| System of a Down – Forest Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I think the interpretations about this being a dialogue between God and Jesus are very close to the mark, but if you listen to the entire album it makes more sense. This is not a literal talk between God and Jesus. It is a dialogue between God and man. Jesus is symbolic of man's existence in trying to commune with god while having a dual nature of the flesh, but even in Catholic doctrine I believe we are supposed to be all God's mind (though supposedly corrupted). So this song seems to me addressed in second person to the listener, no matter who he may be or what religion he may follow, from the perspective of God being the narrator. | |
| Tool – Viginti Tres Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Now, anyone wanna take a crack at solving this album? I'm guessing the song "Be Patient" means we shouldn't give up, but since maynard likes to f*** with his fans, that could also be a false hope of reaching an answer when one doesn't , in fact, exist. (Oh, in my previous post the last line was supposed to be"symbolize X/Y chromosomes.", not "symbolizes ...") "God is dead." - Nietzsche "Neitzsche is dead." - God |
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| Tool – Viginti Tres Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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heh, i just realized something the other day; the mystery of tool is in fact a metaphor for the mystery of the cosmos. the music was created with sacred geometry, the very thing that maps out the irrationality of mathematics. phi? irrational number. but it figures in to pretty much all systems in terms of how exponential growth sequences fall into spectra based on distances between successive iterations, in two directions, from each term's relation to it's predecessor and successor. the fibonacci sequence is this tendency mapped out assuming the ratio approaches phi, and this is a sequence found overwhelmingly wherever organic life is found. phi also maps out the difference between major and minor chords of any scale of n tones, where n*phi represents the total font of divisibility (i.e. we have 7 note scales, 7phi approaches 12, so we have 12 semitones in western music.) Now, tool studied sacred geometry more than probably anyone since the guys who built the atom bomb, or maybe Pythagoras, so the mystery of this album is probably comparable to those mysteries. the real question is whether the album was designed to have a solution, or only to raise questions. The questions raised link music theory to wave theory, to quantum mechanics, to ancient eastern philosophy, to everything. So perhaps we are meant simply to ask how these songs go together, without the possibility of a true answer, but with myriad possibilities, all with their own mathematically derived importance (presumably by intention.) Or perhaps, when combining Lateralus and the modified 10,000 days to get 23 tracks, we are supposed to see a parallel between the number of human chromosomes in a full set. The track lengths could relate to the relative chromosome lengths, and wings for marie/viginti tres would probably , as the last track (if the order is put the way it's meant to be) symbolizes X/Y chromosomes. |
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| Tool – Rosetta Stoned Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I still stand by the idea that "yogi DMT" is NOT ingested as traditional drugs, but is instead simply released from the pineal gland from meditation. Otherwise, why would he call it "yogi DMT" and not just "DMT"? | |
| Tool – Lost Keys (Blame Hofmann) Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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The thing somebody posted on page 2 (i think it was) about the guy showing up in a hospital who didn't speak but could play piano is definitely the first thing I thought of when I heard the song. In fact, i'd forgotten that guy played piano, so I didn't even think of "Lost Keys" as meaning that but I guess it does. However, I think the real meaning of the title "Lost Keys" actually refers to the keys of the Qabbalah. The tracks on the album represent the keys, and they are "lost", or out of order. In fact, there are 22 paths on the tree of life that these songs may represent. If one combines Viginti Tres with Wings For Marie I and II into a single track, then put this in place of the two Wings/10,000 days tracks, the album then consists of either 22 or 23 tracks (depending on whether you still include Viginti Tres). My theory is that when grouped properly, the 22 tracks go into 9 different groups, which are intended to represent 9 of the spheres of the tree of life. Now, somebody on a different song mentioned that there is a UPC code embedded in a picture with Maynard in the liner notes to 10,000 days that reads "342121243". If you add those numbers, you get 22. There are nine of them. My thought is that when the songs are grouped into the correct spheres, and the spheres are ordered thusly, then the album is finally in the proper order. I have a tentative order that i've been messing around with, but it's not quite complete. , at least that I know of. My hypothesis, don't flame me because it sounds weird, is that once the album is correctly ordered, it can be synchronized with itself, reversed. I think this may be something that actually requires reversing the waveforms in an audio editor, but I might be looking way too deep into things. Either way, certain things do seem like they'd work out that way. There's a line in "Schism" that says "Pure intention juxtaposed will set two lovers' souls in motion". Well, there's a song called "Intension", and it's full of the word "Pure" in the lyrics. When reversed, and laid on top of Schism just so, the songs play off each other in remarkable ways. The harmonies converge, and a lot of the rhythms seem to be playing off of each other. Perhaps the reversal is not quite right, and renegade-ninja's idea with a sync list is more accurate. However, I have no idea what those numbers are intended to represent in that synclist. There's more to this theory of mine, but it's pretty complicated and I still don't really have it worked out fully. If anyone might have any insights, they're more than welcome to share them.. |
