When the word tragedy gets used in a literary sense, it generally refers to a play or story that ends unhappily due to the fall of the protagonist. The difference between comedies and tragedies has often been oversimplified as everyone lives in a comedy, whereas everyone dies in a tragedy. While in some cases that logic may ring true, as the definition of the tragedy has evolved over the years it doesn’t necessarily imply death, but rather unfortunate circumstances for the protagonist.
The most frequent use of that oversimplification comes when describing the work of William Shakespeare, who it’s possible you may have heard of prior to reading this piece. Shakespearean tragedies actually contain a number of elements: a tragic hero who is cursed by fate or possesses a fatal flaw, a conflict between good and evil, tragic waste, internal and external conflict, catharsis, supernatural elements, and a lack of poetic justice.
It’s my belief that, given the real life events that inspired it, the making of the record, and what transpired after its creation, there is no album or story in music that fits these criteria more than Nevermore’s 1999 masterpiece concept album Dreaming Neon Black. The largely autobiographical record tells the story of a man who slowly loses his grasp on his own sanity after losing someone close to him to religion. The man cycles through self-blame, self-hatred, denouncing God, before ultimately meeting his own demise, assumed to have killed himself. It is a brilliant, gut-wrenching piece of art that sadly mirrors the true life story that inspired it.
Our tragic hero in this case is Warrel Dane, the lead vocalist and primary lyricist of Nevermore. Dane, who trained as an opera singer in his youth, rose quickly to fame in the late 1980s Seattle metal scene as the frontman for Sanctuary, who released two noteworthy albums prior to the formation of Nevermore marked by Warrel’s distinctive voice and superior lyricism. In between the release of those two Sanctuary albums (Refuge Denied in 1988 and Into the Mirror Black in 1990), however, events would take place in Dane’s personal life that would have repercussions on him for years to come.
At some point, Warrel became involved romantically with a woman named Patricia Candace Walsh. It’s unclear how long the relationship lasted, but it ended very poorly. Walsh left him to join a religious group, telling Dane he “was evil and horrible, Satanic, all this crap,” and ceased contact with him. She ended up marrying a man named Douglas Scott Zyskowski in late 1989. The newlyweds left Seattle in November 1989 to hitchhike to Georgia to attend a religious conference or event, with the intent of spreading the Christian gospel on their way. Unfortunately, the couple would never make it to their ultimate destination.
After several failed attempts to contact Douglas and Patricia, their families reported them missing in late 1989. It wouldn’t be until nearly two and half years later in May of 1992 that police would positively identify Douglas’ body as one they’d found in January 1990 on a stretch of road about 300 miles from El Paso, Texas. Patricia remained missing, but her friends and family, Dane included, feared for the worst.
Under this uncertain cloud of impending doom, Dane forged on musically in 1992 as Sanctuary would disband under pressure from their record label to ditch heavy metal and go grunge. Refusing to do so, Warrel and bassist Jim Sheppard, alongside touring guitarist Jeff Loomis, would form Nevermore in 1992. When they recruited Van Williams to play drums in 1994, the classic lineup of the band was established, and they would go on to release their eponymous debut album in 1995 on Century Media Records. The group would follow up in 1996 with a 5-song EP titled In Memory and the legendary full-length The Politics of Ecstasy on which Dane’s lyrics have a political edge. Throughout all of this time, there remained no updates on the whereabouts or fate of Patricia Candace Walsh.
Three years passed between the release of The Politics of Ecstasy and 1999’s follow-up, the aforementioned Dreaming Neon Black. While the tone of their earlier releases could be deemed political and angry, Dane chose to approach the band’s third full-length album as a form of catharsis for himself and write about what had happened to Patricia – and the results would show just how much this situation weighed on him in the years since he learned of her disappearance and presumed death.
When asked by Ironworx about the lyrics and concept of Dreaming Neon Black in 1999, Warrel said:
I had this girlfriend who just basically disappeared. No one knew what happened to her and then when I was writing these songs I had been having dreams about her. Long story short, she joined a cult and no one ever heard from her again and I imagine she is no longer living and maybe that is why I was able to conceptualize all of this; I don’t have closure.
The dreams Warrel described above involved Patricia calling out to him while drowning, begging for him to save her. These dreams inspired much of the lyrical content for the album, during which Dane makes many references to dreams, drowning, and water. I’d really recommend reading through his prose, which includes quotes at the beginning of each song that enhance the concept, to get a full feeling for his mindset during the songwriting process.
