A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

Between the two emails of lyrics from Dementor we had lyrics for eight Death Beast songs, which I had counted as enough for our first album. But, as it turned out, I ended up writing another one - “Here Comes the War”. This one was unique in that, unlike other Death Beast songs but like many of my Rampage songs, I wrote the music first. In fact, I didn’t even have any lyrics or title for it - just an idea of the feel that I wanted, which was something in “F#”. Actually E, since I tune down a whole step, but you know what I mean - rooted in the thrash tradition of the root being on the second fret, and getting the 7th-root movement by hammering on from open to 2nd fret, something like “Trapped Under Ice”, the pre-chorus to “South of Heaven”, or the main riff to the song “Exodus”. In fact, that song was literally the inspiration for it, to the point that the original filename for it was “xodus_fl.sng” - “Exodus-feel song”.

I stumbled across the main riff while trying to write something like the verse riff of “Exodus”, 7th-to-root by hammering on and then going to the tritone for accents, but tweaked it with the hammer-pull-off riff to get its own flavor. A little more playing got me to the descending chromatics for the chorus parts, but I tried to break up the samey-ness by making one repeat a whole step higher and going from straight-8th-based descents to 3-on-2 triplets. I also stepped up the solo sections another whole step and put each solo section a fourth apart, going A-B-A-Harmony for the soloists (another nod to Dark Angel’s “Death is Certain”, which uses the same solo arrangement - I’ve done that quite a bit, now that I think about it…), and then a ‘chorus riff’ with just vocal screams and solos instead of a fully-sung chorus. Again, all pretty standard, but I tried to change a few things to give it a bit of a different feel. When I sent the last set of music to Stan for his ill-fated final vocal sessions (the ones where Dementor’s computer blew up and he ended up deciding to quit Death Beast) I sent this one along, asking him to try to come up with a title and write one more song’s worth of lyrics for it. I don’t know if he ever did write anything, though.

When I finally got Ramrod to join Death Beast he heard the instrumental version of it and liked it. We were chatting on AIM and he said he already had an idea for it - the title would be “Here Comes the War”, and that would be repeated in the chorus. He said he’d need a bit to come up with the lyrics, though. Just before Ramrod joined, though, I had asked Aerik to join Death Beast on vocals. He declined, as he was already singing for Rampage and didn’t want to have it sound the same, but he wasn’t opposed to writing lyrics for me. Well, Ramrod was also working with Aerik on the Von Frankensteins and so the two of them put their heads together for lyrics on “Here Comes the War”, and of course by now you all know what they came up with:

Feel the heat, the burning streets as bullets rape the air
The bombs will fly and men will die and nobody will care
But empty heads obsessed with death just so afraid to die
A protest here – just built on fear and tears the cowards cry
But in the trench or on the bench the others hide from heroes ends
Insurgents rise to spite the lives of a reign come to an end
Roadside bombs like horrid songs explode with living hell
The war still lost, but keeps the costs of lives where soldiers fell

Here comes the Pain - Here comes the War
Drives you insane - Here comes the war
Pray for your death - Here comes the war
Take your last breath - Here comes the war

The flag is torn, weakened and worn being burned by those we "saved"
The soilders grind against the tide in lands that rest untamed
In the name of God, the killing dog who spurs them to attack
From friends to foes to silent death, the blade against the back
From desert sands, by foreign hands, the gates of hell tear free
Chemical war, the silent whore, may spread it's misery
We took the throne but now lay prone for the God and his mad slaves
The war won't end till all lay dead and rot in nameless graves

Here comes the Pain - Here comes the War
Drives you insane - Here comes the war
Pray for your death - Here comes the war
Take your last breath - Here comes the war

The tanks are burned, and overturned, the cities smoke and ash
To save the mind, the killing kind, false peace the aftermath
Our bitter mold, a social gold, forced down upon the tribe
A despot king to justice bring but we failed to save the lives
And now we're here, still torn by fear, fighting street to street
The war still hot, the "peace" that's not, but death you get to keep
The fire ceased – so soon released, the war will not subside
When soilders trained take on the rage it's the fate of man to die

Here comes the Pain - Here comes the War
Drives you insane - Here comes the war
Pray for your death - Here comes the war
Take your last breath - Here comes the war

They were perfect, and as such they never changed through Ryan’s fortunately-surviving demo version, the album version on The Wakening, or any of the live versions after that. Swapping off the vocals on the live version was just a way to add some color to the live album as well as to pay tribute to Ramrod. The idea came from Desaster’s “Metalized Blood”, in the way that they had three guest vocalists to sing one each of the three verses. It’s a shame we didn’t get to do more writing together, because this one came together really easily and I think it’s one of the better songs from the first album.