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| Tool – Triad Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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okay, i was slightly wrong, it DOESN'T need to be reversed after being "folded back upon itself"... and 4:23, the tracks' halfway point, might actually be the point to split it. Really, however, it makes little difference. What I've discovered is pretty astounding to me, and I'm not even sure where to start in explaining. I certainly don't have it nailed, because this is very hard to pull off, and there are clues that I think i might still be missing. Okay, to start: I took Lateralus and 10,000 days, and made them into one big list. Then, in order to make Viginti Tres the twenty third song, I combined both parts of wings for marie (along with viginti tres) into the 3-track sync track that so many talk about. This leaves a 22 track playlist. Next, i split Triad right down the middle, as I described above. Except, I didn't just do that to triad, It really happens to the whole album. I strung all the tracks together, and completely reversed the second half, starting with halfway through Triad. I then overlaid this backwards half with the first half. The synchronization is very much lacking in spots,a nd I'm not sure exactly how close it was supposed to be to begin with. Regardless, however, the two tracks really play off each other. Up to "Schism", everything plays back and forth beautifully in terms of melodies, rhythms, and intensity. "Schism" takes on a whole new meaning, however, because at this point, the pieces definitely DO NOT fit. In fact , the point of greatest dissonance comes at the lyrical climax of the song. As things wrap up, everything ends up back in the same key, and things start meshing again. It's REALLY bizarre. Basically, all kinds of hell breaks loose all over the place, but there is enough to tie the two tracks together that each one takes on entirely new meaning. chords are ripped apart, rhythms are mutilated into horrible mockeries of what they once were, but the two tracks continue to interact at an unnerving level even through all this. Then, astonishingly, at the end of Schism, everything locks together, and then the backward track PLAYS THE SCHISM RIFF. Everything now fits back together. I really can't keep typing, i have to go listen more, and get this submitted so people can see it and hopefully start working on how to get the sync perfect. Then again, perhaps it was never meant to be perfect. regardless, it is UNDOUBTABLE to me that the se albums were designed with total symmetry, except perhaps with an offset of somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-30 seconds; i haven't worked it out. I had to insert about 16 seconds of silence in one track to make the sync perfect. Perhaps the actual intended number is 17, which certainly sounds like something Tool would do. |
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| Tool – Triad Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| oh, i realized for my idea to work the whole thing would then have to be reversed ... it sounds a bit different, that's for sure, but who knows.. i'd be interested for someone to try it and listen.. plus i may have the synching off by a smidgen, but i know i'm within a fraction of a beat because the rhythms and music complement each other very well | |
| Tool – Triad Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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wow, i'll tell you one thing, and you probably won't believe it because it sounds kind of lame, but just listen. take triad, open it in soundforge or something, and then split it exactly at the 4 minute 20 second mark. reverse the second half, then move it back over the first half, mixing the two together in to a 4 minute and 23 second track. it is AWESOME, and based on some other observations i've made lately I think it was intentional. I have yet to try hinging the entire set of two albums, Lateralus and a "modified" 10,000 days, but the lengths sync up perfectly, and I really think it's designed to be done. If anyone beats me to this, that's great, I just want to get this idea out there because it's intriguing. then again, this could work out horribly... only time will tell. |
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| Tool – Viginti Tres Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| hmm, i just had a thought, once everything is put together, lateralus + modified 10,000 days, minus the track viginti tres , you have 22 tracks; incidentally this is the number attained if you add together all the digits of the UPC code mentioned earlier. if you look at the song triad, and ignore it for one second, you'll see that all the songs on each side of it total up to the EXACT SAME LENGTH. i also couldn't help but notice that the beginning of triad is a fade-in, and the end is empty. this is very intriguing, and it seems like a breakthrough is close on deciphering something here... i'm gonna hit the mixing and see if i can come up with anything. | |
