This is a song in three parts:

I. Final Form
II. Furious Flamenco
III. Salsa Shower

It's both the newest and oldest song on the album. Oldest in that the first section, Final Form, is a reprise of The Riders, Drakus, Worthwhile and Sword of Aquarius (four of the oldest songs I had written). But newest in that it is the most recent song I had recorded, and the last two sections, Furious Flamenco and Salsa Section, were written as recently as March/April of 2018.

When I was first putting together the Drakus Suite in the 90s, I knew it needed a big finale. The original 20 minute version didn't really have much of a finale, it just sort of trailed off after Dying Embers. Final Form was written as a reprise of most of the major themes and was one of the reasons the song grew in length from 20 to 30 minutes between 1995 and 1996.

But, when the time came to put together the full Drakus album a few years ago, I actually decided not to include Final Form. I felt it was redundant. By then I wanted Shining Through to be the finale. I wanted the album to end on a positive note. I wanted the villagers to break the cycle and a new age to begin.

It was Eduardo Rivera who changed my mind and convinced me to put Final Form back in, although he really wasn't trying to do it at the time. Eduardo played congas with us in The Diamond Jig Band and heard me playing Sword of Aquarius. There's a section of that song that has a little flamenco inspired guitar playing. He loved that part and we turned it into a full on flamenco jam with Pete on bass pedals. We had so much fun with it that I almost wanted to redo Sword of Aquarius and add that flamenco jam section in. But the song was already mostly recorded, so rather than alter that song, I revived Final Form and turned it into Firestorm.

The beginning is pretty much the same as I had originally written it, but when it goes into the Sword of Aquarius section it suddenly becomes the new piece "Furious Flamenco" that Ed, Pete and I had jammed. I also asked my friend, Mike Perlmutter, who had been hosting the open mics on Long Island I had been attending since 2011, to play bass on it. I love the cool little spanish lick he did on the intro to Furious Flamenco.

The Salsa Shower section at the end also almost didn't make it onto the album, this time for length. I didn't want the running time of the album to go over the length of an 80 minute audio CD, and by adding Firestorm I was getting very close to it. But I had recorded that salsa piano version of the riders theme and really wanted to use it at some point in the song. Plus, my mother, being from Honduras, loves salsa/merengue music and I wanted to throw a little something in there for her even if it was brief.

As a compromise, I put the salsa section in as a very short two phrase tease. Pete and Ed told me the salsa section was way too short and that I should extend it, but I but I didn't change my mind until I actually put the tracks together to get a sense of the running time. I realized the album was nearly 82 minutes long even with the salsa section kept short. Not wanting to cut anything out I gave up on trying to keep the album under 80 minutes and decided to extend the salsa section like I originally wanted to, and even threw in a little Trumpet solo to boot.

I had always intended this album to be a double LP, at least if it was ever put out on vinyl ... something I'm hoping to do eventually, so perhaps it's fitting that it goes on two CDs.