Some of you have written to me wanting to know what a particular song means. One good use of this newsletter is to tell you all what the songs mean (at least to me) as well as give some other comments about how they were written and anything else interesting. This issue will look at the popular songs "DeathMachine" and "Nightmare Lake".

DeathMachine DeathMachine is the longest song on "Unholy Rapture" and one which is becoming my personal favorite on that demo. It began as just a chorus, the word 'Deathmachine' repeated over and over in 3/4 time. This can be heard in the "angelic chorus" at the end of the second verse. How a twelve minute song grew out of such a simple melody is a story in itself.

I needed a body to match the chorus, one that would be of a similar descending style. The 8 chord progression I came up with was definitely odd. It goes in and out of minor chords and has a really neat feel to it. The tricky part came when I was trying to figure out the accompaniment for it. After struggling for hours I found a great match which somehow lines up with all the minor and major chords while maintaining a smooth feel in itself. With that part played with distortion, the other without, and done to 3/4 time it sounded like some sort of death waltz. Bizarre, but fitting well with what I had in mind for the song.

When I reached the "age of disillusionment", which a lot of us go through, and realized that our civilization was built primarily on bullshit, I had the desire to put my thoughts about it to music. Deathmachine is the song which captures these sentiments. Society is viewed as a great machine which chews up and spits out the individual to maintain it's need for progress. I figured I'd have an introduction segment describing how things all got started, three segments dealing with various perspectives on our society, and some conclusion or climax to describe where it is going. I started thinking up short verses which describe the hopelessness characterizing the human condition in the modern world. I came up with some great ones like:

"So you swear to be pure, and bravely assure,
your virtue will never be tried.
But you must lie, steal, and cheat, in a world made of meat,
and repent at the end of your life."

And

"It doesn't matter who's right and who's wrong,
If they have the power, you won't last long."

and one of my favorites:

"With a tear in your eye, you make one last try,
your children will champion your cause.
And you sadly lament, what you cannot prevent,
as their crushed by mechanical jaws."

After putting together enough of them to fill each verse I was ready to add the climax. I wanted it to get fast and furious, matching the breakneck pace of our modern world, and describing how we climb all over each other to get ahead. I stuck in a few solos to heighten the tension and then had it descent into pretty much industrial noise. The heavy pounding rhythm with wailing harmonics played over it made it sound like the death machine was devouring you.

Then there was the finishing touch. The ending I came up with while cycling one day. For whatever reason the following verse came into my mind:

"And as your body starts to choke and spit up blood,
and you are longing for the release of death,
the madness falls away, layer by layer,
one taste of freedom before the end."

When sung clean with just minimal instrumentation, it sounds hauntingly beautiful, sweetly tragic, a mixture of emotions that are usually separate.

All that was left was to put an appropriate intro and outro to the piece. The keyboard added a kind of dreamy feel to it giving the piece the impression that it is like a dream, or nightmare. I added the guitar part onto it later. Like the rest of the song, the contrast created worked wonderfully.

When I finally had it completed, it was over twelve minutes long, but the length was of no matter to me. I felt I had said what I wanted to say and if it takes that long to say it, then that's how long the song should be.

Nightmare Lake Turning poetry into music is not easy. You have to work around the fact that there are no choruses and that the whole thing often flows as a single piece. Then you also have to make sure to match the theme and feel of the poem along with the line length and meter used by the poet. Another problem which can come up, and did so with Nightmare Lake, is that there are no breaks in the poem. There you have to use some artistic license to put in breaks for solos or interludes and make them add to the song (or at least not detract from it). You also have to worry about whether the original author will be rolling in his grave, or in this case, sending a Shoggoth out after you.

Nightmare Lake builds to two climaxes and so I searched for a way to build to each one while keeping continuity between the parts. Since most music that I had written and listened to up to then was pretty much the ABACAB format it was difficult figuring out how to make it work and sound cohesive. I eventually found four parts which flowed well together and described different feelings. These I associated with the parts of the song that fit them the best. The result was pretty impressive, fitting well with the poem, and helped spur me on to more and more experimental ways of writing songs.

One problem that I didn't pay attention to was that I didn't put in enough breaks. I laid down the drums, guitar, and solo tracks and then got ready to do the vocals. It was then I noticed that I had to sing constantly for three full minutes in the body of the song including some of the more tricky parts. This first time I tried singing it I was just about dead at the end. It forced me to learn some singing tricks and techniques for handling long verses.

The poem is in line with the classic Lovecraftian theme, an unspeakable horror is slowly revealed from a first person perspective. In this case it is a lake which covers over a forgotten city of nameless horrors. The occupants are long dead, or are they? In the final climax the vision of the doors of the sepulchures opening yields a disturbing image of what might soon come forth. It is too horrible to imagine, and the reader must pray that the lake's surface may never sink and unleash whatever is waiting down below.

The music captures the feel of the poem wonderfully, building from quiet serene passages to powerful and dramatic creshendos. Vocal only passages in the middle and at the end punctuate the horror, especially the final line. It might just put a chill up your spine.