2025-Feb-15 - I Beat the Wall of Flesh
This week's randomly selected song I Beat the Wall of Flesh is track #5 from disc #2 of my triple CD album It Was All Just a Dream.
I Beat the Wall of Flesh first appeared on my 2017 album Juxtaposition, and again on my 2022 album Juxtaposition Reimagined. The final version of the song on It Was All Just A Dream features me on bass guitar (instead of the synthesizer bass from the original version), a brand new section with a guitar solo (the original had no solo), and the drums and overall mix got a face lift too.
Let's get to the burning question: what in the world is up with this song title? The origin of the title is pretty tame and mundane to be perfectly honest. One day while I was at work at the observatory, I was searching a tech forum that I frequented for the solution to some odd Linux issue I was trying to solve. I was having a bit of trouble finding much that would help my situation, so I was scrolling through post after post. The way the forum was organized on screen, there was a column along the margin of the web page with related entries to my search. In addition there was also a listing of the most recent and most active topics on the forum.
So as I was reading through the related results, not realizing that I had read through all of the relevant results, I happened upon an entry that was titled "I beat the wall of flesh but the jungle did not grow restless". Obviously I clicked the link. Because how could I not, right?
It turns out this tech forum was also a popular repository for game development and testing. The entry was related to a bug that a game tester had encountered during game testing. But I just couldn't let that awesome title get away. I wrote it down in my notepad of song titles and ideas. Later that day during my lunch break, I picked up my guitar thinking, how on earth would I convey such a weird title? Turns out, I had plenty of ideas how it would sound, and the song was born.
The Music Theory Behind the Song
This song really doesn't really fit into the mold of being easily described with music theory. The song mostly centers around the tonic of A, but the tonality is pretty ambiguous, regularly shifting back and forth between major and minor with a TON of chromatic notes. However, that said, the song MOSTLY centers around the A pentatonic minor scale, just with a lot of extra little added "flavor" notes. And structurally, there's no real concept of verses or choruses or really anything like that. It's more just a collection of riffs that I play in different sequences. However, that's not to say that it's just randomness. There is an intentional ebb and flow to the sequencing of the riffs, building and releasing tension as the song progresses.
At the height of the tension, the song switches gears completely for the guitar solo. Unlike the wildly chromatic build up to this point, the guitar solo and the chords behind the lead guitar are a fairly straight ahead Am and F with an A blues scale solo on top of that. The end of the guitar solo transitions right back into the chromatic and whole tone chaos to finish the song with a couple familiar riffs from earlier in the song.
Guitars and Amps
 TigerLuv Custom Chiron (2020) |
 Ibanez RG470 “Swirly” (1999) |
 Sully Guitars 624 CS Prototype (2018) |
 Sully Guitars Custom 622 (2021) |
I used four guitars for I Beat the Wall of Flesh. Most of the song blurs the lines between rhythm guitar and lead guitar. So for most of the song I played two guitars: my TigerLuv Custom Chiron and my custom refinished "swirly" Ibanez RG470, both played through my Mesa Boogie Mark V:25 IIC+ voice. For the guitar solo break, I played a couple of clean tone guitars behind the lead melody: my "swirly" Ibanez RG470 and my Sully 624 Conspiracy Series prototype, both played through my Synergy Fryette Deliverance green channel. For the guitar solo, I played my Sully US Custom 622 through my Mesa Boogie Mark V:25 IIC+ voice.
If you love what you hear and want to support the music I make, please consider purchasing It Was All Just a Dream on CD or digital download. I will gladly personalize and autograph your copy.
https://chrisstark.com/it-was-all-just-a-dream
Keep an eye out for next Saturday's song spotlight, and as always, thank you sincerely for all of your support!
Love, Aloha, and Rock!
❤️😎🎸