Sanctuary of Nevermore

In this post I talk about the song Blindfold, the title track off Descent Into Madness’ 2012 EP.

The idea that people keep making rules and bending rules to their own self-interest, and the masses following those rules blindly, without challenging assumptions, always bugs me, much like the idea that people believe a "God-fearing man" is a good person. When a person is afraid of something or someone, does it mean the person is good? Not necessarily, I don’t think.

Some believe that everybody has a "mind's eye", but leaders gather their flock, and collectively puts on a blindfold on the group's mind's eye. But it goes down all the way to the individual, when a father forces his children to follow him by means of fear, instead of respect.

The song was written rather quickly, but it took the band a while to play it live, and even more so to record it. When we started playing it live, though, it immediately became the band’s favorite live tune.

Here’s one live execution of this song:

Here’s also a video of me writing the solo. I’ve changed it a bit when I finally recorded it, but most of it came out of this version:

The intro to this song is mainly the core notes of the first riff, played on a keyboard and using some weird sounds. The influence for that intro came to me from Angra’s song Winds of Destination.

There’s also one riff in Blindfold that many years after I wrote I sort of figured what could have inspired me: the intro riff on Arch Enemy’s Dead Eyes See No Future.

Other than those two things, I can’t really think of any specific musical influences that inspired the creation of this song.

In order to come up with the vocal lines, I recorded it my own way, and then we worked on figuring out who was going to sing what. Eventually the band decided the first verse should be a tread of lines between Alex and I. I ended up not doing the chorus backing vocals in the studio version (which I used to do live).

Preaching for the mass

Your attitude lies beyond comprehension

Teaching for the dumb mass

You lie, beyond comprehension

Making the rules, bending the rules

The Ivory Tower crumbles

One can only hope

For a better future without you

God-fearing man, synonymous with good man

Scared minds are easy to control

Father… inflicted fear, I'm your tyrant

Father… you are free will deprived

Blind collective mind's eye

Shielded from what's real

Led to a one-way road...

Where does it lead?

Blind collective mind's eye

Shielded from what's real

Led to a one-way road...

Where will I be?

God-fearing man, synonymous with good man

Scared minds are easy to control

Father… inflicted fear, I'm your tyrant

Father… you're free will denied

Blind collective mind's eye

Shielded from what's real

Led to a one-way road...

Where does it lead?

Blind collective mind's eye

Shielded from what's real

Led to a one-way road...

Where will I be

I, ambush, lie

Land of the free

I, ambush, lie

Blind collective mind's eye

Shielded from what's real

Led to a one-way road...

Where does it lead?

Blind collective mind's eye

Shielded from what's real

Led to a one-way road...

Where will I be?

Preaching for the mass

Your attitude lies beyond comprehension

Teaching for the dumb mass

You lie, beyond comprehension

Making the rules, bending the rules

The Ivory Tower crumbles

One can only hope

For a better future without you

In this post I’ll cover the Descent Into Madness’ Blindfold EP, released back in 2012. The EP consists of three songs: the title track, To Each His Own, and World Undoing.

World Undoing = Dump Truck

We have played these three songs at rehearsal for a couple of years. We even played two of them (To Each His Own and Blindfold) a couple of times live. However, we were unable to get it properly recorded as a band. When we were short of both a drummer and a bassist, we decided to record the songs as well as we could. Alex recorded the bass guitar, and we hired Marc Norgaard to lay down the drum tracks. We had worked with Marc on one song before and were happy with the results, so we figured we could do that again.

With a click-track created, I recorded a guide guitar track, which we sent off to Marc, along some room recordings we had playing the songs as a band. Marc sent us his first shot at each song, we shoot back some changes we’d like to see, and after 2 or 3 rounds of going back and forth we reached the best results we thought we could with this type of set up.

The main problem of working remotely with a hired musician like this is that we lose the chemistry of all people working in the same room. That being said, Marc did a great job, even more so considering this is not even his main style of music. As with our previous experience, he was very easy to work with.

Most of the guitars were recorded at Alex’s home studio. At the time I had just finished building a new computer and getting me some gear that would allow me to do some recording, and I was able to record my guitar solos back at my home studio. I think those are the best leads I recorded up to that point.

The artwork for this EP is centered around the title-track, Blindfold. I’ll talk about it in another post, after I’ve talked about the song itself.

I’ll be writing individual posts to talk about each song in this release, and I’ll make sure to include some room recording versions, as well as live versions.