Warrel’s nightmares also served as the inspiration for the cover and insert artwork for the album, shown below, which as you might imagine, are not very cheery.
"Everything I used to be, has spiraled into insanity..."
Given the lack of closure, one might imagine this was Warrel’s vision of what happened to Patricia, or the manifestation of his own guilt and helplessness in his mind, still not knowing what happened to her almost ten years after her disappearance. Still, publicly he claimed that working on the album was a positive experience for him personally to come to terms with the experience. He expounded further on the exorcising nature of Dreaming Neon Black when speaking with Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles, also from 1999:
As far as myself, this was something that I was able to get past and move on and deal with. But what I think I wanted to touch on here was that sometimes people can't get over traumatic experiences like that, and sometimes they're just fucked up for life basically. Everybody's not that way, and maybe by writing a story like this, something kind of depressing and tragic, where people see that I'm still OK, where this is just a way to get it out, maybe that can touch people that have had similar problems and make them feel better about it. I guess it's a bizarre kind of psycho-therapy, and a bit of catharsis for me, but I'm hoping in the end it has a positive effect, even though it is kind of a dark, tragic, romantic, depression vibe going through the whole thing.
Dreaming Neon Black proved to be a boon for the band – it was positively received by the public upon its release, for both the intense emotional storyline and the tremendous riffing provided by Loomis. After it’s release, Nevermore toured with the likes of Mercyful Fate, Iced Earth, Opeth, and Arch Enemy – further entrenching themselves amongst the most well-established metal acts of the late 1990s. Their 2000 follow-up Dead Heart in a Dead World and 2003’s Enemies of Reality would further catapult the group to the metal forefront, while also seeing Dane return to his previous, less personal lyrical themes.
Shortly before the release of Enemies of Reality, however, Warrel Dane received news that he had been sadly expecting for the previous thirteen years. Police in Utah positively identified the remains of Patricia Candace Walsh through dental records. Her body had been found in October 1990 by deer hunters, reportedly having been shot several times, but was unable to be identified until June 2003.
Two years later in 2005, Robert Ben Rhoades, also known as the Truck Stop Killer, would be charged with the abduction and murder of both Walsh and Zyskowski. The couple allegedly accepted a ride from Rhoades near El Paso in 1989 - it’s believed that Zyskowski was murdered almost immediately. Walsh was held captive for about a week, tortured and assaulted, and then shot several times before Rhoades left her body in a field in central Utah.
At this point in time, I’m not sure if Warrel Dane had ever disclosed Patricia’s identity publically, so there are no records to my knowledge of him discussing these events close to the time they occurred. Given the horrific nature of the crimes, learning of them almost assuredly had a profound impact on him. Around this time, in fact, Warrel developed type-2 diabetes and began suffering from other health issues. In an interview I did with Stu Block (Into Eternity, ex-Iced Earth) last year, he spoke glowingly of Warrel Dane personally, and had this to say about being with him on Into Eternity's fall 2005 tour with Opeth and Nevermore:
Of course, everyone knew what he was going through right and so he was trying to find meetings on tour and really trying to keep himself together and get himself on track. And so we hurt for him too, you know, we were just like man, like what a beautiful human but he's struggling. You could tell he was struggling and but there's like because there's nothing you could do, you know, like there was like what can you do and that's the thing about life, man, just some people just get caught up and I think there were demons that he had that, I think those demons ended up consuming, you know.
Approximately a year after the news surrounding Walsh was released, several fans reported the lead singer to be exceedingly drunk on stage while performing during a show on the This Godless Endeavor touring cycle.
chadsxe
Nevermore was a group that always considered one of the hardest partying bands in the metal scene, but this seemed to be a new level as it was affecting their performances, as noted by this thread from 2006 above. In fact, the band also cancelled a previous show on the tour due to Dane suffering from an unspecified illness. Later that year, he would fall ill with an infection on the day the band was to film a concert for a DVD, causing the show to be cancelled and subsequently rescheduled. I can’t claim to know the mental state of Nevermore’s frontman during this time, but I also can’t help but wonder how much learning of these events affected his behavior and his relationship with alcohol, which was tenuous to begin with, at this point.
