Something Wicked This Way Comes

Cover

Artist: Infernal Death
Released by: Evil Angel Records
Release Date: 2008-08-05
Review: Perfect (21)

The follow up to the band's concept landmark album, The Great War, was a stressful project. Having just completed their first world tour, the band was concerned about trying to top themselves again with new material and another grand project. Rather than attempt to deal with that kind of pressure, Danny suggested the band take a step back from that kind of thinking and just concentrate on writing things that just felt in the moment. The album, Something Wicked This Way Comes, is somewhat of an eccletic collection of tunes, but still a very solid offering. The first half are songs that came from a lighter source of inspiration, while the second half of the album is where the title for it came from, dark, brooding and dangerous.

Danny broke out of his traditional metal roots a bit, although he did pen the only two that fall into this category with “Top Shelf Seeker” and “The Murders In Pleasantville”. Dean was still experimenting with his style and form. Most of his early tracks on this record were centered around the birth of his first child, a daughter, Erica Royle.

Dean and Danny each provided five tracks for the record. Neil was still too uncomfortable to provide something himself.

Half the album was recorded at their homebase of Gunsmoke! Records in Toronto. A couple of other tracks were also recorded at another studio in Toronto when a small flood forced the band out of their usual studio. The other tracks were recorded while the band was on the (Some Wicked Tour Your Way Comes) tour.

Danny Harris produced the album, except for “Terror”, which was produced by Gareth Cutting.

After the final five tracks were revealed and played by the band, the feel of the record became clear, with strong tones of a dark, fearful and dangerous world. Danny came up with the title of the record, “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, based on a book of the same title he once read. The cover art was designed and produced by Danny and was an attempt to provide a taste of the fear the latter half of the record was meant to provide.

Rock Band Blues

Back on the Light The Fire album, Danny’s experimentation with the funkadelic “Slap My Pup” would lead to this track. “Rock Band Blues” is a funk heavy blues track with a traditional blues progression and a lot of wah-wah. For some reason, it worked rather well.

“Honestly, I didn’t think it would work as well as it did,” Danny comments, “but it surprised the guys and I just how good it sounded.”

This was the first track Danny wrote for the new record and is probably the most dated due to its style, although at the time it was used as the second single that was released for the new record.

Elzė Kicked My Ass

This was one of three tracks that Dean wrote for the new record that were tied to his first wife and family. The songs, part of a sort of “parenting trilogy”, seemed forced however and didn’t have a free flowing, natural edge to them. It was a conscious decision to not include any of them on singles.

“Musically, the tracks were decent and I’ll admit, Dean’s stroke with the pen for lyrics wasn’t always his strong suit,” Neil recalls, “I just remember being happy when we dumped this track from the set list. Sometimes he wrote too literally and it came off as contrived, like Fredericton Death March of Death By Danny.”

Top Shelf Seeker

What good, patriotic Canadian band wouldn’t have a track about its national pastime? Well, probably most, but not Infernal Death.

“I had just completed Floodtide and Murders, two pretty dark, disturbing tracks,” Danny recalls, “and I wasn’t sure what to do with them. I was a little nervous to show those to the guys. But they knew I was writing and I knew they were expecting me to have something for them when I came to the studio, so I quickly punched out this track about hockey. It didn’t take more than a day to complete, but the guys really dug it.”

Basically, a very straight forward rocker, the crowds always helped out on the chorus and had a real “Cat Scratch Fever” edge to it.

Super Spawn

Part of Dean’s “parenting trilogy”, this was a far departure from what he normally wrote. Soft, meek and lacking his usual flair on drums, the melody was something he hummed out to Danny to play on guitar. The melody again, was very good, but once again lyrically, a little weak.

The Perfect One

The final piece of Dean’s “parenting trilogy”, this was all about Erica Royle. One thing Dean always was was a good father. A folksy edge, and the strongest of the three tracks of the trilogy, “The Perfect One” is an ode to every parent’s belief that their child is the perfect one.

Terror

All the initial tracks that the band shared with each other were light and fluffy fare. It wasn’t until Dean came to the studio on the third week of writing that he admitted he’d held a track back so he could touch it up. That track was “Terror”.

