Spotify Playlist - Enter Pinhead Playlist
Inception:
The final chapter to “Adam the Astronaut”...”Enter Pinhead”. Grab a drink, fire up the Spotify playlist, and brace yourselves, for I have such sights to show you…
Fair warning, if you do not believe in the supernatural, past lives, mediums, ghosts, or any of the “woo-woo” stuff, this blog may have you rolling your eyes a bit. If so, I get it…I would only ask that you read with an open-mind, and trust that I’ll bring us around to the point and, hopefully, a fun little read. So, here we go …
From the jump, I wanted this to be a fun song, but also a song with real depth. It was a practice in working on the story and message, while being a bit overtly playful. It was finding little ways to throw some levity to the content in the form of the “Hellraiser” storyline, and leaning into the truly terrifying elements. Whether it was creating a narrative with elements from the plot of the film, or throwing in a couple of direct Pinhead quotes, I wanted this to be a layered experience from start to finish.
Let’s start with the obvious, “Hellraiser”. The film was released in 1987. As usual, I was late to the party with this classic body-horror, and I didn’t actually sit to watch it until 2005-ish. It was one of those movies which was very unsettling to watch, but I also knew I really liked it. Something about the story, the score, and the visuals, just really resonated with me.
Since watching it, Pinhead has been one of my favorite “antagonists”. The mythos built around Pinhead and the cenobites, creates an aura that allows him to be terrifying while doing very little. It’s a bit of a master class in psychological terror…your mind fills the gap left by the narrative. And, in the end, the visuals may still exceed what your mind created.
Next up, Rachel Stavis (or R.H. Stavis). A truly fascinating individual. I won’t try to explain her life story and the details of everything she does, as it would take quite a bit, and I’m not totally confident in my own understanding of it all. To avoid mis-representing her, and if you are interested, I highly recommend her book “Sister of Darkness”; it is sort of an autobiography and gives a good run-down of her work.
In very short, she’s an exorcist of entities. She sees things in the world that others do not perceive, and she knows how to help people sever ties from these entities. I know this probably sounds really far out there for some people, and it did for me as well, in the beginning. However, my years and experiences have taught me that I perceive just a fraction of the world around me, and to assume I know any significant amount based on my perception is wildly ignorant. So, when someone tells me they see things that I do not, I am the last in line to argue against them.
I was actually able to meet Ms Stavis (via zoom) once. Though I’m keeping the details of our conversation to myself. I will say, she had more insight and understanding about me and my life than many people I’ve known for years, and I do not think that is a coincidence. After our meeting, I was a believer in her work, despite not fully understanding it. Such is faith, I suppose, we choose to believe things we cannot fully grasp.
The last piece of this little puzzle is Unhealthy Attachments. When I talk about attachments, I’m not talking about human to human attachment exclusively. Of course, that’s part of it, but I’m also talking about attachment in terms of addiction, and behaviors, and objects we obsess over. I’m talking about the things that keep us from being the person we truly want to be. We do our best to move through life happily, but we are imperfect and we stumble.
Composition:
So, how did reading “Sister of Darkness” lead to the unhealthy attachments, and “Hellraiser”? Well … In her book, Stavis describes the things she sees, these entities. One of the forms she often sees, she affectionately named a “Clive”, as in Clive Barker, the director/creator of “Hellraiser”. She gives it this name because it reminds her of some creature Clive would create. The entities are attached to people and places, in a very one-sided and unhealthy way.
Lyrically, I wanted to capture the “feel” of struggling to scrape off this foreign thing that digs so deeply into our tender places. And, even when it’s separated from us, it’s still waiting and looking for its opportunity to re-attach. As much as we want to believe that we are free forever from some things, the reality is that keeping space from them is the long game work.
Another part of the message was the accountability we have for our actions. While entities, and addictions and what-not, can have an exceptionally large pull on our inhibitions and ability to make the best decisions … We are still the ones that make the decisions and take the action, and there are consequences to them.
To be VERY clear…I DO NOT mean to victim-shame, but rather to acknowledge that we are all just doing our best and sometimes it is harder than others; and that none of us are immune to this. No one, not even those people we put oh so very high up on pedestals. My work within the mental health field, and the homeless community, taught me that none of us are as far away from personal catastrophe as we think. The courage and strength it takes to stay the course toward who we want to be cannot be overstated, and I am very wary of one that might suggest otherwise.
In regards to the music and song structure for “Enter Pinhead”, I wanted some complexity, but nothing too wild. So the song structure, as a whole, is fairly basic…
- Intro
- Verse 1
- Chorus
- Verse 2
- Chorus
- Bridge
- Verse 3
- Chorus
- Bridge
- Outro
I used the same root piece of music for the Intro and Outro, with the outro being an altered version. I wanted to establish a different vibe for this song, while keeping the feel of the rest of the album. Setting up an atmospheric intro and outro allowed me to really tell a different story in between.
Most of the riffs came before writing the lyrics, which is common for me. If memory serves, the intro was written first, which birthed the verse riff. But, in a unique turn, the melody for the chorus came to me before writing the music for the chorus. It just kinda flowed from the verse melody, and I figured out the music behind it afterward. While constructing the chorus music, the bridge flowed from it naturally. After that, it was about putting the bits together in the optimal configuration…you know, as if it was a mystical puzzle box that when solved correctly, takes you to a realm where the ends of extreme pleasure and extreme pain meet.
One of the more challenging parts of this song was singing it. Initially, the melody and key was quite uncomfortable for me to sing. I tried a handful of different approaches to singing it, but eventually just had to trust that through practice, I could get the vocals the way I heard them in my head. Thankfully, that’s what happened.
In the end, “Enter Pinhead” became a true metal song on ukulele, and it provided a perfect “closer” for “Adam the Astronaut”.
Lyrics:
I fell into the fray, maybe I jumped in,
You step back, or maybe I pushed you,
Something between us, keeping me distant,
And now you wait, and now you wait for me...
Start shaking, trembling,
Vibrations...you wait for me,
To shake off my passenger
Fear...the great oblivion...
Deconstructing useless defenses,
Weigh me down, keeping me anchored
To this Pinhead, looking to break me,
And now you wait...but, he won't wait for me...
To Start shaking, trembling,
Vibration, you wait for me,
To shake off my passenger,
Fear...the great oblivion...Wait for me, through oblivion
I gotta get out, escape of the ether,
Puzzle box, solved in a panic,
I figured it out, or maybe I fucked up,
A whispering, "we'll tear your soul apart"...
Start shaking, trembling,
Vibration, you wait for me,
To shake off my passenger,
Fear...the great oblivion...Wait for me, through oblivion.
Inspiration:
Hellraiser
Clive Barker
R.H. Stavis - “Sister of Darkness”
Black Sabbath
Nine Inch Nails
Alice in Chains
Metallica
Queens of the Stone Age
Beastie Boys
Outkast
Rush
Primus