Integrity are releasing their new album "Howling For The Nightmare Shall Consume" this Friday (July 14th) and to celebrate we asked Dom to tell us about the song "7 Reece Mews". Here is the story:
Named after the address of Francis Bacon's painting studio, this song originally came about as a slow and mean eight-minute blues jam inspired by Led Zeppelin's 'Since I've Been Loving You' fused with CCRs version of 'I Put A Spell On You'. I really wanted the minor chords to shimmer the way they do in the CCR song (which is my favorite quality of the finished song). It was cool but didn't really go anywhere, so it was moved to the back burner while we worked on other songs.
Months later I had acquired a weird echo pedal called 'Misty Cave' (Last Gasp), and was messing around with it as I came up with the pretty part that appears in the middle break of the song. It was lofty/dreamy almost surfy�which made me think of being at the beach. This got me thinking about being a kid and how much I loved when The Honeydripper's version of 'Sea Of Love'. One of my favorite slide guitar solos ever... and by who better than Jimmy Page himself?!
Anyways, I was sitting on my bed inspired by that Honeydrippers song and messing around with a lap-steel guitar that I had just purchased. Out of the blue I came up with the lap-steel solo that appears on the record. It just came and went just like that, like an out of body experience. Thankfully I was recording at the time, as I was never able to capture the feel of that first attempt. When it came time to record the final version, we actually used the demo solo.
Eventually I came back to the slow meandering blues jam and decided to give it a dramatic facelift, and approach it as if was the soundtrack to a movie. Once I popped the 'Misty Cave' part into the middle it was too perfect. I played around with the arrangement for a while, sewing in a few other riffs and transitions before finally revisiting the second verse theme as a clean 12-strong intro complete with a homemade dungeon stomp pedal. Frankenstein's monster had come to life.
Dwid and I had the idea to track down John Christ (Danzig) and ask him to play a guest solo on this song, since we both are huge fans. Things didn't pan out with JC (and I hope I didn't scare him off with my obsessive stalking) so I laid down a solo over the ending as an homage to the man himself, asking myself the question 'What would JC do?'.
Now with all of that out of the way we were faced with the final piece of the puzzle: What was going to happen with the vocals on this song? Anyone familiar with Integrity's body of work would wonder the same thing. I was left in suspense while Dwid finished the rest of the songs / left this one until last. Once he sent me his takes I was blown away. It had all the powerful stuff you expected from him during its heaviest moments, but it was his eerie narration that took this blues jam and turned it into something you might hear on Twin Peaks. I was absolutely floored.
Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album right here!
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