Some of you have written to me wanting to know what a particular song means. One good use of this newsletter would be 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 begin to look at the songs off the Fireaxe CD "A Dream of Death" starting with the first two tracks, "The Rack" and "Earthbound Goddess".

The Rack. This is one of the most intense songs on the CD. It's meant to be that way. Few songs really capture the Fireaxe sound and feel better than "The Rack". It's fast and it's slow, it pounds and it lets up, and it explores the dark side of life that most of us would like to forget. A lot of us look back on our childhood as a time when everything was carefree and simple. For the most part mine was like that too. I wasn't sexually abused or tortured or anything like that, but there were times when I felt myself being forced into doing things and becoming someone that was completely against who I was. Slowly but surely the pressure was applied and increased until I finally conformed into the somewhat grotesque person that I am today. Why do we look back on our childhood as being so wonderful and carefree? It's because as adults our lives have become fraught with stress, responsibilities, pressures to succeed, high expectations, and all manner of things which we must do or else. I personally think it's a cruel thing to do to a human being, to replace all that is pleasing and tangible with conditional promises and dreams. We get so little in return. But if our society is to operate at the breakneck pace it's going at, we need to be trained to forgo as many pleasures as possible and concentrate on the work at hand. Not that we aren't thrown a bone now and then for our good work or are allowed to indulge to excess to forget the pressures we're under. But the bulk of our time seems to be spent waiting for relief and finding little.

For the ones who fight back there lies only more pain. I'm one of those people. I didn't conform to expectations as easily as others did. I fought the system. I tried to break free of it and I have the scars to prove that I tried. The song sums it up all too well:

"My anger always building, and tears me up inside,
but I cannot release it, for every time I tried.
I was met with hatred, and taken to a longer rack,
and drawn till I felt nothing, and they had broken my back."

The one thing that I learned was that there is no compromise. You are forced into the mold whether you fit or not. The less you fit, the more it hurts, and when you fight back you get met with an even stronger force. Eventually you are forced into submission. There is no true escape, but you can escape within your mind, and thus the dream is born.

Writing the music was a challenge. I needed to capture a lot of different feelings in the song. I needed aggressive parts to drive home the torture aspects and I needed powerful parts to capture the feeling of surrendering to a superior force. The chorus ties it all together, and is pretty dark as well. I used a lot of different riffs to mimic the emotional turmoil in the song. The feel is pretty close to what I envisioned and strove to attain.

The centerpiece of the song is the 2 minute long guitar solo which spans five different song segments. I think it's the best Fireaxe solo I've ever done. My favorite part is at the climax when the rhythm shifts into the chorus and the solo guitar starts to play two note chords. All the instruments are screaming the chorus in unison. To me it's quite a moment, everything coming together perfectly. The ending works well also. The final cry "I must escape!" where all the instruments fall away and the voice cuts through into nothingness can put a chill up my spine sometimes. It's a great lead in to the next song which is about the protagonist escaping into his mind...

Earthbound Goddess. This is a song I had wanted to write for a long time. I came up with the chorus when I was a teenager (about 12+ years ago) and it never left me. I felt I was destined to record the song. When I was in my teens I was like a lot of other guys who couldn't say the right things or do what it took to get girls to like them. Part of that was probably my hideous appearance, but at least I wasn't going bald then. In any event, my desire for love and my inability to find it made for a far from pleasant adolescence. Instead of being able to drown my sorrows in the comfort of a lover my attempts just became another source of pain. So the only comfort I found was in the arms of a dream.

The girl I spent my youthful dreams with appears on the cover of the CD. She's beautiful, soft, and loves only me. The sadness she shows is all a part of the dream. My desire was to rescue her from overwhelming emotional distress and show her a world of love and caring. I would win her over like a knight charging in to save her. That may sound silly or at least done to death, but it's how I felt back then so I felt I needed to be true to those emotions to tell the tale. Here's my version of the "white knight" tale:

"Hiding away from chilling winds and driving storms.
Cold and afraid, I did my best to keep her warm.
And slowly she turned, and opened up her yearning eyes.
I lost all my fear, and chased away the madness from the skies."

The music is mostly light and dreamlike and filled with warmth. The chorus adds some heavily distorted guitar which, looking back on it, probably should have been less distorted. Regardless of that the impact of the solos is there. It captures the strength of the protagonist's resolve and love for his dream girl. I know the singing isn't perfect in this song, but I tried as hard as I could, and I think that aspect works as well as if it had been sung perfectly.

In the end the protagonist leaves his dream girl, not for another woman, but for another dream. She has helped him through the difficult times and now he's ready to go out into the real world and fight again with renewed strength. It is there that he meets "The New God".

(to be continued)