Making Of ‘The Hand’- Paz

The first Castle Metal project had finished in late 2007 and the momentum carried me on to write the second as a direct follow on. The riffs were coming quite regularly and, apart from one song, which was thrown out and a new one inserted, I was happy with all of it especially the tracks, ‘Hail! Victory!’, ‘The King Of England’ and ‘The Bleak Decisions Of Man’. Even though it was an extension of The Castle Metal Project it was more polished, more grandiose and had better performances. In short ‘The Bleak Decisions Of Man’ showed a natural progression and demonstrated what was possible if Castle Metal was taken a little more seriously. The problem afterwards was how do you follow an album you’re completely happy with? Easy, you keep writing but I had run out of riffs, the momentum had gone and the creative tank was dry and I had serious doubts about there ever being a third album. My initial ideas of making a third instalment with the exiled King coming back from France was blown away with a phone call from Hedgy. He said he had an idea for a story but it doesn’t have any big battles in it, no ballistas, no Trebuchet and definitely no Mangonels of which I had a song left over called this. It was going to be a down beat, dark tale about an antihero who is betrayed. Cheery and rousing stuff, I’ll get right on it, I thought. In the past, the lyric duty fell to both of us. The music was already written it just needed some words. I would say to Hedgy, this is about a joust, and by the end of the evening we would have the words and a test demo with the ‘actual’ lyrics. Because it was going to be Hedgy’s story he said he wanted to write all the lyrics which was fine by me (I find lyric writing a necessary evil of song-writing).

The problem with trying to write when the creative tank is dry is you try and force out the ideas settling for any old nonsense and this was certainly the case in the early writing. There was a lot of discussion about the direction of Castle Metal 3. Hedgy preferred the longer more progressive songs from The Bleak Decisions of Man such as ‘The King Of England’, ‘Overthrow,’ ‘Spiral Into Madness’ and the title track itself. I am more of a fan and prefer the more immediate material so when Hedgy said he would like the Castle Metal 3 (CM3) album to be more progressive I had a problem, I didn’t really want to go down that route. I think it was my lack of commitment in the early writings that made me put up with any old rubbish that emitted from the ole 6-string. After a couple of months, I had written over seventy minutes of music, all long, all progressive and all as dull as ditch water. It was coming across as the previous album’s drawn out hand-me-downs rather than something new.

Hedgy seemed to like it, but not like it enough and I wasn’t getting anything from the music. This was metal, it’s supposed to cause a reaction within you whether it is excitement, anger, misery or joy. The music was flat and yet I still think it was a surprise when I said to Hedgy, “I’m going to scrap it all and start again”. We concluded this was the best option because neither of us were completely happy, and it’s not as if we’re on a schedule and we’ll never be signed so, let’s take our time.

About 6 months later Hedgy had gathered his ideas and sent me song titles with a paragraph of what was going to happen in the songs (no lyrics yet). There were ten songs in the initial lay out, an extract is below:

I am the hand

I. Soldier – He is a soldier and has been for years, this is the position he ostensibly holds but in reality and secretly he is much more. II. Lover – He is in love with his lords daughter and she seems to love him however he is not in a position as a soldier to do much about it other than meet in secret. III. Spy – He is a spy for his lord. He does the jobs that need doing secretly, he will kill someone if necessary but does not do so on a whim. (think thief)

The Poisoning

Sent to dose the water supply with a sleeping draft however he has been given a poison instead, his boss want his rival killed and doesn’t care if he has to kill the whole household to do it. He knows his man won’t be an assassin so tricks him.

Sickness

Vomiting sickness which makes people drink more water, takes a full day to get serious so everyone has had it in their cooking etc by the end of the day. By the next morning most if not all affected are dead.

Dawning of a new day I. Betrayal – His boss sends men to kill him so no one will find out who did what, he also puts out the news that the spy is responsible for the poisoning so the townsfolk want him dead too.

II. Realisation – Having escaped from the lords men the spy discovers what has happened and is filled with remorse. Poisoning men, women and children is not his way. He flees town by the skin of his teeth and is a wanted man. Depression and rage fight for control of his mind.

