| Protest the Hero – The Dissentience Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Whenever i hear this song, i always envision it taking place in an opium den with a plethora of subdued men relating exaggerated stories of murder, ghosts, and their rebellious views of the current political system (ties in with the definition of "dissentience"). All of them are in a vegetated state, they all conform to each others idea of nonconformity. In the end, their mythology reaches young ears and is interpreted as truth. The mythology instills conservatism and a fear of the UNKNOWN into little girls and adults until they are no longer emotional, free, individual human beings but still-life, cold blooded, god-fearing, monster-fearing slabs of meat. It is not the actual monster who hacked her to bloodmeat, but the sense of "faith through fear" that stripped her of her humanity and individuality and turned her into nothing more than blood and tissue. The same "faith through fear" persuaded Genghis Khan's minions to spread the virgin east and the modern world to crusade against extraterrestrial life. |
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| Protest the Hero – Bloodmeat Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I also want to note because this is pretty interesting. There is a hidden instrumental track before Bloodmeat which contains the same chord progression as the segment of Bone Marrow where it goes, "Tomorrow they will find us Oh God". As I mentioned before, Bloodmeat is about the birth of masculine god figures, like Khan, due to mans new gift/curse of consciousness. I forgot to mention that not only are these men conscious of the emptiness, but they are also conscious of their fate, inevitable death. So they cry for a God because tomorrow might be their last day. Conveniently Khan is able to fill the role of God. This supports my theory that Fortress is a cyclical album. | |
| Protest the Hero – Bloodmeat Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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One must remember that this song takes place during the beginnings of civilization. From the vast emptiness of the east and steppe, the newly conscious man shouts out the apparent emptiness and silence ("after the music has stopped"-Goddess Gagged.....the album is basically a cycle). They cling to their masculine saviors, such as Genghis Khan, and spread their word across the villages. They create "good" figures like Khan who punish them if they are "evil" and "evil" figures like Nurjan who kill them if they are "good". They fight righteously and mercilessly for "good". Just as they had spread the virgins, they spread the virgin east and gagged it with their sense of morality. So B12, Bloodmeat is exactly like Sequoia Throne in its meaning and intention. Both exhibit the raping of virgin lands, whether on distant planets or on the steppe |
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| Protest the Hero – Turn Soonest to the Sea Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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i guess i could of worded it better, but i think what i was going for was that the prison guards use of reason gave birth to his righteous, cruel sense of justice and eventually his recognition of choice. he is a precursor to nihilism in the sense that he chose the blatantly absurd, but "right" thing to do (kill kezia). the purpose of his character is to show how devoting oneself to social justice, which we know to be subjective, is no different than devoting oneself to a religion, which society tends to view as objective. btw, clever name |
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| Protest the Hero – Turn Soonest to the Sea Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Thanks for recognizing the nietzsche reference, amplevoltage, and i think thats an interesting interpretation of Fortress. I think what half of fortress is about is kinda like bury the hatchet from kezia. It basically portrays the acts committed by those who righteously and blindly follow justice and morality. Fortress is unique in that the other half says how this justice and worship of masculine gods came from the more primal worship of feminine goddesses. Goddess worship, as far as i understand, is alot like existentialism and transcendentalism in that beauty or divinity is not dependent on the "morality" actions, it is inherent in every single thing. Therefore, science, which for the most part is the practice of classifying things and kinda "claiming dominion" over them, is more relatable to god worship than goddess worship. To sum it up, goddess worship is the closest humans can get to nihilism and it is in interference with the conscious mans tendency to classify things. so while the struggle in kezia was between nihilism and faith, the struggle in fortress is between goddess worship and god worship respectively. btw, the "order, chaos, new order" spiel was an idea that i got from my uncle, a professor of biology. he uses to explain entropy and what not, but i like to relate it to Nietzsche | |
