A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

If you’ve heard the live album, you hear me say in the middle of it, before it cuts into “Born in Hell on the Bayou”, something like “Man, Deicide bores the shit out of me”. That pretty much gives away the inspiration, such as it is, right there… It was early 1997 and soon to be (though I didn’t know it at the time) my last recording session with Paul. I was furiously trying to write as much as I could, grabbing inspiration from wherever. Toby had lent me a bunch of CDs that he wanted me to hear, and one of them was Deicide’s “Once Upon The Cross”. Literally the only thing I remember about that album, other than it boring the shit out of me, was the very first song, starting with four quick drum/guitar impacts and then blasting on open E, with the title of the song screamed in time with it - “ONCE U- PON THE CROOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSS”. Though you wouldn’t know it from his nice-guy exterior, Paul is a sucker for that kind of blasphemous over-the-top death metal stuff, so I thought “I should write something like that for him”. It only took a minute of thinking to come up with the idea of writing about The Antichrist, one of those “I’m a badass” big-swinging-dick type of songs, and the title just hit me - Born in Hell, and the way I could do the intro - “I WAS BORN IN HEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!”

At the time I was on a big Possessed kick, so while I wanted it to be really fast and simplistic like Deicide, I also didn’t want to bore myself, so I started trying to work in some Possessed-isms in the riffs. The single-note stuff and that main riff are just me trying to play fast and simple, but the chorus with those fast hammer-on weird-harmony riffs was me trying to mimic some of the crazy fast shit Possessed would do in songs like “Pentagram”. As for the lyrics, I just riffed off of being a satanic badass:

I WAS BORN IN HELL!

I was born in the fire
To rule you all is my desire
Bend your lives to my will
Drink your blood to have my fill
Crush your bones, smash your head
Leave you bloody, broken, dead
You are all my playthings
Slaughtered angels, broken wings

Born in Hell, take your life
Born in Hell, Antichrist
I have brought god's death knell
I was born in Hell

Yahweh's sons scream and crawl
Angels down from heaven fall
Cast them down from the gates
Damn them to unholy fates
I have won the eternal war
Good shall reign fornevermore
Torture him, endlessly
In pain for eternity

Born in Hell, take your life
Born in Hell, Antichrist
I have brought god's death knell
I was born in Hell

I just wrote them at work one day during lunch. When we first recorded the song, I didn’t have a structure in mind at all, so after the second chorus Paul and I just wander on some fast riffs, a bit of solo wanking… aimless. When it came time to record it for real, I knew I had to fix that. I pinned down the initial verse/chorus structure, then got the idea to go into that half-time solo thing - I’m not sure where I got that idea, or the idea to do duelling twin leads over it.

… And that was it. I was never terribly happy with this song, as it was obviously derivative (intentionally so, and for what I feel is a good purpose -the mocking of boring music - but still….).

(I’m still not sure exactly where I got the half-time-solo idea, except that I was into doing radically-different dynamic changes in songs, and since this one was just so fast and straight I thought a half-time beat with a slow, crunchy riff would work well to break things up. I still think going off into a CCR cover was a better choice - I’m a big fan of pisstake rock-n-roll covers, even if they’re songs I like.

As for the dual solos, I think I cribbed it from Black Sabbath-by-way-of-Metallica, from that mid-section on the studio version of The Four Horsemen - you know, the cool fucking part they NEVER play live. Or, at least, never did while they were still relevant.)