A Trip Inside a Separate Mind

Wanderlust is another song that I had ideas for back in the Early Warning days, but this one had one of the longest, strangest trips from where it started to where it ended up. It started from the same self-critical base as Doomsayer, but as a song title - “The Enemy Within”. Even back when I was ‘depressed’ all the time, it struck me that it was a trap I could get out of anytime I wanted - my theory was that you’re depressed because you can’t have what you want, so if you stop wanting it you won’t be depressed. And maybe that perspective is as naive as the whole teen angst thing itself, but at least it’s an attempt at a solution. So, the “Enemy Within” was me getting in my own way.

I tried crafting a song for Early Warning out of this idea, but never got any farther than a bass riff that they couldn’t figure out how to use. I had a hipshot tuner and would drop my E string to D a lot, and I wrote an arpeggio-type bass progression in D, centered on that low D string and higher chord shapes - basically, if you take what’s currently the clean-guitar intro riff now and play it on the bass, 2 octaves lower, that’s what it started as. Not having a gift for lyrics at the time didn’t help either, so beyond that riff I couldn’t get anywhere.

In a completely disconnected event, I was watching a local band at a gig one night near the same time (Crazy Ivan) - they had an insane bassist, a total beast of a player, and I watched them play this one song they had, “A Million to One”. It was in D minor, and used that standard vi-vii-Root Maiden-type progression. Obviously theirs was more riffy, but I liked the idea, and got the idea to lead from that intro I had to a Maiden-type song. I tried showing that transition one time to Chris and he thought it was too cliche.

So the song sat. Unused. For years.

Until, of course, Paul and I re-formed Rampage.

Just at the same time I was resurrecting Doomsayer, I found some tab for the riffs to this song, and thought “you know, Paul wouldn’t mind doing this one, I think…” - so I started stringing the riffs together, adapting the bass riff for guitar and such. At this time I needed a subject change, though - since I never had any real lyrics for The Enemy Within, and again since I had finally outgrown what was the impetus for the song in the first place. The Maiden connection inevitably led to literature, and since I had been listening to Iced Earth’s “Burnt Offerings” a lot at the time, the connection to Dante’s Inferno was just too obvious. So, I cobbled together some lyrics, a smoother transition from intro to song (thanks to me ripping off the chord progression from UFO’s “Doctor Doctor”), a total Mr.-Crowley-Homage guitar solo, and a climbing-harmony guitar section like the outro to Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys are Back in Town”.

Startled awake, midway through life
Cowering from terrible cries
Surrounded by blackness, I could not find my way

In the dark of this evil dawn
I see a light, it draws me on
But my terrors and fear turn me away

Behind me I see a shade of a man
"My name is Virgil, please take my hand
Put your trust in me, I shall lead you to your goal."

And you Muses, sisters of three
I beg you listen I call unto thee
Hear me - give me words to speak my tale

The intro I had the idea for writing in Terza Rima, as another homage to Dante - I couldn’t get the rhymes to work, but I stuck to the idea of three-line stanzas, the whole ‘waking up in the middle of life’, and concluding by invoking the Muse before getting down to business.

As we pass through the black pit of hell
Screams rise from the depths, giving me chill
Tears fill my stinging, burning eyes
I cannot watch what I'm forced to face
Souls damned here for fleshly vice
Screaming, flitting tortured through the skies

And through the pit of hell we go
Pity builds and tears do flow
What horrors await I do not know

We pass into the rings of Dis
Realms of greed and violence
They even steal and kill in death
We pass through Woods of the Suicides
Their looks of sorrow make me cry
I whimper and faint, short of breath

And through the pit of hell we go
Terror builds and tears do flow
What horrors await I do not know

We pass from fire to snow and frost
Where plains of traitors pay their cost
Sins that place them near their evil lord
Towering above, faces of three
Chewing on the triad with evil glee
Shedding crimson tears of blood and scorn

And by the master of hell we go
Pity builds and tears do flow
What joy awaits I do not know

The nods to details in the original text are obvious, I think. Anyway, Paul and I recorded this one for the first time on our second Boombox go-round (at the same time as Doomsayer and Doom Metal), and it got re-recorded every time. I think it’s Paul’s favorite from that era, and I confess, as derivative as some parts are, I always hold a soft spot for this song - which is why I wanted to ‘preview’ it on Cummin’ Atcha Live. I just wish I’d practiced the harmony parts better before recording that one. Ah well - the studio version on Monolith is definitive, I think.

(I ended up doing another version for the now-abandoned ‘Fucked Raw’ rehearsal. That one was pretty well-done, except somehow I knocked a guitar out of tune after the solos, so the whole last verse sounds like shit. I guess this song is just doomed to never be perfectly pulled off. Or maybe I should take that as a dare?)