A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

##The Story of “Nemesis”

After claiming Untwain and seeing the vision it gives him of his future, L__ sets out to create an army from the creatures of darkness, the Night, and Evil.

In the dark by glimmering candle
I see my shadow upon the wall
A reflection of the darkness inside me
To bring the world of light's downfall
With my blade, I am but one
While they are legions of the light
I must search this world above
Create an army of the night

To call, to bind, to fight, I'll be...
Nemesis of earth and sea
Their lives to be at my command
Domination, retribution
Rule them with an iron hand

The Sisters guide me by their light
To the ones who heed my call
I seek the creatures of the night
Bind my legion from them all

To call, to bind, to fight, I'll be...
Nemesis of earth and sea
Their lives to be at my command
Domination, retribution
Rule them with an iron hand

In the night by flickering torchlight
The legions rally to my call
United under the blade of Untwain
Before my might the world will fall

My rule, my sky, my world, I am...
Nemesis of earth and sea
Their lives to be at my command
Domination, retribution
Rule them with an iron hand

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##Writing “Nemesis”

Nemesis started its life as an Early Warning song, written by Frank at about the same time as I was writing “Storm over Avalon”. While I was at home in Augusta, Georgia with my family for christmas of 1992, he was at home in Arecibo, Puerto Rico with his family (where the rum is dirt cheap… but I digress). He had all the guitar parts, lyrics, and a couple of bass lines worked out, and we spent a few weeks in early 1993 putting it all together. I was very proud of my bass lines on that one, as I was allowed to craft the bulk of them. The guitar work was full of counterpoint, diads, multiple layers, etc., and it gave me a lot of work to get more in-depth with counterpoint of my own. We ditched the song by the end of the year, much to my dismay, because it was one of my favorites and undoubtedly one of our darkest, and when I got Rampage going in the home studio I knew I would re-record it myself, one day…

After finishing This End Up, when deciding to lay aside the Doom Metal album in favor of doing Bellum, I felt the time was right. I thought there needed to be a bridge between L__ finding Untwain and then him rallying his troops - WHERE DID HE GET THEM? The song title itself, “Nemesis”, suggested that this was the perfect point for it - now that L__ has found Untwain and the two have become a gestalt, it was the perfect point for him to inspire the evil creatures to join him for the fight. Step one was to rewrite the lyrics, as that was the easiest part. I kept the same opening line, but then changed it all - instead of being about a man confronting his own dark side, it’s about him roaming the world exhorting creatures to fight for him.

The music was another story. Despite the many years in between, and there being no existing recordings of it, I remembered the song very well - at least, I remembered my bassline. I knew in vague terms what the guitars were doing (harmony, rhythm, chords, etc.), but didn’t know exactly the notes. Still, since I did so much work on the basslines from studying the guitars, I had a good signpost to go by, and so I just re-built the guitar parts from scratch, balancing what I remembered with what the basslines suggested and what I could actually play. It may not be perfect, but it’s damn close.

The only major change was the ending - after the last chorus, there was some silly syncopated quarter-note-triplet bombastic ending, complete with these horribly pompous rolling multilayer vocal harmonies that, for me, just killed any darkness the song had. Instead, what I decided to do was have the song ‘cut’ right after that last chorus and reprise the arpeggiated solo section, but arranged for synths. I adapted the arpeggios and supporting chords arranged for a string quintet and horn quintet, playing together (trumpets and violins playing the arpeggios, with the lower-pitch instruments playing the chords), and a flute playing the bass solo portion, transposed up into the flute’s natural range of course. I think it came off pretty well.

And I can’t let mention of this song go without mentioning my guitar solo in it, where again I had to try to rise to the level of Frank with my meager skills. I ran through a couple of times just to warm up, and then laid down a scratch solo just to guide myself for when I went for it for real. Well, the scratch solo was so good, and my subsequent takes never matched the feeling of that scratch track, so I ended up just keeping it.

(Not much to add here, except that this one benefitted almost as much from the rerecording as Soulsword did. I do go in-depth about the updates and changes, but that’s a later blog post - about a year or two from now.)