And then it was, ‘there you go Paz, do your stuff’. There is one album I always go back to when I begin to write. I use it as a template for a creative process. Even though the music I write sounds nothing like it this particular album has got so much variety, so many great ideas and yet is still credible and totally the band’s style that it is a great place to start from. It tells me that not every song has to be the same and there are so many ways in creating emotion with a couple of guitars, some kick ass drums and a bit of melody (Should I divulge its name? Ok then, The Years Of Decay by Overkill). I got busy and started to write lots of ideas. I tend to write little bits of riffs along to a drum track and save it as ‘CM3 Idea 1’ and so on. After I had around forty ideas I would then listen to them all and expand the ones that still sound ok several days/weeks later. With these ideas I applied them to the structure Hedgy had laid out for me. Not every idea was thrown away in the early cull. What became ‘I Am The Hand’ was the only full song that survived. Other ideas that survived were the main riff in ‘The Poisoning’, the rain opening for ‘Return’ (part 2) and a few bits and bobs in ‘Redemption’ (part 2 again). Very early in the writing it was clear that there were going to be more songs than Hedgy had initially envisaged. ‘I Am The Hand’ was about three subjects and suddenly it was three separate songs as I split each subject (Still no lyrics). I knew ‘I Am The Hand’ was a big ball busting riff and decided to use that as an opener, but then the first of many changes of heart happened and it was suddenly something else, and then the next week it was something else. In the end I returned back to the game Stronghold and modified a brilliant piece of music called Honormix_1.

As Hedgy described more of the story I realised that blaster style songs such as ‘Boiled In Oil’ and ‘Hail! Victory!’ were going to sound out of place in such a dark fable.

So now I had an extra problem to add to the mix. How was I going to make CM3 sound exciting, without upping the tempo? It also had to be quite progressive and all hang together and make sense. In the end I decided on a different approach. The idea was to make the music more interesting in respect of song structures, changes and really defining the Castle Metal style. I mean, what the hell was Castle Metal anyway? I had called it Castle Metal after reading several shelf magazines who deem it necessary to label music even if it doesn’t make sense, such as ‘epic neo-classical hardcore math metal’. Castle Metal is metal that is about castles. I had no intention in writing folk style metal with quirky tunes because Falconer, Ensiferum and all the other folky/battle metal bands do it so much better, so why copy them? The Castle Metal style is big riffs coupled with short melodies and tunes, oh yeah, and long instrumental breaks.

The Hand wasn’t written with part 1 and part 2 in mind, this suggestion came much later. The Hand was written as a whole. With Hedgy nailing the story even further (still no lyrics) I began to structure the songs in an order that was true to the tale, had the all the peaks and quiet parts in all the right places and was a balanced album from start to finish. When I wrote the music for ‘Dead To Me’ it was obvious it wasn’t going to be an opener but fit nicely as the Lord’s Daughter tells The Hand what she thinks of him. The dark undertones in the music were perfect for the story at that point. Unfortunately you cannot dictate in what order ideas come out so it was suddenly song 13 (Return) that was completed first and both Hedgy and I were looking at each other saying ‘wow, this sounds great’. Out of the blue some Lyrics for ‘Return’ arrived and it was nice for me to sing the melody with the proper lyrics. Usually, to demonstrate the melody for Hedgy, I would sing any old claptrap which tended to be what was on my desk, bookshelf or on my mind at that precise moment, for example, ‘It is 1984, the war of the worlds, I can see the anthems of rebellion in the matter of life and death...’ and so on. It was at this point that Hedgy put his first drums down on the project which then spiralled into several frustrated month’s searching for a suitable drum sound (you’d better ask Hedgy about that one).

The goal of making the music more interesting was getting the best out of me. The chanting at the end of ‘I Am The Hand’ is a case in point. This new thinking is also evident in ‘Christiana’, ‘Bloodless End’, ‘Betrayal’ and ‘Escape’.

I am big fan of Adrian Smith who tends to write complete songs with a beginning, middle and end. Sometimes, I think the end of a song is easily forgotten about and it’s a bit lazy for bands to repeat to fade or just do a couple of choruses and then a big bash to stop. A friend of mine always skips to the next track after the solo because she knows that the song has ‘spent its wad’ so to speak and there are no more surprises left. I wanted to get away from that even though sometimes it’s unavoidable and does sound good if not over used. The music was gathering a head of steam with songs being churned out quite regularly.

