Warpriest “Dark Ages” Song Breakdown

So today the first song we’re going to talk about, is the self titled song, Dark Ages, off of the Dark Ages album. And a reminder that if you comment under this, you’ll be entered to win this album free, and some swag too.

So, the idea for the album came to me about 2013, where I wanted to write something that dealt with the ills of our society, where I felt like we were heading almost into a “dark age”.

The song I think was written in 2015, originally titled ”Low Blow”, which was just a working title at the time. I ended up changing the title, deciding that I wanted that to be the “Dark Ages” song. It was written in Drop C. It was a little bit faster than what the song is on the album, but the whole structure came to me pretty quickly for how I wanted the song to go. The solo part ended up being, a lot of times what I’ll do is, I might loop a riff, and just solo over it and work out some ideas, and sometimes that will actually turn into a long solo like I did with “The Witch” as well. So that’s what I ended up doing with this one. I didn’t really have to change a lot. I think I added in the bass solo towards the end later on. So a lot of the structure stayed the same. What I ended up doing, was when I picked the song back up around 2020, 2021, I ended up slowing it down a little bit, and I also added the breakdown at the end of the song.

Lyrically, I wrestled with the song, I had an opening verse that sat there for a couple of years and I never really worked the song out. It wasn’t until I was getting the album done that I really started working on the lyrics. I think I went back and forth with a bunch of different lyrics that I just wanted to try and describe a bleakness. In some of that, I was also trying to describe what I feel like was a lack of direction and leadership in our country. Whether it be politicians or the church, or any kind of structure, that I felt like we were going through this time of disunity and disharmony and infighting and stuff and to some degree we’re still going through. And I saw that as a dark age, where personally we tend to pick aside and then plant our flag there. We don’t have enough love or grace with other people. I think the last lyric in that song kind of deals with that, where I say “pride clouds the vision”, but I believe that we can see a light at the end of the dark ages. So, as I mentioned, comment underneath, whether this is onYouTube, Instagram or Facebook, and you’ll be entered to win a copy of this album. After these videos are done, I will randomly pick a person and we’ll inter you. And if you haven’t already, like and subscribe to my channel. I’m always trying to keep things updated, and we’re looking at coming out with a third album this year, so I hope you’re as excited as we are. So have a great day.