"...the Destroyer of Worlds."

For all that Chronicles of a Dead End is indeed a prog album in form, I've now felt, while mixing both fast numbers, that there's a punkish energy to the music at the same time.  In this case, it's the sepulchral 5-string bass work on "Them" that's giving me that impression.  Combine this with some beautifully raw rhythm guitar work and the multi-tracked, heavily reverbed drums in the two taiko-like passages, and the effect is like thunder.  There's a strong possibility that "Them" might remain my favourite song in the set - but for completely different reasons than before.  Keep in mind that, for the time being, the Ellen Foley vocal impression still only exists in my head.

I did use a bit of volume-envelope trickery here.  I've found throughout this project that bass DI, while it has an imposing presence (necessary for this track in particular), doesn't capture dynamic subtleties as well as the mic'd amplifier would.  So in the bass part underneath the first guitar solo, I had to carefully engineer the crescendi on my end.  While I was at it, I used a similar trick in the final phase of the "development", building up to the climactic re-statement of the intro.