A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

“Apocalypse Metal” was the first song that was ever written for Death Beast, strictly because of the fact that it was first in the email that Stan Dementor, a.k.a. “IRONFIST”, sent me in mid-2001 when we first decided to give this collaboration a try. Keeping in mind that we first collaborated because I wanted to go in a more black metal direction while he wanted to go in a more traditional-old-school direction, I reviewed the lyrics overall and saw that they fit very well with the whole stew of thrash, death, black, and speed metal that the old greats were into in the very early 80s - Mercyful Fate, Metallica, Sodom, and of course Slayer. In fact, at the time I had been listening to Slayer’s first album and picking up a few of the riffs and songs from online tab books, so when I saw the lyrics to “Apocalypse Metal” I thought they would be perfect for something very much in the vein of Slayer’s “Evil Has No Boundaries”:

Raging armies of madmen
Storm the gates of the heavens
The holy die by metal
Hear the voices of daemons
Armageddon is descending
Thy torment, neverending
At last, the prophecy came true
Storms of Heavy Metal vengeance

Apocalypse Metal (x4)

With a swing of the axe 
Severed is God's head
And the cloven hoof is the sign
As monarch, forever...Darkness Reigns!
The iron hammer smashes the cross
All hope for humanity is eternally lost
Apocalypse, the disastrous end
Total human holocaust

Apocalypse Metal (x4)

Spread the legs of the nun...
Drink the blood of the minister...
Bang your head till' exhaustion...
Vomit on Jehovah's altars...
Metal has triumphed...finally
Death to Eternity...

Die!

Apocalypse Metal (x4)

I started by copying that first main riff to the Slayer song, hammering the D-to-E over the low-E-string drone but changing the chords on the turnaround at the end of the riff. The cadence of the vocal rhythm fit that riff pretty well, so I just decided to go with it, setting up my main method of composing Death Beast songs, mashing up many different ideas from different bands and songs so that, while I’d obviously borrow a piece from here, a piece from there, the whole thing would have a somewhat unique look - kinda like mashing up a building from two different Lego kits.

I pulled a trick from Metallica stepping up a whole step for the interlude between verse and chorus, combined with a lead-guitar-melody replacing the vocal lead line like I heard in Countess. I’m not quite sure where I got the idea for the chorus riff itself, but taking the lead melody from the bridge and changing it to fit the new riff was something I’d heard a lot of other bands do, from Judas Priest to Hirilorn. Slowing it down for a ‘crunch/mosh’ riff section was another standard, from Slaughter or Anthrax (really, both!), and then of course speeding back up for the solo section. For some contrast I moved keys up for the mosh part, from D (open) to F (third position), since I don’t use F in any other section of the song, and then returned back to the basic D to E (whole-step, like the bridge) to the chorus progression. I also wanted to keep the variation theme going, so while the key shifts follow the same verse-bridge-chorus pattern I did a different rhythm pattern for the verse section, then changed back to the familiar patterns I’d set up for the bridge and chorus while changing the bass pattern for the bridge and continuing the solo throughout.

As far as writing it goes, I really only spent about an hour or two coming up with the parts and deciding what kind of drum patterns I wanted for each part, then a couple of hours actually programming it out. I left the spaces and riffs anticipating a particular singing pattern based on the verses he gave me above, but when he returned his first vocal take for this he had changed it completely! I’d intended for him to sing the second half of each verse over the step-up ‘bridge’ part, then repeat “Apocalypse Metal” four times over the chords after the bridge, then a quick stop before the next verse, but as you all know from hearing the song he changed it a bit - and, I think, for the better. I also was expecting more of his black rasp like he used in Song of Melkor, not the old-school Slayer+Nasty Savage gruff singing with falsetto stabs, but the way he made that stand out by sticking the chorus just once, right in the pause, worked perfectly.