A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

“Heaven’s Gate” is a rather unique song in Rampage’s repertoire because I normally detest current-events-type ‘CNN Metal’. However, these guys were just plain wackos, and seeing the kind of brain-rot this kind of shit does, and seeing how most churches do the same thing, albeit on a slower scale, I thought it would be worth doing because of that connection to a larger question - what makes people disengage their brain for god - and, really, not even for god, but for just some guy who claims to speak for him? I mean, shit, haven’t these idiots ever heard of Charles Manson? Jim Jones? David Koresh? The Pope? I’m pretty sure the music came first, and the lyrics later, but I had the basic song idea down before starting. I wrote this one early in 1997, and Paul and I did this one on our last boombox tape in March or May of that year. I remember thinking that most of my songs were ‘straight’, rhythmically, with very little in the way of either syncopation or ‘holes’ in the rhythms. I used to never leave rests or spaces to let the groove breathe. I wanted a song that would do something like that without sounding groove-monkey about it, and I went back to the Skiptoe days, to an old song that I never actually played with them, the song named “Skiptoe”. It was on their very first demo, and was centered around a straight-8 ‘hole on three’ riff. (DUH DUH (space) dah DUH DUH (space) dah - rinse and repeat). Instead of basing the whole riff on just that part, I added a turnaround on alternating bars, and got the idea to move chords around. I was in an F# mood (second position, that is - I’m tuned down a whole step so it’s actually in E, but you know what I mean), so I just started moving intervals and hit on what became that main riff. I liked adding in the major third instead of the minor, which makes it sound way more harmonically complex than it really is.

True to my singing and playing at the same time ability, I simplified the verses by moving them to straight crunches with just the last two chords as the turnaround from the main riff. The intro was just knocked out on the fly after I got the basic verse/chorus thing down - I wanted something that would lend itself to a tom-oriented beat before kicking into the main riff. Finally, I had an idea of doing a trill-based riff for a bridge that could modify for the chorus, so I did the descending bit - E trilled with F to G, then E-F trill to F# - I liked the way it worked low, as a riff, and then also worked high as a solo, because then I could just start the solo that way and then mutate it from there.

Once I had the verse riff pattern down, I just sat down with my pen and spilled out lyrics:

A madman's will where mine is weak
He'll take my soul for his to keep
We lounge around in Platonic Love
Waiting for the sign from up above
We are from a higher plane
One day we'll ascend to where there's no pain
When we see the sign on the proper date
We'll shed our bodies
For Heaven's Gate

The sign is here, the time is come
Let not my will but yours be done
A whole life wasted, but now I've got
To throw it away without a second thought
We're just things with which you play
You have your fun, then you throw us away
But if there's justice in our fate
We won't see you inside
Of Heaven's Gate

Heaven's Gate
You've led us to hell 
Through Heaven's Gate

The reference points to the real story are obvious, I think, but I tried to phrase things so that they refer to pretty much any religion that demands people leave their brain at the door. As I alluded to earlier, Paul and I only recorded this one once, on our last boombox session (which reminds me, I really need to chart those out chronologically - but that’s another series of posts…). Since it was still ‘fresh’ when I started putting This End Up together, I think it was one of the first ones I adapted for full-band lineup. I had a lot of fun working out bizarre harmonies and counterpoints for the intro and the bridge trill section.

(Despite this being somewhat different from my other songs I’m still pretty happy with it. I just always had better songs when it came to compilations, fake live albums, rehearsals, etc. I wonder if the current-events-angle weakens it somewhat?

What strikes me here is how I routinely mention in the lyrics posts for this album that “I just sat down and started writing” - and while some of these could use a revision or two (okay, almost all of them could…), the fact that I could come up with a song’s worth of lyrics so easily is still a mystery to me, because I’m finding now that it’s one of the hardest parts of writing. Did I change, or just my standards?)