good to me - it's not very obvious but quite specific, but it is also difficult to find the name by its translation (well, unless you are cheating and are using advance search by "Additional notes'' on MA instead of googling in cases like this - because there are a lot of band pages on MA that have information about meanings of band names in additional notes (including Opeth)). I checked out "City of the Moon" Google search results and there were a lot of cities with ''the Moon" in their names or in their translations/meanings, plus the search results were flooded with science fiction literature about some events/adventures that 'happened' literally on the Moon).
So if someone did not recognize the name of the band from the first description/or who recognized it and just wanted to make sure the answer was correct, there were additional and indirect ways to find the information by Google search:
- from the clue about the Ancient Egyptian Festival Opet;
- or to find the novel The Sunbird from my alternative description of the name of the novel (and to recall the name Opet in memory (if you read the novel) / or to find and to read some information about the novel/plot where the name of the city was mentioned).

Maybe it is a bit 'too much', but this is a progressive death metal band who have songs with unusual/complex structures - so their style inspired me for some over-thinking+searching, that's it.

I heard of both bands (and I think I even listened to some songs from them somewhere) but I didn't remember their artwork. But I know that there are some other metal bands/projects who also have birds on some of their artwork, so I think I would give more detailed description of birds/wings+their meaning (reflections of death and freedom) from Katatonia's artwork + would mention that the band has a logo with a bird which is positioned inside the letter ''O'' on the logo + would add an additional clue that is not related to the albums that have birds on their artwork (for example, that the artwork to the first full-length album from this band contains photos of band members (the album's line-up)+ and there is also a part of a human skeleton on the back cover of the album), - i.e. I think I would give enough specific details that are directly related to the band's discography, and the fans (both fans of 'old' and 'new' Katatonia) would easily recognize the band.. Well, now I think there are enough posts about Katatonia from me in this thread anyway (I hope it was not (too) boring/tiring to read all those posts, and once again I apologize for the offtopic/long posts/and especially for my nervous mood in this thread in general - I'm very sorry about that.).

Thank you for the answer and for the kind words. I have an anxiety disorder but most of the time it doesn't cause difficulties/problems that much (anymore), but I'm also tend to be a bit too emotional in general and it can cause too much worrying/overreaction in situations that can trigger too much (strong) feelings and emotions (both positive and negative) and I'm not always sure how other people perceive my words/reactions so it's better for me (and for other people) to ask/clarify about it. So answers + advices like these are always helpful. Thanks again!

I'm glad that you got positive emotions from reading my posts about Katatonia, and I have to admit that those posts are quite similar/close to "diatribe'' stylistically/in composition (I didn't even realize it when I wrote them *shame*), and for me it looks and feels like you mentioned this word in a positive (and broader?) sense, but the description of its meaning here - https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... h/diatribe made me worry about it too tbh, so I need to say+clarify it:
I hope that my posts were not perceived by anyone as some kind of passive-aggressive moralizing/criticizing other people (other than myself, and the band Aphotic (only for their lyrics)*) / or in ''religious/political speech''-like ''seeking to persuade an audience'' way. I am very sorry if it looks/feels like this.
I was+am not angry for anyone and didn't criticize anyone, I just wanted to ask/find out/figure out how those descriptions of bands/their names work(ed) for other people here and shared my emotions/personal opinions about the game and about one of my all-time favorite bands - Katatonia, that's it.

*By the way, if someone prefers less accessible doom/death metal (and has not heard of them before), check out a doom/death metal band Dusk (and especially their album ''...Majestic Thou in Ruin'' (which also has birds on the album cover btw ) ) - they have a split album with Aphotic (The song "An Aerial View" by Dusk is especially interesting musically and one of my all-time favorites) and they were/are related in general (see the line-up(s)), but Dusk's style is significantly different - the music is heavier and mostly slower, and the atmosphere is darker, plus the low growls are impressive.

Soilwork and Alcest

* Clue: The name of this young and still obscure band has roughly the same meaning as the architectural remnants in brackets. If you've never heard of the band, the most obvious guess is correct. Genre: heavy/post-black metal (according to Metal Archives).

It's Old Ruins. Killer track:

* Clue: If you know the season and the meaning of "rog" in English, you have the song title. If you have the song title, it's easy to guess the band because both the song and the band are anything but obscure (and, btw., not Tolkien-related at all). If you don't know the meaning of "rog", here's another clue: Abaddon, Incubus, Pazuzu etc. Genre: progressive death metal (according to Metal Archives).

The terms Abaddon, Incubus and Pazuzu refer to demons as does the Elvish word "rog", it just means "demon" ("Balrog" = "Demon of Might"). Elrond's council took place in autumn / fall (in the movie they captured the seasonal vibe with lots of browns, reds, yellows). So the song title is "Demon of the Fall", one of the fan faves from Opeth's catalogue.

* C(ryptic)lue: They covered Pete Pleasant, the bass player lives directly above Frodo's alias in Bree, and a song on the debut album is about the season when Gandalf tries to remember the right path through Moria by resorting to a mind-altering drug. ( )
* Bonus clue:
The band name is not Medieval Torture Device.
Genre: heavy metal.

If you take the shortcut in the bonus clue, it's easy.

It's "Biblical betrayer plus holy servant" / "Traitorous disciple preacher" / "Treacherous Man of the Cloth"!!

The diversion / roundabout route looks like this:

a Lucas character's (Jar Jar's) brother => Les Binks
Aragorn's love interest: Evenstar => song from '78: "Evening Star"
Pete Pleasant => Peter Green; the green / pleasant pun is a common cliché pun based on a Blake poem that became known as "Jerusalem", and the cover song is, of course, "The Green Manalishi"
Frodo's alias: Mr Underhill => the bass player directly above him: Ian Hill
the season: winter => the song on the debut: "Winter"

No. 1: I know this thing from somewhere, either from reading an interview or from surfing the Archives one or two years ago, but I can't remember the name of the main band. It's like that one item you stow away behind the vase on the shoe cabinet because you never need it, but when you need it, it's not there anymore. The only details I remember are: the longer name of the main band sounded more interesting than the stripped-down version, and the band wasn't as successful as it could have been. There was a problem of some sort (or if there wasn't a problem, I probably simply read a bad review and am now messing things up). If you just posted the name I would instantly recognise it – does that count?