| Protest the Hero – Wretch Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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From Arif's mouth himself, the whole idea behind the album is the loss of faith in science and reemerging of goddess worship. With that said: Chews the fat with his creator Over breakfast in the sunlight (through when he says grace) When he says grace He feels enveloped like a shadow It is when a man says grace that he becomes conscious of his actions. this consciousness is the very concept that clouds his idea of choice and therefore clouds his sense of divinity. because with goddess worship, nature and everything natural, such as ones subconscious, is divine due to its mere existence. It is like nihilism and existentialism in the sense that there is no real right or wrong, the only thing wrong would be to lie to yourself and believe that there is a universal, objective set of ethics that everyone should follow (or else...) there are evenings when this decimated world of movement, colour, form, is thin and getting thinner - when lights are dim and getting dimmer (when nights are grim and getting grimmer) this beautiful world is defiled and perverted by mans consciousness and ethics as they barter their boulders and martyr their soldiers, teach a man to tear her fucking head from her shoulders they demean the natural value or divinity of boulders and they give men a false idol to kill themselves for. they are teaching everybody to become conscious of their actions, to have faith, and to kill the goddess held into the sun by threads of her hair as they impart a secret hatred from their fathers to their heirs the mens subconscious secretly hates their fathers for feeding them such bs In silence left unbroken On the bed bound and gagged With culture, language, myth, and law Our goddess gave birth to your god the goddess remains silent and unconscious as she is being raped by language, myth, and law. all of which are the conscious man's pitiful attempts to interpret and explain what cannot be explained, the incomprehensible idea of incomprehension. the natural divinity of the world cannot be explained and therefore should not be explained. As Ravolution basically said, this song is about the goddess being raped by consciousness and giving birth to idolatry and modern religion |
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| Protest the Hero – Nautical Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Ok so, it helps to know what the prison guard represents in this album. He represents society's devotion to logic, reason, and intelligence which, in turn, leads to death of god (because after all, through " treacherous reason", one can determine that its not the actions of a person that makes them divine, it is their mere existence, "Your flesh means more than you". Religion and morality are exposed as fairy tales that try to give meaning to a meaningless universe and god is killed.) As for the song: The day that civil glory dismembered my civility I could have parted ribs and flesh like a different kind of Red Sea Drowned the ancient east in western progress Custom and the least of all our pride and sentiments The day that society killed a contradictory morality, the guard could have gone killing people in the name of nihilism (kinda like how moses parted the Red Sea in the name of god) and he could have drowned the former, ancient religion founded in the eastern part of the world with the reason and dehumanization founded in the west. Which turned out to be the closest thing to a fashion trend That's ever been put on trial Pretty awesome line, what is religion, but another way to conform (as one would conform to a fashion trend)? And now it's being questioned and perhaps put to death(kinda like Kezia, hmmmm). The rest was cast off as denial of statehood and mastery; The ultimate form of treason is the treacherous use of reason Employed by the bastard sons of American fore-fathers who keep this fire burning With the flesh of their would-be American daughters, daughters, daughters, daughters!! Now this society is hailing their establishment of reason and intelligence founded and fueled by the devaluization of humans, specifically women. Us who fought the monsters of our country's crowded closet Us who dropped the bombs on goodness when we saw it wasn't flawless The pawns (soldiers/prison guards) of this civilization have fought their enemies (which i'm assuming are those who try to keep the faith, like Kezia) and in turn killed a morality that may have been contradictory like all moralities, but was still "good". They dropped the bomb on the only thing preventing them from going nihilistic just because it had contradictory logic. Us whose youthful life was hostage to what harm did Us who fought the hardest to be swept under the carpet Us whose small, youthful minds were trapped by the truth and society's of a both infinite and infinitesimally divine existence Us who now wish to be swept under carpet as the mere pieces of dirt we are And I'm still a cigarette softly smoking on the edge of a metal ashtray I begged this place to let me burn, and it whispered, "burn away" Why would one want to live when one have committed the most foul act of all, killing God? "Burn away" said society after selling their soul for cigarettes.... |
