RIGHT BRAIN/LEFT BRAIN: Darkest Hour's "The Tides"

THIS MONTH: DARKEST HOUR’S "THE TIDES"

(darkesthour.cc)

WITH JOHN HENRY (VOCALS)

MESSIAH COMPLEX

It’s kind of about two different things. The main inspiration was me thinking about how you can never predict which direction your life is going to go, like the random flow of the tides, and how it’s really unpredictable and chaotic. When I came up with the word "serpentine" in the chorus, I was imagining going through these long, twisted tunnels, and not being able to find my way out. I was also thinking a little about the fall of our whole economic system: It seems like all these companies were built on trying to predict where money was going to go, and building all these false palaces that started to crumble down. It reminded me of how you can never predict things-and that’s the basis of the song. When I sing at the end, "If you think you can predict it/Well you fool and you fake," almost sums it all up for me.

THESE FEVERED TIMES

It’s all just greed [causing the current recession], and people not knowing when to stop. The one line where it definitely ties in is when I say, "You reaped when you knew there was nothing to sow." I definitely don’t claim to have the answer, but it’s one of the things that inspired me. Especially with the stock exchange, though, it seems like it’s all about trying to find where it’s going to be next and chasing money that actually ends up being worth nothing, because there’s nothing backing it up. It’s just another empty cycle of repetition and greed. It’s pretty wack. [Laughs.]

THIS WILL OUTLIVE US

["The Tides"] was the second song [on The Eternal Return] I wrote the lyrics for, and the second song I demoed, and it pretty much remained unchanged throughout the recording process. It felt really awesome from the get-go. I wrote it in my apartment in New York; I was living up there for a while and was doing a lot of writing. The practice space was in Richmond, [Virginia,] so we were having practices; then I was going back up and writing in my own little spot. Usually it all comes to me at 6 or 7 in the morning; then it just all fucking comes out, and I’m like, "Goddamnit, why did it take this goddamn long?" [Laughs.]

WITH MIKE SCHLEIBAUM (GUITAR)

SANCTUARY

It all spawned from a couple of riffs that were born in the basement. Mike "Lonestar" Carrigan, our other guitar player and I were writing in my basement-all month, every day, just writing riffs. Mike had gone home for a quick stint, and I was just jamming by myself… The middle of the song was written in Texas, because there’s a shred section that we took from another song that [Carrigan] had lying around. We pieced them together, and it made a kind of beautiful mistake, and we went from there to the jam room. Once the band got a hold of it, the translation you hear is the result of a bunch of people screaming at each other.

FIRE IN THE SKIES

A lot of [2005’s] Undoing Ruin and [2007’s] Deliver Us have these crazy shred parts. We wanted to do one, but with a different spin, so the first half of it is this kind of neo-classical thing that Mike [Carrigan] had going, but it was tweaked, and moved all around, and the chord progression was changed. It was bastardized by everybody, of course. Then we wanted to have a sick, wild solo; those are kind of my solos on the record, because I’m not really like the type of dude who’ll shred neo-classically all the time, though I do like it. We just wanted to juxtapose the neo-classical shred with a wild solo, and live it’s really fun to do that way, too. It’s kind of inspired by a lot of old Megadeth, because on Rust In Peace, man, [Marty] Friedman and Dave Mustaine would go back and forth on these sick guitar solos, and Mike and I grew up always thinking it was awesome. It’s just the perfect homage to that, in a weird way. I’m not trying to say we’re as sick as those dudes, just that we’re into them. [Laughs.]

ETHOS

When I went into the writing of this record, I really discovered the [Slayer] record God Hates Us All. It’s a little overlooked, because it’s not Seasons In The Abyss and it’s not Reign In Blood, but the production is now, which I think is cool, because Slayer had really raw production earlier on. And dude, it’s such a pissed off, vile record, which is how I felt as an artist when I wanted to start writing these riffs; I wanted to channel that feeling. Slayer are a really good interpretation of the emotion of anger, and I really wanted that to come across. That Slayer record was really inspirational. Slayer didn’t fucking change-they didn’t do a Black Album, not to diss Metallica for going pop, but Slayer stayed the course, a lot like the way Darkest Hour have.

THE LEGACY

We finally allowed the song to have its own natural identity. When you’re in a band, you’re aware of what sounds like you, so you’re always trying to get outside the box and get something crazy. When we were writing this song, we knew it was always a kind of classic Darkest Hour riff, but we wanted it to always be different, until our producer Brian McTernan got a hold of it. He was the one who was like, "Hey, man, it has this swing that you’ve used in a lot of the other songs, and if you slow it down, it sounds like really classic Darkest Hour." Until then, we hadn’t realized how awesome that is. [Laughs.] We’d been trying to fight it.

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LINER NOTES

SONG: "The Tides" ALBUM: The Eternal Return WRITTEN: October-November 2008 in New York City/Houston, TX. RECORDED: Salad Days Studio, Baltimore, March-April 2009 PRODUCED BY: Brian McTernan