| Tool – Jambi Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| sy5tem , i think you really hit on something there, i haven't read through all the stuff here on this song but just clicked to this page to post a similar view.. the song seems to deal with the fact that in today's society, especially with the internet, credit cards, etc, we pretty much get whatever we want, whenever we want. maybe not everyone, not completely, but relatively speaking this is true. our music definitely reflects this in its materialistic nature. the title Jambi, since yes, that was pee-wee's genie's name, sort of implies this "get whatever you want" mentality that has emerged in our culture. now, as for what this results in us losing? societal identity? personal fulfillment? spiritual connectivity? it's really endless... | |
| Tool – Viginti Tres Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| oh yes, and, if you combine lateralis with the album 10,000 days, then replace 10,000 days/wings for marie with the single combined version, then the song viginti tres is in fact the 23rd song. | |
| Tool – Viginti Tres Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I would just like to revisit the 10,000 days synchronization topic, hopefully for the last time. We've established that the ideal synchronization is to line up the event occuring on or around the 9:14 mark in 10,000 days with the one in wings for marie after having been appended to viginti tres. The way I did this was by simply inserting silence at the beginning of a track consisting of viginty tres+wings for marie of about 1.4 seconds (i arrived at this figure by finding the difference in event times in the unmodified tracks). Once accomplished, every single thing lines up perfectly until the strange series of echoes past the 9:14 mark. If this ~1 second offset is not included (at least with the rips I have) then everything will be around 1-2 beats out of sync. This makes the songs clash almost always, and makes the echo part seem random. In fact, unless you get the tracks to within 0.1 (or less, preferably) seconds of each other, you will notice significant problems, because of what I'm about to explain: The fact that the tracks sync perfectly up to and including this point indicates that Tool records with a digital metronome of some sort in order to attain precise rhythm. This is supported by the fact that most of Tool's mystique is derived from the mathematical precision which they employ in songs, which definitely includes precise rhythm and tempo. I'll come back to this in a second. Let me first deal with the section where the two songs stop being in the same key. The main riff continues in tool's foreboding minor mode, while an entirely new theme comes in on top. This theme is major, rather than minor, and its key happens to be one "tritone" above the underlying riff. A tritone is exactly half the number of semitones (semitone = the smallest discrete step between pitches of varying frequency recognized in traditional western music) from the root note to that note's first higher octave. Think evil-sounding organ music, it incorporates many of these, as do all "diminished" modes. In antiquity, tritones were referred to as the "devil's interval", and were to be avoided in music, especially religious music. The song is integrating a major theme over the original minor riff exactly one devil's interval higher. The irony here is that the major theme sounds sinister due to the dissonances inherent in tritone relationships, while major keys generally sound bright and promising. Now as for the rhythms, since they stay in sync up to a point until the cacophony at the end, it is not unreasonable to surmise that this cacophony is in fact simply the two songs moving in and out of phase with each other due to intentionally misaligned time signatures. This creates the illusion of differing tempo, when in fact it creates extraordinarily complex mathematical ratios between the rhythms. I didn't analyze the rhythms to the point to be able to make an accurate guess as to what these ratios might be, but I am positive that the clues are there for someone to find; and besides, someone could determine this by carefully examining the songs side by side. I will speculate that these ratios involve fibonacci numbers, prime numbers, and/or the number 23. There is no doubt, when the songs are properly aligned, that this is what is occurring. I too am a trained musician, and I know the difference between complex polyrhythms and "neat sounding coincidences". This is no coincidence. If you're having trouble understanding the things going on in this mix, I venture to suggest that you listen to some african tribal drumming. Some of that stuff has unbelievable mathematical complexity, and it's certainly the spiritual predecessor of Tool's music (as well as much other popular music in western culture). If I lost anybody with all that, I'd be glad to try and explain if anyone has any questions. If you'd like to flame me, go ahead, but I'm probably not going to pay much attention. If anyone would like to directly challenge any of what I said, I'd welcome the discussion and I certainly don't profess to fully understand what exactly is going on with these songs - they still retain some indication that there is more than meets the eye, or, ear. |
