A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

“Agent of the Reaper” was the fifth of the original six Death Beast songs that I wrote, though it was last in the email. Song five, “Every Church Shall Burn”, had such a weird structure that I bypassed it so that I could finish an easier one first and keep the momentum going. If you’ve seen the demo tracklists, though, you know by now that this song never ended up on the original four-song demo, even though it could have been (though I guess that would have made it a five-song demo - plus covers… but I digress). I had a drum and music synchronization problem that crept in as I was in the middle of converting between two different software platforms - either two versions of Cakewalk (7.0 and 9.0) or between Cakewalk 9.0 and Sonar 1.2. The other demo songs didn’t have this problem, and it’s been so long now that I can’t remember the details. That said, I DO have a recorded version of this with Stan/Ironfist on vocals, but the drums are so out-of-sync that it’s pretty unlistenable.

What he gave me:

vrs.
They call me Demetor; the Destroyer; the Demon
They call me a killer, Agent of the Reaper
For when you least expect it, early in your life
A shadowy figure stalks you and you're murdered by my knife
Before the Reaper takes you, if He thinks you should die instantly
He raises up his scepter, and to slay he summons me

Agent of the Reaper...
Executioner of the Worthless
Agent of the Reaper...
Bringer of Diabolical murder
Agent of the Reaper...
Slayer of youthful mortals
Agent of the Reaper...
I am your Destroyer!

(mid song bridge type thing:)
In the shadows I lurk
In the dead of the night...
When you hear my footsteps
You shall die of fright...
And when you feel me, getting near...
Nothing shall save you, as you drown in fear...
And then I will strike, send you down to Hell
Slit your jugular vein, at Death's command...

(repeat vrs. chs.)

Unlike the other songs that Stan recorded for the Death Beast demo, he sang this one pretty much the way I envisioned when I wrote it, which is pretty much the way you’ve heard it on all of the other versions that are out there. His notes about verses, bridges, and choruses suggested the structure, and with a single verse repeating fore and aft I thought it would do well as an album-ending superfast thrasher, along the lines of “Hardening of the Arteries”, “Strike of the Beast”, or “Nailed to the Cross”.

I remember starting with the drumbeat on this one. I was worried about the other songs being too ‘stiff’ with fast but rigid beats, so with this one I started with one of those fast, staggered 16ths-note beats that you can cram a few full-four-16ths in: dotted eighth, sixteenth, two eighths, and repeat, sometimes dropping four-sixteenths instead of the dotted-note combo. It doesn’t scan in text as well as it sounds, so just listen to the drum intro and you’ll hear what I mean. It reminded me of a lot of the kinds of fast, simple, heavy rhythms that the guys would write back when I was in Skiptoe, and so I went for a pretty straight, direct, Dm-plus-tritone progression for the main riff. On the demo I grinded on the low “D” power-chord in the open position, but after that when I started working it up for the proper album I thought it sounded a bit more classic-old-school thrash to hit the higher D in the 7th position (like those old E-based Metallica riffs).

The rest just flowed from trying to keep the fast feeling through the verses - not changing the tempo or beat too much, but using different kinds of riffs for each section. The regular thrash-styled ‘3-on-4’ riff for the verse changed to a combined riff of ringing chords under a muted 16th-note riff, then a different staccato riff for the chorus that combined chugging with accent chords. Instead of chugging on just a low ‘D’ I alternated D and F, another thing that harkened back to the Skiptoe days. Changing to the slow ‘mosh’ part for the bridge was a given, and again it just kinda wrote itself, along with the way the song flowed back to the chorus riff for the solo, then used the verse turnaround to come back to the main riff. I wish I could still make them fall together this easily nowadays.