No Morning for Us

Previous titles: Her Moonlit Return, From the Ashes, His Moonlit Return

Dialogue from:

Dracula Has Risen From The Grave (1968)

Dracula Prince Of Darkness (1966)

This was always going to be the opening song since it was the first one we wrote and because it had that kind of feel. The guitar samples we used back then were already partly replaced by poorly recorded guitar parts since we actually started recording at some point but never finished it. The keyboard part was the only good recording that survived from 1999 so it seemed fitting to actually use it. Especially since a friend had his father drive his keyboard to my house so we could record it through my analogue 8 track in my bedroom. Technology has come a long way…

We never wrote actual lyrics and since the experiment with “Release” worked really well, the same was applied here. You can read the full story on the “Release”  page but basically I used dialogue from the Dracula movies of the Hammer Studio era. Lyrically it seemed logical to go for something that would establish the Dracula myth but in a not too obvious way. There were lots of pieces of dialogue about Dracula’s castle which seemed like a interesting way to set this up. Although he maybe wasn’t there physically, people could still feel his presence, especially in the shadow of his castle.

A couple of things have changed compared to the original Mod. The intro is shorter as are some of the main keyboard parts, it just dragged too much. The biggest change is the way too fast guitar part in the original, 2/3 into the song. I tried a slowed down version of it but it never felt as something you would actually play on a guitar because of the way you had to play it. So I worked with a slower and more simple setup which ended up being way better.

A fun thing about metal is coming up with titles which vary from evil to corny and anything in between. Back then we never thought about actual lyrics so coming up with names was more like “what sounds evil and cool”. A friend of mine came up with the name “Her Moonlit Return”. We never knew who “Her” actually was but most likely it would have been Elizabeth Báthory. That changed after I decided to make it all about Dracula and changed it to “His Moonlit Return”. But with the actual Hammer dialogue the name didn’t feel right. That’s when I came up with the idea to use a catchy part of the dialogue as a title and “His Moonlit Return” as the main E.P. title.

“No Morning or Us” sounds pretty evil and people might even think they hear “No Mourning for Us” which makes it even more metal.