“As soon as I heard it, I knew it had to be the first single,” Danny says, “and I knew that I could bring out Floodtide and Murders too. The album was going to have two very different sides.”

“Terror” was full of piss and vinegar with an opening blast beat that blows you away. Neil’s rumbling bass line provides the perfect complement to the melody line allowing Danny to bring the noise on guitar. The dark imagery of fear and terror is conjured ever so carefully so you never know what is causing the authors shivers, allowing the listener to imaging their own worst fear.

As Danny said, it indeed was the first single released of the new material and went on to become Infernal Death’s biggest selling single of all time.

The Murders In Pleasantville

After using an entire album to set a scene and tell a story, Danny wanted to try real hard to do the same thing in a single song. “Murders” became a sensational number that the band absolutely loved playing live. The stage show, the theatrics, the whole package really make this one of the band’s most memorable.

“What’s not to like?” Neil asks. “From that creepy opening guitar solo, it really set the atmosphere for this chilling little ditty about a sadistic serial killer. The crowds loved it.”

The melody line, after the opening solo, breaks into a galloping line as the tale gets spun in a very traditional new wave of British heavy metal style. While being played live, a man dressed up as “the killer” would roam the stage behind the scenes, usually followed by his quick disappearance as the spotlight gets shone on his latest gruesome murder scene, newspaper and news reel images flashing across the canvas from stage projectors. The murdered is never caught, so always remember “when you walk alone at night” to “always try to stay in the light”!

This track was released as the “B” side on Beware The Deceiver. Danny notes he wished this had been released as its own single instead.

The Darkness Within

Dean’s second best contribution to the record was a track he wrote right after “Terror” before his trilogy. He didn’t show it to the band until after “Terror” and Danny had brought in “Floodtide” and “Murders”.

Continuing his theme of fear, Dean used this track to explore where that fear comes from and how some people succumb to their fears and spend the rest of their days trapped by it, locked away, insane and alone.

Because the band would often use the same actor who portrayed the killer in “Murders” during the stage show to portray a man who slowly becomes more withdrawn throughout the song before ending it in a straight jacket in a small cell which always went pitch black at the end, some mistakenly assumed it was a follow up.

“Yeah, many people mistakenly think this track is a follow up to Danny’s Murders track,” Dean says, “but really it has nothing to do with it. It was a personal exploration of fear and the dark recesses it resides inside the human psyche.”

This track was also very different from anything they had played to date with gothic overtones from some experimental guitar and bass synth work.

This track was released as the “B” side on Terror.

Floodtide

“In short, I had just finished watching some gangster flick and there was a scene where they dump this store owner who failed to make his protection payments into a river wearing some cement shoes,” Danny says. “So, this track was basically a play on that theme, some poor guy who ticked off the wrong crew and ends up sucking water in the river. The police only find a bloated, flesh eaten corpse.”

This track was very different much like “The Darkness Within” was, musically. Danny experimented with a heavy industrial edge to it. While worked relatively well, Danny wouldn’t return to this sub genre in the future.

This track was released as the “B” side on Rock Band Blues.

Beware The Deceiver

The final track that was contributed by Danny and to the record was this one. By far, Danny’s best work to date, “Beware The Deceiver” would also be released as the final single from the new record.

Another track that played on the themes of fear and the unknown, this time through the power of lies told by the beast, the snake headed deceiver. The band took some heat from religious groups over the song as they claimed, wrongly, the track promoted the beast.

“Not sure why people always immediately hear a song like this and assume we are some kind of devil worhshippers,” Neil comments. “The final stanza of the lyric clearly states a warning to beware this person's lies, that it is something evil and wicked, something not to be trusted.”

Danny also used the lyric at the end of the song that the record was titled after, the name of the book:

“Beware, beware the Deceiver
Hear the steady beat of drums
Beware, beware the Deceiver
For something wicked your way comes”

This track is the longest on the record, timing in at over eight minutes, it has some serious time changes and was a real challenge to play live exactly as it was recorded in studio.

No chart history.