Lyrics - storm over avalon
posted on 20 Apr 2005 under category Songs
##The Story of “Storm Over Avalon”
As night falls on L__ he is lulled into a deep sleep. He sees visions in his head of war - eternal war of good and evil, struggling in various guises and times, but always fighting, forever. Through the visions of war, he sees the side of Good, and through the changing faces of their leaders he sees the eternal, unchanging icon of good, the gleaming blade of Excalibur.
The names change with the faces
Through the years the battle rages
Graves and tears the heirlooms of the war
One side fights for the right
Excalibur, symbol of their might
It is the end of war for which they long
Warriors brave, the nights of round
Who stand to give their lives
For the sovereign crown
Then the dream continues and he sees the side of Evil, and the Balancer of Excalibur, the ebony blade of Untwain. He sees the faces of the leaders and wielders of Untwain, and among them he sees a face that he knows is his own. It is then that he realizes he is destined to find Untwain and lead Evil in this generation’s iteration of the Eternal War. And, always with the Sisters in mind, he hopes to win, to ascend to heaven and help them kill the light for good.
The Enemy waits for their defeat
To push them from ancestral seat
Untwain, his Icon, forged in black
The time for peace is at an end
On the morrow they'll fight again
The Time of Restitution is at hand
Lightning flares and thunder roars
The storm draws nigh
Raging evermore
---
##Writing “Storm Over Avalon”
As I’ve mentioned before, this is one of the first serious songs I ever wrote that was actually used by one of my bands. The idea went back to my first inspiration for writing an album about Legolas and Untwain, back when I was getting the lecture from Frank about being willing to throw away songs and write just for learning. While writing an album was too ambitious (at the time), a single song that was the story in a nutshell wasn’t too far-fetched, so the idea and inspiration came long before actually writing it. As did the title - I am a Doctor Who fan, and in going over episode guides one time I noticed in the last season, with the seventh doctor, the story that they did about Lancelot, Mordred, and Camelot was originally going to be titled “Storm Over Avalon”. I liked the title so much I kept it, and when coming up with the idea for the story of evil, and remembering the song “Excalibur” from the old days, I thought about casting that whole King Arthur legend as just one part of the eternal war.
Still, I had no music, riffs, or lyrics. But, as I’ve often found out, it’s the idea and inspiration that are the hard parts, and once you have those the rest is child’s play.
So, Christmas break of 1992 comes along and I had just gotten a new five-string bass. I was at home with my parents for a week during the college break, and I had nothing to do but sit in my room and play bass. I worked out five-string arrangements of many of the songs Early Warning was playing at the time, played along with records, and just played around jamming. One of those days I had just figured out Thin Lizzy’s “Emerald”, and noticed how the song is about another kind of war, another tale of good versus evil with the outcome in doubt. I thought of coming up with something with a similar feel, that triumphant triplet march, and started going at it - and about a half hour later I had the verse, chorus, and solo arrangements on bass. I knew I wanted the guitars to lead in with harmonies, then join me for chords on the verses and choruses. I thought that Frank and Chris could trade off solos, so I used a trick from “The Trooper” to have the same progression in two separate keys, figuring they could trade according to who wanted to solo in B and who wanted to solo in F#.
Well, when I showed it to the guys, they liked it enough to want to gut it to make it work for them. Still, I wrote the song. As for what they did:
Early Warning played the song for about eight or nine months, then we ditched it because the other guys got tired of it. When I finally got around to writing Bellum as a whole, I knew this song would be a part of it, so I just restored it to the original version as I wrote it, except that I kept the little lead theme Chris added. With only one guitar, it sounds a bit empty on the boombox versions that Paul and I recorded, but since the full-band thing had been worked out already it was a snap to record it when I did the album proper - the only two tricky spots were figuring out (re-writing) the harmony lead-in at the start of the song and writing a solo that wasn’t just my usual flailing-wanking.
(For being the first song I ever wrote that was actually written FOR another band and then actually PLAYED by said band, I still think this one holds up well - though, I admit, without the little flavorings that the other guys added, it wouldn’t be quite as good as it ended up turning out. I don’t remember now if it was Chris or Frank who wrote the harmonies at the very beginning of the song, but I do know that Chris did that main lead bit that goes before each verse. It’s hard to say since I don’t have any recordings of Early Warning doing this song, but I think this solo isn’t that far from what Frank ended up writing, at least in the basic dynamics of where it starts, how it builds, and how it finishes. I do remember for a fact it finishes the same way, with the high bends repeating as it kicks back into that crunching chorus riff. Because it was in F#, he could only play that on one of his guitars, an Ibanez RG760, because that was the only guitar of his with a full 24-fret neck and so was the only one he could bend the highest note up to. I brought it down to the 14th position and made it unison bends instead - I think it sounds a little more aggressive that way.)