God bless us everyone
We're a broken people living under loaded gun
And it can't be outfought
It can't be outdone
It can't outmatched
It can't be outrun
No

God bless us everyone
We're a broken people living under loaded gun
And it can't be outfought
It can't be outdone
It can't out matched
It can't be outrun
No

And when I close my eyes tonight
To symphonies of blinding light
(God bless us everyone
We're a broken people living under loaded gun, oh)
Like memories in cold decay
Transmissions echoing away
Far from the world of you and I
Where oceans bleed into the sky

God save us everyone,
Will we burn inside the fires of a thousand suns?
For the sins of our hand
The sins of our tongue
The sins of our father
The sins of our young
No

God save us everyone,
Will we burn inside the fires of a thousand suns?
For the sins of our hand
The sins of our tongue
The sins of our father
The sins of our young
No

And when I close my eyes tonight
To symphonies of blinding light
(God save us everyone,
Will we burn inside the fires of a thousand suns, oh)
Like memories in cold decay
Transmissions echoing away
Far from the world of you and I
Where oceans bleed into the sky

Like memories in cold decay
Transmissions echoing away
Far from the world of you and I
Where oceans bleed into the sky

Lift me up
Let me go
Lift me up
Let me go
Lift me up
Let me go
Lift me up
Let me go
Lift me up
Let me go
Lift me up
Let me go
Lift me up
Let me go
Lift me up
Let me go
Lift me up
Let me go
Lift me up
Let me go

God bless us everyone
We're a broken people living under loaded gun
And it can't be outfought
It can't be outdone
It can't out matched
It can't be outrun
No

God bless us everyone
We're a broken people living under loaded gun
And it can't be outfought
It can't be outdone
It can't out matched
It can't be outrun



Lyrics submitted by MusicFREAK20

Track duration: 05:40

"The Catalyst" as written by Chester Charles Bennington, Robert G. Bourdon, Brad Delson, Mike Shinoda, Dave Farrell, Joseph Hahn

Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

Lyrics powered by LyricFind


The Catalyst song meanings
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54 Comments

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  • 0
    General Comment:call me a video game nerd but i cant help thinking about halo when i hear this
    if any of you have played the original halo you know that it is "far from the world of you and i" and due to it being a ring, where the player is on the inside surface, the ocean appears to "bleed into the sky"
    Flag acidfart43on February 28, 2013   Link
  • 0
    My Interpretation:So, let's try to imagine like this.
    Imagine that mike voice as a prayer from the heart to the god,
    and Chester voice as a description of the world right now.
    Flagged 7flameson September 06, 2012   Link
  • +1
    General Comment:So, given the entire album is rife with metaphor (or direct quotes) of nuclear holocaust, why are people spouting off about how this song is about "the police state being constructed all around us, and the fact that the majority of the population has been lulled into submission." and "the NWO being worldwide and the ushering in of the new political and belief system of one world government."


    Seriously, the album opens with a quote from Openheimer and you think the "loaded gun" is a bunch of cops and polititians?

    It's about nukes. Fits everything. They are the loaded gun, they can't be outfought/outwon/outdone/outrun etc, and with 10000+ of them still in storage around the world, we may well suffer the sins of our father and burn in the fire of a thousand suns.

    Some of it is a bit more abstract. My best guess is the "twin symphonies of blinding light" are the only two times we've used nuclear weapons on a live target (japan). I am also GUESSING that the "transmission echoing away" is the fact that nukes release a huge amount of RF energy, they are theoretically "audible" across interstellar distances.

    But yeah, this is a fine tune, but don't over analyse it. Nukes are bad, mkay?
    Flagged CthulhuChildon November 14, 2011   Link
  • 0
    Song Meaning:Ugh, it seems only Letmein guessed it more or less in a right way...

    As a scholar of nuclear deterrence and all the things connected to the Cold War I can say that Mike and Chester made quite a statement here.
    1. God save us .. phrases describe the current state of affairs in the global politics -
    "broken people living under loaded gun" - is a metaphor for the political role of NW since the Cold war - it's not a weapon, it's a means of deterrence, a guarantee that your adversaries will think twice before going into war with you. This sentence unearths a moral dilemma - to live (somewhat) peacefully under a constant threat of a nuclear holocaust OR to wage continuous wars that plagued the Old World before the advent of Nuclear Age. It may not be familiar to your, americans, but we - russians, british, germans, french - have lost millions of lives to those petty (or even global) conflicts.

    "cant be outrun etc" - depicts the so called MAD doctrine - namely, mutually assured destruction. Despite many bold dreams of some of the Nobel Peace Prize awardees such as Obama or the soviet president Gobrachev to dismantle nuclear arsenals it wont happen in the nearest future or in any time until something more powerful were invented or some truly global threat were to emerge (i.e. aliens). That's why the helpless hero of the song states that 'it cant be ...' changed in any way.

    other parts unwind in the same way, however, i never thought that there'd be some 'oceans bleeding into the sky'... I thought it was like 'ferocious bleeding into the sky' as the nuclear 'mushroom' look like after the explosion... the dust and other tiny particles are sucked in and lifted by the lower pressure in the epicentre of the blast.


