A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

Now I’ll be tackling all of the songs on Bellum Infinitum. I’ll go through the songs in playing order on the album, and will be discussing them in two contexts - first as story of the album goes, and second as the history of the songwriting. First up, of course, is “Up From the Depths/Rainbow Skies”.

##The Story of “Up From the Depths/Rainbow Skies”

“Up From the Depths” is L__ in a tunnel, banished from his home and walking toward the surface to which he has been doomed. He believes that he will die when the sunlight from the former world of his people hits him, but despite this belief he does not reflect much on the murder he committed which damned him to this fate. He simply marches onward.

In “Rainbow Skies”, his thoughts pass by his fate again, and he thinks back on the legends, telling of a world that seems, to him, incomprehensible - with no ceiling; rather, the world is wide open, with a sky - an emptiness so large that it contains orbs of fire that will burn him, or any of his kind, to death.

The legends spoke of a world 'up there'
With orbs of fire in the open air
The light will burn and blind my eyes
Peel my skin until I die
For stealing kindred final breath
They damn me to a fiery death
In the world they once called Home

When he reaches the surface, of course, his eyes do burn as they are accustomed only to a world of shadows. Eventually, though, his eyes become used to the light, and in the light, instead of the usual dark vision of the Drow, he can see real light, and colors, and almost no shadow. The beauty which is breathtaking even to those who see it every day is completely overwhelming to him, and he decides that he MUST own and control this world, to completely possess and dominate its beauty.

The colors I see are so bright
It burns until it tames my sight
I feel the power inside of me
Filled with murderous beauty
Sharp as a blade, quick as thought
Implacable, I can't be stopped
By these colors in my eyes
I'll decide who lives and who dies
In My Rainbow Skies

---

##Writing “Up From the Depths/Rainbow Skies”

The main riff that started this entire song was, of course, the main/chorus riff to “Rainbow Skies”. I remember coming up with it while just dicking around on guitar some time in late 1994, and having the idea for the guitar melody over it. I showed it to Chris of Early Warning, and we started trying to hash it out into a song. The title at this point was “The Last Time I Laugh”, inspired by one scene in the movie The Crow, but without any real idea of what I wanted to do with that theme, and with Chris almost gutting the idea and adding parts that didn’t go where I wanted the song to go (and with me quitting the band just a month or two away) I just let the song die.

When I was starting to hash out the idea of the story arc of Bellum Infinitum, I knew I wanted to start with L__ coming up from underground and that beauty inspiring him on his mission. With this in mind, I knew I needed an upbeat, triumphant-sounding song and this riff came to mind instantly. By this time (late 1996) I had been getting a bit better at playing and singing at the same time, so I just started with the lyrics first and then started stringing together a few chord changes, hammering it out until I got the verse and the transition from that back to the chorus. The melody part after the second chorus and the guitar solo were pretty much created spur-of-the-moment when we first recorded it, and I was lucky enough that my guitar solo was close-enough to being in key to basically keep for the final version of the song.

“Up from the Depths” was the last part of this song written. The original versions of this had only the clean guitar part (Fm to Abm), as it was just one guitar and drums. I knew I would put a guitar solo over it when recording it for real, but the idea to start with keyboards and a keyboard solo was another moment of inspiration when I first started programming this song for Bellum. For some reason I decided to put the keyboard portion a minor-third lower, Dm to Fm, and have the piano play basically the same part as the guitar, but in the style of a piano with full chords and partials instead of just single-noting it. Though I’ve never played piano before, I think I got something that’s not too far from what a live keyboardist would play. However, I’m sure most flutists are laughing at my ‘solo’ there from a technical standpoint. Oh well, it works enough for my purposes.

(This is another one of the songs, like Doomsayer, that gets the most attention from Rampage fans because of THAT ONE RIFF. In this case I’m pretty proud of it, though, at least musically. The main riff is one of the earliest riffs I’ve written, but I managed to put a lot more into this song beyond just the one monster riff than I think I did with Doomsayer. I’m especially happy with the intro and how it blends into the opening of the heavy part of the song and with the bleed from the second chorus to the solo section.

The rerecording of this came out REALLY well, so I’m kinda sad that it won’t be released the way we envisioned it with really strong vocals. And probably some tweaked lyrics - as I look over these, I see where they could have used a lot more work - too many obvious rhymes and too much turning-around of standard diction to get the scansion or rhyme to work out.)