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| Tool – Rosetta Stoned Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| well what somebody said about how DMT can be naturally produced in the brain is, i believe, in fact, true. in fact, some researchers now believe that many of what people describe as encounters with extra terrestrials are in fact releases of DMT in the brain induced by some ordinary means. driving on a country road at night induces a trancelike state believed likely to cause this, which is why a lot of people have these experiences in such circumstances. I would say that the term "Yogi DMT" probably refers to a release of DMT via transcendental meditation. Interestingly, the gland in the brain believed to secrete DMT is the Pineal gland. the Pineal gland is biologically similar to our eyes in some respects, and is a key element of the seratonergic system of the human brain. In some fish, the pineal gland is actually developed into a sensory organ very similar to a crude eye. this is generally the scientific explanation for what many, including tool, might call the Third Eye. Basically, "prying open" one's third eye (a la that song off Aenima) would be thus interpreted to be a DMT experience, while to many eastern philosophies this experience is NOT thought to be drug-induced but a natural part of existence. Thus, the idea of this alien coming down as god to reveal one's nature as the chosen one is not entirely as ridiculous as many here seem to think, nor is it as elementary as a simple drug problem. | |
| Zwan – Settle Down Lyrics | 21 years ago |
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there were 7 deadly sins, yes but there were 7 virtues as well... |
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| Nada Surf – Psychic Caramel Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| it drags... | |
| Nada Surf – 80 Windows Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| his relationship is obviously empty, and he has basically become disconnected from the world | |
| Nada Surf – Icebox Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| nada surf is definitely one of the few bands that can make me want to cry. incredible songs. | |
| Radiohead – There There. (The Boney King of Nowhere.) Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| my god, i think we've witnessed something inhuman | |
| Radiohead – Pyramid Song Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| this song makes me want to die ;) | |
| The Smashing Pumpkins – Rhinoceros Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| except that the lyrics are, "open your eyes to these mustered lies" | |
| The Smashing Pumpkins – Annie-Dog Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| just wanted to point out that cocaine is not an amphetamine... and there is of course an old song called "amphetamine annie" | |
| The Smashing Pumpkins – Bullet with Butterfly Wings Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| song is great, basically lamenting that whatever one does is never enough, no matter how hard one tries, he'll always get screwed in the end. people appreciate jesus now for what he did in life, but at the time he was killed for doing his best to help humanity. i guess just a song about the futility of everything, and a song about how everyone says nothing can be done to save what is lost - and the refusal to accept this as true. | |
| The Smashing Pumpkins – Bodies Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| VektorW, did you ever listen to any of those songs you listed? some are hopeful, some are perhaps bittersweet, but HAPPY? i don't know about that.. maybe a couple of them are. | |
| The Smashing Pumpkins – Tales of a Scorched Earth Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| i love this song, i guess kilroy and i are the only two in the entire universe... i love the utter despair and anger at the fact that even through all of our hopes for life to get better, in the end it all turns out bad | |
| The Smashing Pumpkins – Thirty Three Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| well billy has said he got the inspiration for the title off the back of a rolling rock bottle... the mysterious "33"... of course this has nothing to do with the actual song's meaning. | |
| The Smashing Pumpkins – Tonight, Tonight Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| i think this song is beautiful.. it's basically saying that life goes on, and people all change.. sometimes things seem to go into a rut , or life seems to take a turn down the wrong path... but a person is always the same person as when he or she was born... there is always a hope that life can turn out right, and one must never give up that hope. no matter how bad things seem, your character is never more nor less than you yourself make it. i guess to simplify what i'm trying to say, it just says "never give up, you have complete control over your own life - always hold on to hope, 'cause it's all we ever have" | |
| The Smashing Pumpkins – Blissed and Gone Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| beautiful, although i don't agree with the version they chose for the release.. | |
| The Smashing Pumpkins – Muzzle Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| this song always makes me cry... everyone who has posted already pretty much hits on different aspects of what it means... i think smashing pumpkins songs tend to be about far more than anybody really can understand, because they're written so vaguely and personally. this is just one such song. regardless, it is incredibly power. "as all things must surely have to end / and great loves will one day have to part / i know that i was meant for this world" ... probably my favorite pumpkins lyrics ever. this song acknowledges that the world always changes, but it keeps going on and we must accept that. bittersweet is an understatement. | |
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