    PS Still, this song is quite straight in its lyrics, so it seems as i read through the comments on other songs - Wretches and Kings and Waiting for the End...
    As I see it, the first one is simply about some guerillas/terrorist vs hostage situation... It doesnt matter who you were in the 'previous' life, when you are held captive, all the hostages are of equal worth (or expense) for the captors.

    Waiting for the end is basically about the same, as the Catalyst, yet it's in the more 'progressed' state of a nuclear conflict... top stages of the escalation ladder as Herman Kahn and Bernard Brodie put it in the 60ies - it's not you that control the conflict, it's internal logic begins to limit your options and finally controls YOU. That's why the hero wants to trade his current life for a new one, because his miscalculations doomed his country and the world itself. "A busted political leader's confession" in the eye of a nuclear storm if you like.

    Cheers to all LP fans,
    Flag AlexTheOneon October 18, 2011   Link
  • 0
    Song Meaning:Ugh, it seems only Letmein guessed it more or less in a right way...

    As a scholar of nuclear deterrence and all the things connected to the Cold War I can say that Mike and Chester made quite a statement here.
    1. God save us .. phrases describe the current state of affairs in the global politics -
    "broken people living under loaded gun" - is a metaphor for the political role of NW since the Cold war - it's not a weapon, it's a means of deterrence, a guarantee that your adversaries will think twice before going into war with you. This sentence unearths a moral dilemma - to live (somewhat) peacefully under a constant threat of a nuclear holocaust OR to wage continuous wars that plagued the Old World before the advent of Nuclear Age. It may not be familiar to your, americans, but we - russians, british, germans, french - have lost millions of lives to those petty (or even global) conflicts.

    "cant be outrun etc" - depicts the so called MAD doctrine - namely, mutually assured destruction. Despite many bold dreams of some of the Nobel Peace Prize awardees such as Obama or the soviet president Gobrachev to dismantle nuclear arsenals it wont happen in the nearest future or in any time until something more powerful were invented or some truly global threat were to emerge (i.e. aliens). That's why the helpless hero of the song states that 'it cant be ...' changed in any way.

    other parts unwind in the same way, however, i never thought that there'd be some 'oceans bleeding into the sky'... I thought it was like 'ferocious bleeding into the sky' as the nuclear 'mushroom' look like after the explosion... the dust and other tiny particles are sucked in and lifted by the lower pressure in the epicentre of the blast.


    PS Still, this song is quite straight in its lyrics, so it seems as i read through the comments on other songs - Wretches and Kings and Waiting for the End...
    As I see it, the first one is simply about some guerillas/terrorist vs hostage situation... It doesnt matter who you were in the 'previous' life, when you are held captive, all the hostages are of equal worth (or expense) for the captors.

    Waiting for the end is basically about the same, as the Catalyst, yet it's in the more 'progressed' state of a nuclear conflict... top stages of the escalation ladder as Herman Kahn and Bernard Brodie put it in the 60ies - it's not you that control the conflict, it's internal logic begins to limit your options and finally controls YOU. That's why the hero wants to trade his current life for a new one, because his miscalculations doomed his country and the world itself. "A busted political leader's confession" in the eye of a nuclear storm if you like.

    Cheers to all LP fans,
    Flag AlexTheOneon October 18, 2011   Link
  • 0
    General Comment:I think rcm034 has it right on, except I think "where oceans bleed into the sky" is an image of a post-apocolyptic world where everything is grey and you can no longer see the line of the horizon, because the sky and ocean are the exact same colour: grey.
    Flag ScottNixonon July 19, 2011   Link
  • 0
    General Comment:For some reason when I first listened to this I thought it was about suicide. Did anyone else think that too?
    Flag mb9squealon July 08, 2011   Link
  • 0
    Song Meaning:The most important aspect in interpreting the meaning of this song is that, when the band asks, "Will we burn inside the fires of a thousand suns?" They respond, "No."
    Flag mastaeon May 06, 2011   Link
  • 0
    General Comment:Totally talking about how people are killing each other over stupid shit and stuff through destructive nuclear warfare. Pretty much it.
    Flag Fringe147on April 17, 2011   Link
  • 0
    General Comment:I feel like this song is like a pray to God saying to save us, because the world is falling apart.

    "God save us everyone
    Will we burn inside the fires of a thousand suns
    For the sins of our hands
    The sins of our tongue
    The sins of our fathers
    The sins of our young"

    This means to me that the world is falling, our country is falling. So they're praying and saying to God that we need him to lift us up and give us faith.

    Just how I see it.
    Flag TmastaTayon March 29, 2011   Link

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