Unfortunately, when I’m in a prolific mood I would demo a song, dropbox (lifesaver) it for Hedgy, and then the next night I would change it and then dropbox him another version. Two days later I may change something and send him another version. It all gets very confusing not knowing what the correct version should be and several times I would be talking about a version on my ipod that is different to the one on Hedgy’s. Once both of us are happy with a version I either re-record the song or use the spine of the demo if I’m happy with some of it in the actual version.

With so much music it was evident that CM3 was going to be huge. It was approaching 100 minutes in length and I didn’t want to drop any of it. And with the age of MP3s and iPods why should we stick to the conventional length of 45 minutes or the limit of a CD? But after completing demos for 75% of the project I found myself stopping after Escape because it felt like a natural pause point not only in the story but also in the music and I felt the 13 minute Delirium just overegged the pudding. Another chat with Hedgy about splitting it and suddenly part 1 and part 2 was born. It also made life easier because we could concentrate on getting part 1 done and out there instead of grinding ourselves down trying to complete a double album in our spare time. What wasn’t easier was Hedgy suggesting a female voice would be nice for the female parts. “The what?” I said and Hedgy produced lyrics with male and female sections. It wasn’t a 50/50 split by any means but it was a significant amount to warrant bringing Katy (Pin) Maskrey in to help us out. Katy was more akin to pop music than metal so she performed on a couple of my old demos to see if her voice would fit and, more importantly, would she like the music. Katy oozes natural enthusiasm and was more than happy to try her hand (or throat) at heavy metal. She sounded great and when she sang the female parts to ‘Return’ both Hedgy and I agreed that the gig was hers.

With that in mind I went shopping and bought a new condenser mic, mini mixing desk (both Behringer) and fx unit. The initial demos were great so Hedgy added more lines for Katy and now the story was truly taking shape.

Eventually, all but one song was ready. I tidied up a lot of the guitars and added a few more backing vocals to make them sound a little more lush (I love my new mic). But one song seemed to keep coming back and kick me in butt. ‘Christiana’ started off under the title of ‘Daughter’ because that’s what it was about, the Lord’s daughter, the fiendish plotter behind this whole scheme. It was a late addition to the album and, for myself, it took a while for this stigma to disappear. Essentially, it is a love song which is something I do not do (love songs? Pah!). But it was vital to the story and introducing the Hand’s desire for the lord’s daughter thus emphasising the betrayal he suffers. ‘But this is a metal album, there’s no room for that kind of nonsense’ was my nagging doubt all the way through the early workings. To get away from the slushy toss of metal love songs I added a melodic but fairly heavy main riff, because the Hand is a pretty tough cookie, and a melodic verse. The middle section had to have grit otherwise it would be that ole ‘spent its wad in the first 2 minutes’ scenario. For almost 6 months it sat festering in the track listing sounding ok but nothing special. Hedgy added a lot of busy drums to the equation and suddenly it was a lot more exciting, but still, something was missing. In the end I threw out all of the vocals and started again with a brand new melody. After two nights it finally came, a melody more rhythmical that worked with the music rather than counterpoint it. A quick demo later and suddenly I was happy and the song finally worked. And this is one of the greatest wonders of song-writing/composing, sometimes ideas come to you straight away and they instantly mould into something special. Other times, especially with ‘Christiana’, they need to be worked at, come at from different angles and looked at objectively. It also demonstrates how a slightly different melody can produce different responses and emotions. Amazing really, considering there are a limited number of notes to play with. But that’s the beauty of music, it has the ability to move you or leave you cold with the changing of a note or two. It may be only 5 minutes and not sound that special to those listening to ‘Christiana’ for the first time, but I’ve been through the ringer with this one and that’s the way it goes sometimes.

At present I am finally running through the final mixes for part 1. I’ve already made some changes such as fleshing out the chorus in ‘Houses Of Power’ and removing the main vocal line in the chorus of ‘Escape’, letting the backing vocals take the stage so to speak. My favourite song is probably ‘The Poisoning’ and I also like the power of ‘Dead To Me’. I also have a soft spot for ‘Bloodless End’ but I’m not sure why. For those interested I use Ibanez and Jackson guitars and use Boss fx and that’s it, nothing fancy and nothing too expensive, after all, it’s all recorded for no cost whatsoever because we do it for the love of music and nothing else, so why should we charge the listener?

Paz