| Thrice – To Awake and Avenge the Dead Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Two things: One, this is probably my all-time favorite Thrice song, and two, I'm a Christian, which colors my worldview and opinions. For me this song resonates with portions of Christ appearing to Cleopas on the road to Emmaus, and Jesus later appearing to the disciples in Jerusalem after his resurrection. It's somewhat forgotten that Jesus' death, his exchange for Barabbas, the insurrectionist against Rome, was essentially THE story in Jerusalem during that time. His was not a quiet death, politically. Thus, 500 channels focused in, the news broadcast your funeral. Cleopas was shocked that Jesus would feign ignorance of the events of Jerusalem. (Luke 24:18) This violence in the name of Love has always come across to me as Jesus' decision to endure the punishment meted out for sinners on His own behalf. Killing Aristotle is a reference to continuing to live in sin after Christ's redemption of man. Aristotle fled Athens rather than be put to death by the same opponents of philosophy and reason that killed Socrates before, prompting Aristotle to say he would not allow Athens to so sin twice against philosophy. But such rejection is expected by God who has given man free will...it's all part of the plan. We have sinned against God, we have been offered salvation, and some will chose to sin twice against God. Ultimately the goal of this violence is to give those who were dead in sin a chance to be redeemed, and to reclaim the saints of the old covenant and bring them into Heaven proper. To awake the old saints and claim vengeance on behalf of all men against Satan who has subverted our true nature and subjugated us under sin. |
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| Thrice – Words in The Water Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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"I knew they'd lay me in my grave...Is there no one who can save me?" could also allude to Romans 7, "What wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" Romans 7 also speaks of the entrapment that comes with a reliance on the word of the law, rather than a reliance on the Giver of the Law. This is a theme Thrice has visited on several occasions, At The Last being one of the most prominent. |
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| Thrice – Anthology Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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I disagree about the band ending their run, or that this song indicates that. Thrice has long shewn a tendency to "start from scratch," by putting their old stuff to bed and revisiting themes and their personal meanings. Melting Point of Wax got revisited with Daedalus, for example. Their sound has repeatedly been given a clean slate through a rather unorthodox cleansing, most notably the Alchemy Index setting the stage for their most recent sound. The theme of Anthology is to use something old, or several old things, and make them into something new. It's not an uncommon writing exercise to review how a character or a line strikes the writer just as much as the reader. Surely the understanding that a book or song or poem might mean something different to you as an adult as when you were a child can apply to the person who wrote it. In the case of this song, those lines that might have applied to something abstract or ephemeral when Dustin was younger now have a much more concrete meaning. So the lines such as "I'm sure you could snap my neck, but I trust you'll save my life instead" applied to God or something else when he wrote Trust, but now apply to his wife or his children. But putting those songs to bed by revisiting their relevance to him doesn't indicate to me that the band is ending. |
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| Thrice – Broken Lungs Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I think it's possible that, when he's talking about fools and cowards, he means those who refuse the notion that the wars being waged today are wars of ideology. Are we fools and cowards all, believing that Islam really is a religion of peace, occaisionally hijacked by a misguided few with misinterpretations of terms like "Jihad" and "put unbelievers to the sword"? We watched the scales fall from our eyes - after denying that the terror attacks of the 1990s were part of an organized group of religious zealots, the West was forced to acknowledge on the 11th of September that we faced an insidious, cunning foe, who sought our death and cared not a bit about collateral damage, even the deaths of their fellow Muslims. Instead we swallowed that theirs is a religion of peace, never mind the attacks of 7/7 in England, the attacks on subways in Spain, the failed bombing on Christmas Day of 2009. Disregard the Talban's subjugation of women, or Saddam's use of chemical weapons on the Kurds throughout the 1990s. I'm not submitting this as the be-all, end-all interpretation of this song, but so long as people are so willing to maintain that this song is based on a Judeo-Christian, neo-con conspiracy theory, I don't see what would stop someone from believing this song is based on an anti-West, anti-American conspiracy of equal scope and danger. |
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| Thrice – The Flame Deluge Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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It's not simply nuclear weaponry that's being spoken of. Guernica and Dresden were, to be specific, fire-bombed. It's interesting that in the case of Guernica and Dresden, the former was the Germans inflicting it on the pro-democracy Spaniards, while Dresden perpetuated on the Germans. In both cases it was a matter of attacking cities with the use of aggressive, powerful firebombs that kill not only through fire damage, but also by oxygen deprivation. Fire is a fundamentally hungry element, pitted to be simply more vicious in its consumption of fuel and oxygen even moreso than humans. This seems to lend weight to the final line of this song; after beating the reigning champion of consumption, humanity, at consuming everything in its grasp, what's left? |
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