A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

“Doomsayer” was the ‘big hit’ from the Monolith… album, and is generally hailed as a fan favorite of Rampage. This is why it was re-recorded with Aerik for the Displeasures… EP as well, to showcase the new lineup.

But, in the grand tradition of artists hating their ‘best’ (most popular) work, I never saw the fuss over this song…

That main riff is the one that drives it home I suppose. It sprang up in 1992, when Early Warning was going into the studio to do the Yellow Tape. Our first night there, while we were setting up, Chris was tweaking his guitar rig and I had the guitar, and he asked me to play something so that he could set up the EQ. I started noodling for a second, then hit on the riff that ended up being the intro riff to the song. It reminded me a lot of the song “Into the Jaws of Death” by Raven (from their Combat comeback album, “Nothing Exceeds Like Excess” - it was also on that Ultimate Revenge 2 Video, which is where I first heard it….), and I liked that kind of straight-up heavy sound with the big ringing chords. It was easy enough to tweak, as well, and I was big on riff development at the time, milking two or three different versions out of one riff.

So, that night, I tried to take the riffs somewhere and got the idea for the song title. See, back then I was in one of those moody teenage depressive phases of my life, where everything was fine but I was too maudlin to see it because I didn’t have “X” or “Y” or whatever. Silly. And I knew it, but that didn’t help. So, I thought of telling myself to fuck off - so I myself am the ‘doomsayer’ who always has to shit on everyone’s parade and make everyone else as miserable as myself. Of course, I re-cast the main subject of the song not as a snotty angsty teen but as one of those astrologer-types - and I used (or tried to) some common prophetic imagery: The tarot deck, the crystal ball… The ‘bones’ thing was inspired by this one scene in Predator 2, oddly - where that Jamaican street thug meets up with the main character and says something about the bones always forecasting his death - and he casts a handful of bones onto a trash can lid and reads the patterns (sort of like reading tea leaves). I only had the first two verses and the chorus for a long time, though, so the tarot deck thing didn’t come until later, although I always envisioned it having another verse using some kind of card imagery…

Anyway, the lyrics, then we’ll get to song history:

You cast your hands, let the bones spin
They spell death; the world is soon to end
Never mind that it's only for you
You want company when you meet your doom

Inner gaze sees the mist inside the ball
Fragile walls of your sanity soon to fall
You try to sieze someone in your grasp
Don't want to be alone when you breathe your last

CHORUS
Fear of this evil world that is only here to cause you pain
Makes you spread your words of doom - you are hope's bane
Just what do you hope to gain?
Doomsayer

Deal the cards, three crosses and one
The tower shows; you say the time has come
The reaper grins his stare at you
The time has come for you alone, you fool

Now, from that first night back in 1992, I had the main riff, two verses and a chorus of lyrics, but no idea what to do from there. The band was never keen on anything I tried with this song, so they never tried to use it, so all I ever had beyond this point was a couple of bad ideas.

And there it sat until 1996.

I think we first tried doing this in the second session with Paul, when we re-formed Rampage. Our first night was a drunken accident, but great - and so when we next got together I knew I wanted to write a few new songs. Well, one of the first things I worked on after that first session was this song - I dug up the lyrics, added one more verse, then just kinda hammered on the main riff looking for alternatives until I hit on that crunching verse riff. At the time, remember, we recorded live so I had to sing and play at the same time, so many of those songs from that time have just simple open-e crunching under the singing parts. That ended up setting up the whole arrangement up to that descending end riff, which was improvized on the spot the first time we recorded the song.

We ended up doing that song 3 or 4 times in the boombox phase, but it never got onto album until Monolith…. It wasn’t a death metal type song for TEU, it wasn’t part of the Bellum storyline, and finally (and I know this will make most of my ‘fans’ hate me) I never thought it was that great a song. I think I milk that main riff for just a bit too much more than it’s worth. Still, it’s an honest emotion from myself to an older version of myself that encapsulates how I felt at one time - but since I really have grown past that phase, it’s more like an old yearbook picture than something I’d really show to anyone now.

(This song still isn’t one of my absolute favorites, but I like that I wrote something that a lot of people seem to still dig. On the Monolith version I am still happy that I managed to sound so strong, vocally speaking. I still wish there were a bit more variation in the song, but maybe some day, I’ll give it another whirl.)