I really like all these interpretations of the song! While I myself am not sure of what the true meaning is, Bastille (the band) stated in an interview with NovaFm that they wrote the song after learning of the "statues" that were created when Mount Vesuvias erupted in Pompeii. Apparently, the lyrics are meant to represent a sort of "conversation" between two of these statues, and how they must have felt in their last moments of life. Remember that the Mount Vesuvias eruption took literally all day, so to imagine how the people of Pompeii would have felt as they watched their city crumble... The band states that the chanting in the background is meant to capture this terrible magnitude, and the horror that the people of Pompeii would have felt during the eruption (rocks falling from the sky, massive black clouds, and finally the fatal ash). I actually really like the image of two "statues" having an in-depth discussion about the date of Pompeii, even though it is not as deep or poetic as some of the other interpretations on this page :)
I really like all these interpretations of the song! While I myself am not sure of what the true meaning is, Bastille (the band) stated in an interview with NovaFm that they wrote the song after learning of the "statues" that were created when Mount Vesuvias erupted in Pompeii. Apparently, the lyrics are meant to represent a sort of "conversation" between two of these statues, and how they must have felt in their last moments of life. Remember that the Mount Vesuvias eruption took literally all day, so to imagine how the people of Pompeii would have felt as they watched their city crumble... The band states that the chanting in the background is meant to capture this terrible magnitude, and the horror that the people of Pompeii would have felt during the eruption (rocks falling from the sky, massive black clouds, and finally the fatal ash). I actually really like the image of two "statues" having an in-depth discussion about the date of Pompeii, even though it is not as deep or poetic as some of the other interpretations on this page :)