Beta Krogoth (a good friend of mine) and I were discussing working on music together one day. He pitched rather an interesting song title to me - Pornstar Slaughterhouse (I don't know where he comes up with such things). Although I was a little sceptical of such an ambitious first project (and as he was describing such a different style to my usual compositional work), we began coming up with ideas.
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Beta wanted the title to be whispered at the beginning of the song, which was simple enough, followed by a heavy drum intro. I was working with editing midi instruments at the time, and wanted to test out the delayed vibrato setting on a midi guitar, so I added a distorted guitar and let it hold on one note for a while to let the vibrato ease in. I then came up with a rhythmic guitar riff, and added in another of my midi creations - a distorted, slightly muted piano sound. Next I made a bassline based loosely off a riff heard in Mike Oldfield's 'Tubular Bells Part 2' (13:25).
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Then came the lyrics. Beta's concept was this - A group of sick individuals who use people for sex and then kill and eat them. At first I thought he'd been reading one of my stories, but perhaps he knew that I would be particularly interested in this concept. I imagined an abandoned sawmill in the forest, interior set up like a theatre, with machinery and instruments of death all over the place. Together we came up with more and more of the specifics, helping us get our lyrics down. The lyrics were hard to decide on at times, but when we hit something we hit it hard. I recorded the lyrics and created a two part vocal harmony by layering my voice. Beta suggested he take one of the harmonic melodies, but that didn't work out. We agreed that the melody of the verses was more suited to my voice, as I had more experience with singing in those octaves. But I was determined to get his voice down somewhere, so I came up with a ragtime solo using my distorted piano sound. Beta thought about it for a moment and then came out with a deep, creepy, nursery-rhyme-esque burst of lyrics that fitted the style perfectly. We worked on this for a while to get it just right, and it ended up sounding great.
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Now we were stuck for an ending. Beta left it with me for a while, and I started to play around with string chords. I would drag them out and let them hang, changing only one or two notes at a time. Eventually I saw an opportunity for an ending, and may have got a bit carried away. It ended up boosting the track length from 3 minutes to 5 (which, being into progressive rock, I liked). I sent the track to Beta to see what he thought. "What do you think of the ending?" I asked. He said, "It's very strange." I said, "Good."
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Next I added sound effects to give it a bit more of an atmosphere, the sound of a drill, a woman screaming, a crowd laughing and clapping, the door of the slaughterhouse opening, allowing the listener to step out into a stormy night.
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And that was how it came about. I realise it's not to everyone's taste, but very few things are these days so I can't complain.