A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

The last original song on the album “This End Up” goes back a long way inspiration-wise. As you may or may not know, Paul and Ben and I did a few other recordings before the infamous POT album in 1989 - but they were literally worthless. It was basically just long recordings of us fucking around, talking, playing occasional snippets of music badly, etc.

In one brief segment, Paul went into the other room to play some video games, and Ben picked up my bass and told me to pick up the guitar. He picked a single note on the bass and let it ring, then said “I’m going to hit this six times, and then I want you to come in FAST”. Never mind that I couldn’t play guitar. He did that, then I just started fast strumming on an open E and he just started growling some insane shit for like 30 seconds. After it fell apart he told me that the song was called “Six Bells at Midnight” since that was the traditional signal for a black mass. I had no idea if it was true or not, but it sounded cool. During the writing process before my last boombox session with Paul in 1997, I remembered this song title and thought I should turn it into a real song - just like Possessed and early Slayer, I thought. I already had a basic picture in mind for the song structure: First, mimic the bells with a ride cymbal, and do the six hits before the guitar starts. Then, do one of those superfast triplet thrash rhythms like on Possessed’s “Evil Warriors”. Go through a couple of fast verses and choruses, then break down to a straight-8 ‘mosh’ part like Slayer did on “Angel of Death” and make the last half of the song just a total uptempo headbanging frenzy.

For riffs, I stuck close to my inspirations. The fast verse riff in this song is very similar to “Evil Warriors”, just with different chords on the turnaround. The choruses I just picked a few open chords to scream over. For the slower riff in the second part, I wanted that similar idea where it’s a bit more of a riff to lead in and in between verses, but is just straight crunching during the singing parts (sound familiar? bonus point for who can tell me why…). I hammered around for a few minutes on guitar and came up with that magic riff, and if you’ve heard it you know what I mean.

I got the music set, decided how many lines each verse would have and how many verses there would be, then I sat down with a pen and steno pad and wrote these out in about a half-hour:

Chiming fills the air as the time draws nigh
Thirteen of us gathered, virgin's time to die
Black-robed evil priests summoning from hell
Satan's first-born son to bring on God's death knell

The chiming of the bells, signaling the rites
In this evil mass we'll end the world tonight

Chanting incantations, weaving evil spells
Summoning our Master from the depths of hell
Tie the virgin down on the altar spread
Gift for our lord Satan, to leave her raped and dead

The chiming of the bells, signaling the rites
In this evil mass we'll end the world tonight

The stars burn black and the moon is full
The virgin starts to cry
Plunge the knife into the bitch
Feel her twitch and die
The warm blood spills onto the ground
From the chalice in our hands
We drink and beg lord Beelzebub
To conquer all the lands

Evil starts to rise, as the six bells chime

A winged shape in the skies above
Down to us descends
Lucifer with rod in hand
Signaling the end
Enslave the world with chains of steel
Leaving us to rule
Slaughtering the weak and good
God's misguided fools

Evil starts to rise, as the six bells chime

Six Six Six

The promise of eternal rule
Leads us through this mass
When our lord ascends from hell
Over no one will he pass
To our coven he will give the world
And immortality
And he will rape the souls of good
For eternity

Evil starts to rise, as the six bells chime

I thought it was pretty brutal and strong-sounding, personally, and while it milks every cliche in the genre I think I at least made it sound good - mainly because I made the cadence of the lyrics perfectly fit in with the rhythms of the guitar riffs without managing to stilt the lyrics in the process.

Paul and I only recorded it once, in our last 1997 boombox session, and it was our personal favorite of all the songs we did that day. I was happy enough with it that it was one of the first songs I started on when recording This End Up - I just HAD to hear it with a full band. It didn’t really take much tweaking because there’s no real two-guitar-mandatory stuff going on. I added some extra guitar notes on the later choruses an octave above the regular notes, but live I handled it by just having the two guitars play the chords an octave apart. It was also a a shoe-in for the live album. All in all, I was really happy with it even though it’s so limited - it was my first ‘sledgehammer’ song; you may not be able to do much with a sledgehammer besides just hit shit, but boy can it fucking POUND shit with one.

(We have a rehearsal tape of this which is nowhere near as compressed as the original, and adds the wah to the solo. It’s a shame it’s another one of those doomed-to-the-vault recordings, unless I really decide to dig things out. I’m not sure if that would reek of desperation or not, but people seemed to dig this one and I would like to show off what I think is a superior version.

Again, I marvel at how easily this song came together. My hope is that by revisiting these memories I can tap into that creativity well and churn out some new music. I have ideas, but unlocking them is the problem. How did I have so many skeleton keys back then?)