Empire of the Clouds story of the R101 airship, which crashed on its maiden voyage in northern France on 5 October 1930. The song was written entirely by the band's lead vocalist, Bruce Dickinson, who initially intended it to be about "World War I fighter airplanes;" Dickinson abandoned the idea after using the same theme for the song "Death or Glory," also from "The Book of Souls". At the time of recording, Dickinson was reading "a big, sort of encyclopedic crash report" of the R101, entitled "To Ride the Storm", which gave him the idea for the song's eventual subject. Dickinson describes it as
What Did You Think When You Made Me This Way? as isolation, lust, religion and mental health with Spellman's character appearing to be a loose cannon throughout the narrative before revealing himself to be a vampire in the final seconds. Clash magazine called the first single "Crunching heavyweight rock" and comparing the band with "pomp" of Queens of the Stone Age and "matching blistering energy" of early Foo Fighters. Billboard called the opening song a "pounding track" and praised Connor Mason's "operatic vocals". Nothing but Thieves Technical personnel What Did You Think When You Made Me This Way? What Did You Think When You Made Me This Way? is the