A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

##The Story of “The Vow”

L__ has claimed Untwain. Together, they have built an army of creatures of Darkness, ready to fight until death. They are marching on the bastion of the legions of Excalibur, preparing for the battle which will come on the next day. As the bonfires burn in the night, L__ gathers his troops together, exhorting them to victory with promises of the glory of battle to come, and with threats to those followers of the Light, promising them a painful and short future…

I have seen the death I'll bring to you
Crush the world, bend it to my will
Ebony blade of steel my crown
Eternal rule, eternal death, my renown

I vow to fight
To kill the right
To rule my whim
World without end

Pledge to me allegiance 'til death
Fight for me until your last breath
You shall have place in my domain
To my foes I pledge death and pain

I vow to fight
To kill the right
To rule my whim
World without end

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##Writing “The Vow”

The core of this song came from one of my and Paul’s boombox recording sessions in mid-1996. Towards the end of the day, after recording everything written, he wanted to jam, so I just turned on the recorder and started crunching on what would become the intro riff to this song. He started playing drums, and we went on from there. I pretty much ad-libbed the verse riff, pre-chorus, and chorus all in a row, a little rough, but identifiable. We were both happy with what was there and knew there was a song waiting to get out.

When we were preparing for the session where we would record the EP version of Bellum, I knew we needed some kind of a prelude to the battle epic, and came up with the idea of having a song called “The Vow” with the lyrics being a monologue from L__ with his promises, predictions, and threats. That little jam thing was pretty menacing, I thought, so I just put them together, adapted a variation of the verse riff for me to sing over, and generally tightened up the riffs and arrangement and then wrote the lyrics. Not much pain or sweat to it, really, which was inspiring and let me know I was on the track of something good.

(Despite it being a short song with a straightforward and easy creation, this little ditty is one of my favorites. I always liked the riff before the verse, where you have the higher shifting notes over steady pedal tones creating some strange chords/diads. I was initially worried that the feel of the verse, with it’s straight power chords over a 4/4 rock beat, would be too similar to Excalibur, and highlighted by the fact that they are only separated by one song in between. Somehow it works - the songs themselves are different enough for contrast, Nemesis is so different from either that they feel separated, but they’re kind-of in the same vein and mood, which gives a cohesive feeling of menace for the last half of the album. Keep in mind, both of these songs happen after L___ finds Untwain.)