Arcade Messiah is my new metal instrumental project, and from the beginning I set myself some guidelines, I wanted to make the heaviest album I could yet retaining a musically cohesive with a melodic structure. I wanted the music and imagery to reflect an apocalyptic and nihilistic feel. I wanted to create heavy riffs with unusual time signatures that didn't fall into the trap of sounding overcomplicated and sounded natural. I also didn't want any traditional guitar solo's, as I feel it can be very easy, when writing music to just say, "lets throw a guitar solo in there to fill that bit out". I wanted to remove that possibility, so that I could focus more on the key structures of the songs and make them strong so they didn't need any additional guitar solo decoration.

The name for the song "Your Best Line Of Defence Is Obscurity" was a line taken from a fictional book, which was made up of notes and instructions sent from a Father to his Daughter, they were written to guide the daughter on how to survive an apocalypse. And one of those survival tips was to always remain obscure and remote and to not draw attention to yourself as everyone in that situation of panic would be out to get whatever they can from whoever they meet. Musically as with all of the album, I wanted to create an ominous climate, an epic heavy sound, crunching guitars, big riffs over odd meter time signatures whilst interlaced with moments of psychedelic calm. As it was the second song on the album and following a fast opening track, I wanted a melodic opening that was calm and sedate and that would explode suddenly, with that wall of guitar sound but also playing the same melody as the intro.

The song went through many different stages before it was finished, and the most trouble I had was the opening wall of guitar sound and getting it to sound suitably heavy. Combining the right sounds of heavy riffs and picked guitar arpeggio parts and getting them to sound the way I wanted took some time for this track. There were numerous guitar tracks recorded, in different ways with different tones, through different amps, all layered together and panned to fill up the stereo field. I think well over 12 distinct parts for guitar, both a standard electric guitar and a baritone guitar tuned to B were used on all tracks on the album. In my mind I wanted to create a heavy slow motion soundtrack to accompany someone watching the horizon of a city in flames. Something dramatic and heavy but moved in slow motion. Does that make any sense? I'm not sure, but in my mind it does.