The group would continue on through the next few years, only releasing one album, 2010’s The Obsidian Conspiracy, while Dane and Loomis both put out solo records in 2008. Nevermore toured North America in 2010 to support the album, but cancelled future dates on the continent in 2011. Shortly after, they cancelled Australian dates in support of it as well. In April 2011, long running fractures within the band ultimately came to a head as Loomis and Van Williams announced their departure from the group, citing personal and musical differences. Dane would return to Sanctuary and his solo career, while the other became in various metal projects, including Loomis joining Arch Enemy. After the breakup, Dane described Nevermore as “the greatest band that alcohol ever ruined.”
Warrel continued to tour different areas of the world and continued to do press to promote albums and concerts. One of the most frequent questions asked of him was usually about the inspiration for Dreaming Neon Black – not only because it’s one of the greatest metal albums ever created, but also due to the content that inspired it. His appearance in these interviews continued to deteriorate over the years. He frequently appeared wearing sunglasses. There was a growing frailty to his speaking voice. During one such interview with Impact Metal Channel on YouTube in 2016, Warrel spoke perhaps more candidly about the events surrounding it than ever before:
Well, Patricia Candace Walsh, that was her name, she was with me in spirit. She guided me told me what to do every step. Maybe it's just in my mind, I could be crazy, but I felt her presence through the whole thing. That was hard, that was very hard, because it was so personal. It was like ripping my heart out and putting it onto a CD, especially the last song ‘Forever.’
Health issues, specifically diabetes, continued to hamper Dane. Years of alcohol abuse also caused additional complications. He had been quoted as saying he had been better with it as late as 2016, but still his prior relationship with it did him no favors. Sadly, Dane succumbed to all of these ailments in Sao Paulo, Brazil on December 13, 2017, at the age of 56 from heart failure while recording a new solo record. A bandmate realized and emergency services tried to revive him, but were unsuccessful. He died with a broken heart, which is ironically much like how he lived.
Warrel Dane is the tragic protagonist of this agonizing story – both through the narrative of Dreaming Neon Black and the real life events he lived through that inspired it. He was cursed by the fate of Patricia Candace Walsh and his fatal flaw was a penchant for alcohol. There is evil present throughout the story – one could view religion, Rhoades, and alcohol as varying degrees of demons the good-natured Dane had to encounter during his life. There is external conflict with his bandmates - internal conflict with his thoughts, regrets, and how to cope with them in a healthy manner. Warrel’s constant dreams of Patricia crying out for help add an element of the supernatural, as well. And there is certainly a lack of poetic justice, as Dane did not deserve to endure any of this, though one could argue he did make some of his own choices in dealing with it – but that relates back to the tragic hero and his fatal flaw.
One of the elements, thought, that’s hard to come by in this story is catharsis, though many attempts were made. Through Dreaming Neon Black, Dane attempted to cope and deal with what happened to Patricia and how it haunted him, but it’s my feeling that he never was able to do so. And who could blame him? Not many people know what it’s like to deal with such a horrific, abhorrent situation. And next to no one, except those closest to him perhaps, know what Warrel felt about his role in it all.
Perhaps the catharsis in this story is death itself, as it put to an end to the suffering Warrel was feeling both physically and mentally. Dreaming Neon Black was sadly as autobiographical as it was predictive. The protagonist in the concept on the album ultimately spirals into insanity and kills himself as a way to reunite with his lost love. Warrel Dane’s words ultimately came true in his own life – he didn’t kill himself in the traditional way, but through his fatal flaw of alcohol abuse, he wore his body down to the point of heart failure, ultimately reuniting him with Patricia Candace Walsh in death. It is the saddest form of art imitating life, but ultimately now his heart and mind can rest.
Warrel, perhaps the best lyricist of his generation of metal brethren, may have put it better than me:
I would like to say that the ending should have been more uplifting maybe, but why? Life isn't always that way. Sometimes life's little problems do have tragic endings. - Brave Words Bloody Knuckles, February 1999
[It's] a very simple story about a man who slowly goes insane after losing a woman that he was very close to. Progressive levels of insanity are expressed in the songs, he goes through phases of denial and self-blame, blaming God, then denouncing God. The ending is a little…tragic, a little depressing. Shakespearean. Everybody dies, it's all happy. - Metal Injection, 2017