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| The Human Abstract – Mea Culpa Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| chris28, you basically got it right i just want to say that its not like my fault as in "my bad, it was my fault that that happened or w/e" its my fault as in my tragic, fatal fault in cahracter. like greek heroes, you know, and there tragic downfall. otherwise youre pretty much right in that he has this tragic fault and no matter how conscious he is of it, the deep root it has in his subconcsious will always overpower his consciousness | |
| Protest the Hero – A Plateful of Our Dead Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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ok so, according to pth, the album follows three characters. The first 3 songs follow the prison priest, the second 3 follow the prison guard, the third 3 follow Kezia, who is assumedly a christ figure, and the last song kinda raps everything up. lets look at each song now: 1. No Stars Over Bethlehem (Prison Priest) Someone plunged a dagger deep into God's chest and When he groaned it laid our entire civilization to rest When he pulled out the dagger and marveled at the pain he could create We stuck another in his back to seal creation's fate This is the basic nitzchean philosophy that god is dead, or god, due to the evolution of human logicand knowledge, is no longer capable as being a logical, refutable source of morality. Amen to the fools and the cossacks and the pulpits Amen to the people who think there's still a way to help us basically amen to those who try to keep the faith and maintain a flawed, yet simple set of moral codes 2. Heretics and Killers (priest) Here, the priest is simply stating how he constructed his faith and he is now coming to the realization that it can be easily destroyed or killed Built a temple in my life and used God to seal the pillars After twenty years of fighting young heretics and killers I watch my temple fall to pieces at the first signs of oncoming weather Fell to my knees like Jesus in the cave, knew I would die I'm a parrot in a cage saying prayers to belong to a textbook Of my crying, lying, dying history 3. Divinity Within (priest) Divinity within (I watch my temple fall to pieces) If you think aboout it, faith is a necessary aspect of divinity because if one does not have faith in any set of morals or a god, then one, logically, would not believe that anything would be any more divine than anything else (the nihilistic idea that were just a bunch of atoms no different than, say, the atoms in dirt). After god dies and divinity falls to pieces, we get to the prison guard who represents nihilism 4. Bury the Hatchet (Prison Guard) I swear I have compassion I've just been trained to disregard the prisoner's life Because I am the prison guard The prison guard is a representation of nihilism and seemingly cold logic (only cold, though, in the sense of christian morality in which each life is divine and precious) 5. Nautical (guard) i dunno 6. Blindfolds Aside (guard) This basically represents the anxiety the guard is feeling before he has to kill god, aka Kezia. He kills god, though because that is his job and he needs to pay his debts and and children and whatnot.( greed resulting in dehumanization and ultimately "de-divinitizaion") Pull the screaming trigger and watch your carcass bleed me dry Or drop the gun and try to shake away the blindfold from your eyes? Whta the guard doesnt realize is that his code based on logic and justice is inherently also based on faith(blindfolding him) and that he has a choice in whatever he does, there is no right or wrong. The anxiety and responsibility of being able to make your own choices regardless of anything is too much to bear though and the guard kills kezia. 7. She Who Mars the Skin of Gods (Kezia) i dunno 8. Turn Soonest to the Sea (Kezia) This is my favorite track, first off because it has an awesome message (respecting women and so on) but also because of its allegory. on one level it is the socio political statemetn of respecting women, but on another level it supports the idea that existence precedes essence (basically ones mere existence is divine and any actions one does doesnt matter because afterall, we're just a bunch of meaningless particles). Your flesh means more than you Your existence precedes your actions, your soul, you This song is also saying that eventually men will realize their lack of divinity and superiority and be taken off their pedestal Know we'll all wake up one day with a gun to the back of our brains Mens gods will be shot 9. The Divine Suicide of K. Blindfolds aside I'd probably still close my eyes Resurrected to be killed and maybe born again I'll always be Kezia so long as any hope remains Right before Kezia dies, the only thing she can do is close her eyes and have hope or faith that eventually, when society realizes living without any form of faith or sense of divinity is an impossible task, god will have to be reborn in the form of the Ubermensch and as long as anyone has faith and hope, Kezia will live with them. There is kind of am "order, chaos, new order" cycle going on here. 10. A plateful of our dead (finale) Don't ever ask us to define our morals There's merit in construction when it's done with your own hands There's beauty in destruction, resurrection, another chance I'd rather kill a stupid flower and spread its seeds around Until a garden with our bullet-laden morals will be found This should all make sense now so wow..... i need a drink... and a life |
