Track 2: Desolation Angel

"Desolation Angel" was the first song I finished for Witch Engine. I wrote the verse riff first, which is in 3/4 and sounds a bit like something Iced Earth would do. During college, sometime around 2021, I decided to turn it into a full song and completely embrace the Iced Earth influence. I recall sitting in my dorm with my acoustic (a Dean Mako) and cooking up the gallopy intro riff, which also led to the bridge. It's a rather simple song, though the amount of gallops always makes my picking hand burn after playing it, and there are a lot of time signature changes.

The lyrics have quite the interesting story. At my old job, when work was slow on some Wednesday nights, the supervisor would declare it to be "Slam Poetry Wednesday" and we'd take turns cooking up little poems which we'd take turns reading. While most folks wrote cute, upbeat little rhymes, I'd always try and write something edgy for contrast and thus created a poem I called "Death." Though the lyrics to "Desolation Angel" differ somewhat from this poem, the first verse is nearly identical. The main change was adjusting the perspective from Death itself (or Time, in one interation), to the Angel of Death. Biblical passages featuring angels, especially those such as Exodus 12, 2 Samuel 24, and 2 Kings 19, have always fascinated me.

"Desolation Angel" was strongly considered as an option for the band's name at one point, when I decided I'd like to start a metal band around 2022. I pulled the name from the Magic: The Gathering card of the same name, but I found that there were already a few bands called Desolation Angel*s*, one being a NWOBHM band from the 80s and the other being a Bad Company tribute. Thus, I named the band after a different card, and Desolation Angel lent its name to a song instead.