A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

So I had the titles and basic ideas for three of the four songs we wanted to put on Crimson Frost, but during the planning stages we still didn’t have a real idea of what to do for the song “Crimson Frost”. Originally, the title itself just came as a spoof on titles you always hear in black metal. Nothing is ever ‘red’ - it’s always ‘Crimson’. And, thanks to panda bear and weather report metal, everyone always talks about ice, snow, and frost. So, when originally crafting the ideas way back when of somewhat spoofing black metal as I epitomized it, I thought “Why not make the most generic/quintessential title out there - Crimson Frost?”

Unfortunately, that one little idea basically burned up all the gas in the tank.

At the time, I thought about it more, and all I could come up with was a battle in the winter. The title itself, ‘crimson frost’, suggests deep-red snow and ice, and given the militant themes in black metal, a blood-soaked snow field after a battle was a natural idea to have. I thought perhaps I could take the angle of the aftermath of a battle, where the slaughtered defenders of good are bleeding into the snow. But without any bigger idea to connect it to, at the time, I couldn’t really make it go anywhere. “Dead bodies, blood, snow…”

*yawn*

It was a good image, at least, but I couldn’t actualize it. Fortunately Aerik could. When talking about what to do about a title track, I described my mental picture, and he said “I can work with that…”. Then, somehow, we got to talking about the number 666 (you HAVE to have 666 in there somewhere…), and he asked what was 666 years ago (from 2004). Using a simple history web search, I found that the Hundred Years’ War between France and England had started nearly 666 years ago - near enough to fudge.

“I’ve got it”, said Aerik, and a few days later, he sent me this:

Six hundred and sixty six years ago... a world of fire and steel
Armies ruled with iron fists... ground nations under heel
Kingdoms rose and kingdoms fell... all empires fall to dust
The dead are gone and buried now... their ancient swords to rust

But in the sky while war was waged, a flame tore through the sky
The slain fell lifeless to the earth, but they truly would not die
Satan himself had blessed these men that they could not be free
Now every year they'll rise from Hell in search of victory

Now every year they meet right here to wage this war again
The steel, the bones and dying groans as the legions find their end
The blood will flow upon the snow as the spectres meet the blade
When morning comes it's all undone, but the Crimson Frost remains

... when the crimson frost remains...
... It means the devil was here again...

Just like pirates who are doomed to forever sail the seas
These legions crave a final rest, but they can never sleep
They fight as if they have a chance to win the devil's heart
But he only laughs at them, their bodies torn apart

It's like a dance, devoid of song to all ears but his own
The war a garden of despair, the seed he's always sown
The beaches burn and screams of pain fill our sleeping ears
The sounds of metal breaking flesh - the sound of dying tears

Now every year they meet right here to wage this war again
The steel, the bones and dying groans as the legions find their end
The blood will flow upon the snow as the spectres meet the blade
When morning comes it's all undone, but the Crimson Frost remains

... when the crimson frost remains...
... It means the devil was here again...

Every year right here in France
Upon historic shores
The screams of men will fill the air
Just as Satan's hordes
They'll fight till dawn on through the mist
The sky will burn with flames
But if you see it you will die
Next year to join their pain

Now every year they meet right here to wage this war again
The steel, the bones and dying groans as the legions find their end
The blood will flow upon the snow as the spectres meet the blade
When morning comes it's all undone, but the Crimson Frost remains

... when the crimson frost remains...
... It means the devil was here again...

As you can see, Aerik is not only more gifted than me lyrically, he’s also more prolific. I had envisioned this being a long, epic song, but having to put this amount of lyrics to music made that pretty easy. The stanzas, repetitions, and breaks naturally suggested a good deal of the song structure, but I didn’t have any specific ideas musically yet. After trying a slow, grinding type of riff and a more laid-back, keyboard-topped affair, I opted going for an open sound - long, ringing chords with a pumping, driving bass line driving the vocals, punctuated with crunching interludes and more aggressive parts for the choruses and bridges.

One of the earlier ideas I tried was a clean guitar riff based on two chords a tritone apart, which didn’t work, but I did keep part of that in the intro section - the ‘lead line’ at the start of the song and between the verses came from that. I had in mind an old Early Warning song, “Beyond the Mirror”, that used this same kind of bass-driven verse idea, but also had in mind Countess, who had a knack for building big, epic songs out of fairly simple individual parts. For the contrasting chorus section, I tried doing that “007” progression - E-B, E-C, E-Db, then modulating it up to G and repeating.

When I first demoed it and heard how static it seemed after all those verses and choruses, I knew I wanted to move to a different tempo and feel for the bridge and second half of the song. Uptempo triplets were a natural choice, and I just mutated the basic chorus chord progression to be played on two harmony guitars rather than crunching chords. I also mirrored the E-G modulation by doing the ‘bridge lyrics’ part in E and then moving up to G for the outro and solo.

After demoing it for Dante, he quickly returned the drum file and I got to work on the final version. I was happy with how unified it sounded for being such a big song - a testament to the power of the ‘theme and variation’ style of songwriting which I’m a big fan of.

(Aerik told me later that he was sick the day they were slotted to do the vocal recording for this one song, so since he couldn’t do the black metal rasp properly he just did his normal singing - which is outrageous when you consider the scream near the solos at the end of the song. He did talk about going back to recut it at some point, but he never did. Never mind - I love this song the way it is now.)