»Notes: The Gates of Violence

The name for this song came from the name of one of my fortresses on Dwarf Fortress. The random name generator in that game is actually remarkably good at coming up with cool names.

I was originally going to call this song Deathquake and use some different lyrics but I changed my mind about the vocals I'd recorded over the Gorebastard song which I called Deathquake and decided I'd keep both songs.

This is the first time I've attempted a death metal style blast beat which you can hear in the instrumental section before the bridge.

I think this is also the first time I've used a 6/8 rhythm in a song. I've been playing around with 6/8 stuff for a while, in a similar vein to the beat in Megadeth - Sleepwalker.

In an unprecedented trio of innovation, this song also features my slowest tempo yet, the slower second half of the mid-tempo section is 60bpm I think.

I lowered the tuning in this song so it's in drop-C#. My guitars need setups though and I don't use very heavy gauge strings so I can't go any lower. I like the idea of down-tuning both in terms of the cool sound and also to ease singing. My only other song with low tuning like this is The Thing That Should Not Be.

I made the whistling sound at the beginning of the song by putting the whole of the microphone right into my mouth. It's a similar effect to if you put a cup over your ear and I was surprised to find you could achieve such a sound on a mic. I could probably have done this with a cup as well but it's easier adjusting the shape of your mouth to get the right sound. The only effects on this sound is a little hall reverb. The sound itself is supposed to suggest a (nuclear) wind or the sound you'd get if you were in an underground tunnel or bunker walking towards the surface, which sort of fit in with the lyrics of the song.

The lyrics are sort of about nuclear armageddon/Mad Max, which isn't a particularly imaginative topic for a thrash metal song. However, when I was re-jigging the order of the lyrics around after I'd written them I decided to make the bridge to be more about Dwarf Fortress (because it's cool). The original lyrics for the bridge came to form the chorus and part of the last verse.

These are mostly here for my convenience.