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| Protest the Hero – Turn Soonest to the Sea Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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it cut me off I was also gonna say that the line "Know we'll all wake up one day with a gun to the back of our brains" is saying how eventually men will succumb to nihilism and be knocked off their pedestal of "superiority and divinity". Men's God will be shot, just as women's God was shot by men. The album in general is the story of the murder of god, society turning nihilistic, and the reincarnation of god due to the anxiety, responsibility, and intolerable chaos of nihilism. Its got an "order, chaos, new order" thing going on. |
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| Protest the Hero – Turn Soonest to the Sea Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Ok so, according to PTH the album follows three personas, the Prison Priest, the Prison Guard, and Kezia. The Prison Priest represents faith and peoples belief in divinity, the Prison Guard represents nihilism and logic and justice, and Kezia is the christ figure who represents the reincarnation of faith in divinity. With that said, Turn Soonest to the Sea shows on one level the devaluization of women as sex objects, but on another level shows the devaluization of mankind as a whole and the killing of god and divinity. The line "your flesh means more than you" is basically the existential idea that existence precedes essence (ones mere existence is ones only source of divinity, not their actions, their soul, or themselves because, logically, what are humans but a bunch of floating particles in a vast universe defined by set physical laws, no different than say dirt. what we do doesnt matter | |
| The Clash – Rock the Casbah Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| It isn't shariff, I'm pretty usre it's shereef. The definition of shereef is: descendant of the Prophet. | |
| Beck – E-Pro Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| This, like most Beck songs, seem to have a morbid feel to it. What I get from it is a prescription drug abuser trying to commit sucide. I didn't derive this from the video, just the lyrics. The video is anyones guess. | |
| U2 – In A Little While Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I have no clue what this song is actually about, but I think its the best track on the album (even better than Beautiful Day.) | |
| U2 – Until The End Of The World Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| is judas a chick or what? | |
| U2 – Discothèque Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| This song has almost the exact same meaning as Vertigo. Your a raver questioning the direction of your life, and you find religion. | |
| U2 – Vertigo Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| Spotting a girl with Jesus 'round the neck? Supports my theory. | |
| U2 – Vertigo Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I believe I read somewhere on their site that this song was similar to Discotheque.... A raver questioning the direction of their life and finding religion, while still being tempted by their "sinful" lifestyle. (All of this, all of this can be yours Just give me what I want and no-one gets hurt). I think it makes sense. | |
| U2 – Vertigo Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| .....or maybe unos does tres catorce sounds better than unos does tres quatro (or however its spelled) | |
| Franz Ferdinand – The Dark of the Matinee Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| FF are not gay. The song Michael is about when the band was drunk in a club one night and they saw an "attractive" man on the dancefloor. | |
| Franz Ferdinand – The Dark of the Matinee Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I think the song Michael makes people think that FF are gay. Michael is about ONE drunk night when one of the band members saw an "attractive" man in a club. Read the lyrics to Tell her Tonight and you'll see that they are not gay. | |
| U2 – Vertigo Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I think the counting makes sense. It kind of ties in with the whole idea of the song. The insecurity of life and how things can jump exponentially. | |
| U2 – Vertigo Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| The other tracks on the album are completely different than Vertigo. Vertigo really stands out. | |
| U2 – Crumbs From Your Table Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I just want to comment: they also wrote the Sweetest Thing while drunk. | |
| U2 – Vertigo Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| The lyrics are correct (unos, dos, tres, catorce) check their official website. | |
| Caesars – Jerk It Out Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| Personally this sounds like the life a dog. Read it, you'll figure it out. | |
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