A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

“Thunder of Armageddon” was the second song in the first set of lyrics Dementor mailed to me in July 2001. I had just finished writing Apocalypse Metal, which borrowed heavily from Slayer’s first album, so it was somewhat natural that my mind would stay there when writing this song as well. I’ve loved the song “Die By the Sword” ever since I first heard it, so I knew I would work at least some of the ideas for that song into this one.

The intro of the song was planned from the start, and directly came from the song “Hell Awaits” - the idea of ringing, changing chords over steady guitar chugging and simple drum pounding is something that many bands have done but Slayer perfected. I also carried the idea of steadily increasing the intensity by stepping up the ringing chords to moving-chugging notes and more active drum patterns, then ending with a big drum fill into the main song.

The main riff and verse was directly inspired by Possessed. On Seven Churches, there was a split between their songs - some of them had really frantic riffing throughout with a lot of finger movement (The Exorcist, Seven Churches), and others were just fast, steady streams of straight powerchords (Satan’s Curse, Death Metal). I took the basic idea of Satan’s Curse for the verse, with a small single-note-picked riff at the turnaround. I wanted to keep the song moving through various changes, so while the verse was basically fast and steady, I left open, ringing chords for the little bridge into the chorus, then used a syncopated riff for the chorus itself, then back through the open chords into the verse again. I tried to keep the same tempo from feeling steady by using the different riff styles and changing the drumbeats, and I’m pretty happy with how that turned out.

Hear the roar, the sounds of war
Hear the thunder of apocalypse...
See the sky, where the demons fly
In the darkness of the midnight eclipse...

Thunder of Armageddon
Crashing in the black sky
Thunder of Armageddon
This is the end of all time

Blades they clash, bloody from the slash
Kill and triumph are the only commands
For the Army of Hell, zombies under a spell
Death down to the earth, descends

Thunder of Armageddon
Crashing in the black sky
Thunder of Armageddon
This is the end of all life

See the black silhouette
In the shape of horns
See the black wings of Lucifer...

Hear the Power
Of the Mighty Thor
Summoning his warriors battle

See devilish legions arise
Hear the end of time...
Hear the Thunder of Apocalypse

Armageddon is coming... (3x)
Armageddon is coming now!

You can see from the lyrics as written above that he changed a bit between that first email and what ended up on the album. The first, fast verses/choruses are still pretty much the same except for a couple of word changes, and they match what I heard in my head when I first wrote the music, but the slower section lost that whole ‘Mighty Thor’ second stanza. The slowdown into the second half of the song was ripped directly off Die By The Sword, right down to using the exact drumfills that Dave Lombardo used in the studio version. I even did the same thing where the guitars crunch on a single note for a couple of bars before one guitar starts playing the riff one time through, then the whole band starts the riff. I also kept up the Die By the Sword idea after the slow verse ended, with one guitar setting up a riff and the other playing a backing open, ringing-chord sequence, leading to both guitars playing the riff harmonized, then cutting loose with a fast solo.

From what I remember, like with “Apocalypse Metal”, it came together pretty quickly. I’d been tossing the idea of that intro over for a while, and I thought the slow buildup on it would be a nice contrast to “Apocalypse Metal”, which blasts right out of the gate. I probably put the whole thing together in a few hours over a day or two. I did modify the single-note guitar line over the chords at the end of the song a little bit between the demo and the final album. The other thing I remember was the vocal version I did when I took over vocals from Juggernaut/Ryan. Hartmuth asked me to give doing the vocals myself a try just to keep the album moving along, and I did two songs, this one and Apocalypse Metal. Doing the “end of all TIME!” scream was really hard the first couple of times but I managed to pull it off.