A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

Obviously, the lyrics part will only apply to “Satanic Death”, but the two songs were conceived of together and so any discussion of writing will necessarily need to involve both. These songs were the combination of several ideas, and I can’t remember which order I had them in, though I can guess. First, in early 1998 when conceiving the songs I wanted to put on This End Up, I looked through the back catalog and was also writing newer songs, coming up with lyrical themes I wanted to cover, song titles that would be good, and so on. Being on a Possessed kick at the time, and always describing them as “Satanic Death Metal”, I thought a song titled “Satanic Death” would be neat. Right as I thought of that, I remembered that we had titled one of our boombox demos “Satanic Symphonies”, and I thought it would be cool to have an intro titled “Satanic Symphony” - and an ‘intro’ morphed into a separate song, ala Black Sabbath and their named outros/intros and such.

I really liked the idea of “Satanic Death”, and started thinking of what would make it really hit hard. Since it was inspired by my description of Possessed, making it a Possessed-type song was inevitable, and I already had my target picked - the song “Seven Churches”. I always loved the way that song was an insanely fast riff-fest (not just chords, but riffs) with very fast singing - just an unstoppable powerhouse. The tradeoff solos were really crazy too, with modulations for each tradeoff.

Usually lyrics come last for me, but this time the lyrics actually came before the music was written. I didn’t have the riffs down, but I did know the basic cadence of the type of verse riff and chorus that I wanted. One day at work I was forced by my grand-boss (my boss’s boss) to sit in on some stupid meeting that he thought would be great for me but which had absolutely NOTHING to do with anything I did. I brought a pen and pad, as I always do during meetings, and fumed at losing half a day of work… then, to all outsiders, it appeared as if I started taking notes furiously.

It was a good thing they couldn’t see my ‘notes’, else they’d have graced their eyeballs with this:

Satan's will from below 
Calling you to die
Crush and butcher, hack and maim
Hear you scream and cry
Use your blood in his rites
Drink it warm and fresh
Use your flesh in sacrifice
Give to him your death

Slice - crush - chant - suffer
Satanic Death

Rip away your crucifix
God can't save you now
Vomit on his bastard son
Before me you will bow
Cause you pain and agony
Until your last breath
Add to Satan's glory
Through Satanic Death

Murder - butcher - for Lucifer - suffer
Satanic Death

Chowing down on your entrails
Wash them down with blood
Through my body, through my veins
Power starts to flood
Through the power from below
The world becomes now mine
Rule it in his evil name
Until the end of time

Evil's price - sacrifice - human mice - suffer
Satanic Death

Yes, the last pre-chorus is a nod to Slayer. It was the best I could do on three syllables and with the grandboss peering over my shoulder.

Anyway, that night, I started working on the music and it came just about as easily. I opted to do a similar riff to “Seven Churches”, which is in F#, and I liked the sound and pitch of that, so I did the same - only, tuned down a whole step, F# is rooted on the fourth fret, not the second. Boy was that fun trying to work around. The verses and choruses fell together quickly, and I got the idea for a very long tradeoff section - first it was just four main tradeoffs, two per guitar, as in the original with the first and third in F# and the second and fourth in E (actually, for playing ease’s sake, the pitches are E and D, since I solo better in second and open positions so I modulated the solo part a whole step down from the bulk of the song. I wanted some way to twist the solo ending around so that it could have one of those quick drum-fill breaks like on Slayer’s “Angel of Death”, and in trying to find a way out of the last solo I stumbled onto the idea of modulating the solo again with some more tradeoffs - that’s how the second part of the solo section came about - and when playing the rhythms that fast I had yet another idea of ending with some guitar harmonies like on Dark Angel’s “Death is Certain”.

Mix in a pot, stir, and let boil. And there you have it.

Halfway through doing this, I thought of what I wanted to do with “Satanic Symphony”. I figured it would come first, and be a more slow, mellower type of thing that ends and begins on the same thing - some big, ringing chords, starting and ending with F# so that the intro could blend into the first riff of “Satanic Death”. My standard rule is ‘when in doubt, go for the tritone’, and so that started the chords that start and end the song - except that “Satanic Symphony” would be based off the tritone, NOT the root. Since F# was for Satanic Death, I started dicking around in C (which is of course is in the ‘D’ position of a standard guitar, since I tune down). I like how you can hit a D power chord lower than an open E by just hitting the A and D strings open, together, and it’s got a really throaty, nasty sound that way, so I thought I’d start that way.

I started riffing around that open D chord, and that’s when I was hit by the Disjecta Membra thunderbolt again. Though it was never on any tapes I got, I remember them playing a song a couple of times that was called “Elfin Symphony” - It was in D and it had a real laid-back heavy type of drumbeat to it. One of the riffs I started with was very similar to that, so I started trying the turnaround they used. I couldn’t figure it out, but what I did stumble across in pursuit of it is what you hear on tape, that F#-A#-C chord thing. I knew that would work as a base of the song, so I slept on it a while as I didn’t know how to take one chord toggle and one stolen riff and make a song out of it. Yet.

I later came up with the basic song arrangement that I wanted to use: Chords -> Riff -> something -> riff -> chords -> seque into Satanic Death. That ‘something’ was a big problem until I decided on the instrumentation for the Symphony. Normally I think in terms of two rhythms, one lead (where lead=solo or voice or whatever the focus is on). However, since this was an instrumental, I thought “what if you play the individual notes of the chords on separate guitars, so it’s like it’s in harmony but also like it’s one huge guitar?” Well, PC power and some basic experimentation showed the limits of what I could do, so I settled on one rhythm and two harmony leads instead. The two leads helped me do some weird stuff on the chords of the riff, like the guitars inverting harmonies, where one goes up and the other goes down to change chords, forming an inversion of what I would normally have played on one guitar. That mathematical approach is what paved the way of the rest of the song - I just took the basic F#-C thing and took off on inverting harmonies, letting those form the background as the bass did the main lines - not soloing, but just playing really active point-counterpoint lines and fills. That ended up modulating to a G-F mutation of the first harmony section, then staying with G-F changing feels to a different type of harmony and riff, then sticking with that riff pattern and changing the chords back to F#-C. That way I got four parts out of two basic variations just by mix-n-matching - plus, it led back nicely to coming out of those faster sections to the basic dirge-type main riff. All in all, it was pretty mathematical, which is why I always refer to it as my answer to “Switch 625”.

(Still one of my favorite songs, not only in and of itself, but due to the circumstances of its creation. If your bosses are going to waste your time with shit you don’t need to be doing, why not do something worthwhile for yourself at least? And, again, I value those little threads that tie the disparate parts of life together, and it’s funny how two things I try to keep totally separate, for the good of each, are tied together so closely here.)