»Notes: Limbo

This song started out life as an hour of messing around at about 2am. This messing about resulted in a demo called Say It In Slugsish, named so because it sounded very similar to the song Say It In Slugs, originally by Entombed. Here's the demo.

I listened to the demo the following day and decided it didn't feel complete so I set about re-recording it.

The first thing I did was come up with a proper drum track. Usually when I make a song I make a special drum track for it, but on this one I recycled some old drum beats, some I've used and some not. The drums you will most likely recognise are played in the pre-verse section and were used extensively in The Darkness Beneath. That particular drum beat was an approximation of one you can hear in Metallica's 'The Call of Ktulu'.

I got rid of the vague post-metal section in the middle and added a fast bit, where I could put some lyrics.

Before I recorded the vocals and solos (which I usually leave until last) I realised that the middle section was a bit too short and there was no room for a solo to go, so I had to bite the bullet and use Cooledit to double up one of the verses. I consider this cheating and usually try to avoid doing it by planning ahead, something I didn't do much on this track.

The vocals came out quite shouty as opposed to singy. I was pretty pleased with the vocals but I think they sound a bit too much like something Evile would do. I think Evile's vocals are pretty flat, so this was kind of disappointing.

I tried doing lyrics in the same style as those I did for Waiting 'Neath the Moon. The idea with Waiting' was trying to convey the Lovecraftian horror of public transport, and so it wasn't a big leap to try and make a song trying to convey the Lovecraftian horror of the Job Centre. So yeah, it doesn't take a genius to see that the lyrics are about the Job Centre, which I have wrote about in great depth on several occasions already. I was pretty pleased with the lyrics, I tried to get them to be more humourous as well, I mean I think you could listen to Waiting 'Neath The Moon and firstly not realise what I'm on about and secondly not realise I'm not being entirely serious. I think a lot of metal, particularly thrash metal has pretty throwaway lyrics (Evile are particularly guilty of this too) so I try to come up with more intelligent lyrics. I'll let you decide how successful I've been.

This song doesn't just bear a striking resemblance to Say It In Slugs. The bass part in the slow section is practically identical and the wah-guitar isn't a paragon of originality either. I usually try not to steer so close to complete plagiarism, I am really rubbish at coming up with bass riffs though.

The solo(s) came out a lot better than I thought they would. I'm getting worse at soloing, I have to try very hard for it not to be a constant stream of noise. I tried reusing an old trick of basing the solos off the riffs that have followed in the song already, it's a trick that still seems to work.

These are mostly here for my convenience.