A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

After “Devastator”, it’s a bit of a toss-up as to which song was the second one written for The Onslaught - either “You’re Fucking Doomed” or “Drink ‘til You Die”. I’m pretty sure I had the idea for the title of YFD first, as I directly lifted it from Stan Dementor when he told me he intended to title the second Wrath Ritual demo “You’re Fucking Doomed” back in 2004 or so. However, “Drink ‘til You Die” was certainly the second song finished, as it came from a very easy place to write - the a-string-based blues/thrash song. The style and the title came directly from “Blood of Dionysus” from the first album, which was exactly the same type of song, and I approached it from the position that I’d do one of these type of things on each album.

That said, I didn’t want to just rehash the same thing, so while it’s very similar I did try to distinguish each part so that it falls more on the ‘homage’ side of the line rather than ‘ripoff’. Instead of basing the riff on bluesy one-finger diads over a pedal tone I came up with a blues-rock-styled hammer-on riff that would work in between the pedal tones. It also helped that I had written a proper chorus instead of just going back and forth between the singing-verse riff and the other verse riff like the earlier song.

As for the lyrics, these were by far the easiest lyrics to write. I took the same viewpoint of worshipping alcohol for the release it provides from daily agony and just wrote basically a love song to my favorite beer:

Your golden brew flows like ice and fire in my veins
When I'm away from your touch it drives me insane
Quench the thirst that gnaws away at my mind
You're the only peace that I ever find

Drink it down - blood of the gods
Drink it deep - until I go blind
Drink it up - Dionysus adored
Drink to sacrifice - Drink 'til you die!

Oblivion, ecstasy, and bliss
You kill the hell of earth with your noxious kiss
Fuck their false heaven, it's right here in my glass
So drink up you worthless losers or kiss my ass

Drink it down - blood of the gods
Drink it deep - 'til I go blind
Drink it up - Dionysus adored
Drink to sacrifice - Drink 'til you die!

I don’t remember much about writing them, so it must have been pretty quick and easy. It might have been at lunch, or at work, or in the shop waiting on the car to get fixed. Anyway, I knew I’d have to throw in another slow ‘blues’ solo, but I gave it a 16-bar turnaround rather than 12 and threw in a few more blues/rock-style guitar comps to make it feel different from the first song. I also thought I had the studio wherewithal to actually pull off other homages to my two favorite thrash-blues tracks by other bands - “Butt-Fuck” by Nuclear Assault and “Teacher’s Pet” by Venom. Beyond both having blues solos in the middle, I thought John Connelly’s rant in the middle of their song was funny, and I also had the bright idea to go ahead and put a lampshade on the fact that I just rehashed the same idea from the first album with my own rant - and, of course, I’d do the same “YOU FIGURE IT OUT!” on the lyrics sheet. As for Venom, I rewrote their ‘get your tits out’ singalong-screaming part to ‘get the taps out for the lads, and we’ll drink ‘em down!’, now that I had a plan for how to record it.

I knew from the start that I’d get other friends of mine to do guest backing vocals, and I knew I’d have to give them scratch tracks and timing tracks, but I spent a night planning out the logistics of that middle section and then set it in motion. I recorded a couple of tracks of my own of the sing-song bit to get an idea of how long the pause should be, then I recorded two passes of my own screaming-and-hollering chaos to give the guys the idea of how to go about it and give them something to play off of. I was also careful to give a very distinctive drum fill which included the count back into the song so they knew when to quit. Overall I’m very happy with how it turned out - one of Toby’s improvised lines was so good I cut it from the middle and moved it to the very end of the song!