SHAYNE: The funny thing about this song is i wrote it in an eastern key and morbid wrote the lyrics based on old westerns. B2B was a bit different to MW but still thrash. We dubbed it our 'hanger 18' due to the amount of solos and interludes after the 2nd chorus but less extensive. Another song never to rise up from demo form it remains as true as it was when first written with Zac adding a few of his touches to the drum track… and yes you’re probably thinking “this sounds like fear factory” but who cares it’s just a riff and we took the riff to a different direction anywho haha
MORBID: When it came to doing back to back, I was fuckin stuck. Really fuckin stuck. I listened to it over and over again and I just had nothing. So I got some food and flicked the telly on. The quick and the dead, the western movie about a gun fighting tournament, was on. That's it. That's all this song is about. Except the 10 paces from death bit. They didn't do the whole start off back to back and pace in the movie, that was just some random crap I threw in once we had the title.
Ex-MW drummer Dave wrote the "chorus" and wanted to call the song Spin the Barrel or somesuch nonsense. He was big on doing satirical names like that. Spin the bottle, geddit? (Engulfed In Fire from the Ashes album was originally called "Need to Bleed", a pisstake on the phrase "The Need for Speed" from that Top Gun movie. Guess who wrote it). I Was chatting to him online (which is primarily how MW worked in the early days) and showed him what I had written, and which point I was up to where the "chorus" would be.
The reason I've been saying "chorus" is because there is only one, halfway thru the song, and that's it. In fact, there aren't any lyrics after it, either. That was simply laziness on my part. After the eastern, clean guitar bit, the song just goes off on what I like to call musical tourettes. Back in the very early days, you see, I would put the lyrics over Shayno's music and then when I'd show him he'd go "Ahh... there's meant to be a solo there..." or "I was thinking of having words over this riff" when I was saying "play melodic solo here". He wouldn't tell me what was meant to be a verse, a chorus, or where a solo was meant to go. I just had to make it up myself. So with just a piece of music, I had to listen to the whole thing, find the repeating riffs etc and work out what was going to go over them. So instead of wading thru that entire 2nd half to find where to put words and such I just went "ah, bugger it. this can just be a total guitar wankfest - hanger 18 style" and that's what it became. Well, that's what it would become for this EP/whatever the fuck. I never even learnt this song. I was the guitarist at the time of writing all this material, we didn't actually have a vocalist, which is why I was doing it (the writing). And probably one of the reasons I ended up BEING the vocalist once Jewlz quit.
lyrics
Bullets in the chamber
It's just a way of life
Fight or die
A quick death can be brought
A click of the hammer
The sound finality
Only one choice to make
The high road or the dead
Crack of dawn or high noon
Makes no difference when death is soon
Money on the table
Placing bets on another's life
Forced bleeding
A massacre
Showdown leads to a certain death
Heavy handed
Or the quick draw
The difference could cost your life
Prepare to march
Ten paces from death
Back to Back!
Tired little whipping boy
Cast off the iron chains
Product of frustration
A trigger happy brutal game
Anticipation grows, take the stage
This is the way that men are made
Money changes hands
Bodies are stripped of worth
Stands are made
Fire when you hear the chime
Accurate presicision killing
A nanosecond from the pain
Legends are made
Bodies are laid
All with one quick spin of the barrel
Biting the dust
Or fighting for lust
It's Kill or be killed
And no one wins
Ease the itch
On your trigger finger
Hesitation will bring you down
A punch to the head
With a fistfull of lead
Bring out your dead
supported by 4 fans who also own “Back to Back (Kill or Be Killed)”
Seeing these guys live tomorrow. I have saw them twice already and they are amazing. Didn't know they had another album as I only owned their new disc. catwizard