I’ll rise again, Resurgam

It’s been a rather busy summer, but I seem to have returned now, and finished off a piece on Psychotic Waltz which I started, as you can see, back in July. Nonetheless, other than just giving a status update, I thought that I might as well use this soapbox to provide some profound platitudes concerning heavy metal, such being my general inclination.
Percy Shelley once stated that, “I think one is always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal.” Perhaps this is why bands like Redemption find it so easy to offend in their love songs, when they refer to calls from ‘restaurants’, and otherwise take an overly terrestrial and trivial focus. Even ‘A Pleasant Shade of Grey’, which is quite down-to-earth in terms of theme and story, has in terms of effect some of its closest parallels in more spiritual bands like Echo Us and, occasionally, Holocaust. There is the same sense of the intimacy, the connection with the ‘other’ of the lyrics, being in essence an expression of one’s own soul, and this forming an important part of the appreciation; ‘this music is me’, in other words. Despite its outwards direction, the soul is not sacrificed by these ventures, but rather characterized by it. The external object of affection or reverence is not ourselves, so that our love is not simply self-love; however, neither is it absolutely separate from and external to us. ‘I had a dream I was you.’
What does heavy metal have to do with the eternal? Well, that varies. Some bands, like Psychotic Waltz, are concerned not with positively establishing the eternal but in leaving behind the rest of the debris. However, what heavy metal, in its most basic manifestations, has, is a sense of power. Not, however, a concrete form of power, that of the strength to beat somebody up, or to rule a nation. Indeed, heavy metal often enough goes far past this, to exaggerated images that hardly anybody would consent to perform in real life, as for example in Lamp of Thoth’s ‘I Love the Lamp’. The power is not one of worldly concern, but of, so to speak, ‘not giving a fuck’; we are, for a moment, free from Earthly bounds, and the pleasure comes not from the thoughts of doing nasty things (yes, I know, ‘speak for yourself’), but from the fact that the music completely abstracts from real life and real power to offer something far more eternal, the power to leave behind our concern about the physical world for a moment. The moral principles of Christianity? Hey, whatever man, I’m killing virgins.
It’s not that we would do any of this, nor necessarily even that we could, or want to; it’s rather the image of doing it itself which is significant. It’s not that it’s a good thing, it’s that we’re free from such judgments. Such, then, is the first form of freedom represented here. This is one which abstracts from the world, one which does not even acknowledge it in its premises. It faces the problems of the world and goes, ‘Well, you can’t touch me, I’m a soul.’ (with rock and roll.) Hence, here heavy metal comes to represent the eternal, the essential freedom which, with its bass, wipes away the world; Hegel’s destructive, abstract ‘I’, in a sense.
This, however, is in the last instance only a beginning; for all of that abstraction, we must still live, in a world which seems to restrict this ‘I’. How are we to manage this? Well, albums like ‘The Spectre Within’ and ‘A Social Grace’ enter in here; they face the world which seems alien, and they realize that the soul may only be asserted through its negation, and is otherwise neglected through absorption with the material, the endless treadmill of physical pleasure. However, these albums have no answers, but simply declare the truths of finitude, and hence establish that it cannot satisfy the soul; they establish its pleasures as illusory, as ‘semblance’, and hence something which must be transcended, but no more. It is, rather, the preserve of albums like ‘Awaken the Guardian’, APSoG, ‘Tomorrow will tell…’, and so on to take a closer look at our concrete humanity, and at how we live and feel, to return the world of dreams to the concrete world and hence give it substance, and give us action; to let the soul move beyond itself and still be maintained. We live in a finite world, in shades of grey, but this is inevitable and we must make them pleasant. We shall look at this aspect in more detail when we investigate the albums themselves, and elaborate upon the roles of ‘The Spectre Within’ and ‘A Social Grace’ in more depth shortly.
Of course, it is worth noting that heavy metal is not philosophical treatise, but more akin to a picture, and only as such can convey what it will. However, so long as the description of heavy metal in philosophical terms and concepts is also taken as essentially a picture, we should be alright. Even if Greek tragedy and its gods would be incompatible with a modern society, strictly speaking, we can still appreciate it from within its immanent paradigm, not as philosophical treatise but as art; and ‘when we understand everything, we will forgive everything.’

Say Goodbye: A Social Grace.

I've seen the sunshine
On the black side of the moon.

Introduction

‘Atmosphere’ is a term that one will hear very frequently in discussions of music, and in this post we shall attempt to investigate its meaning and significance as a musical phenomenon. Admittedly, its use is not always merited, and at times it can be reduced to a fairly meaningless phrase used to sell records; this can be especially pronounced in reviews. However, charades aside, I think that it does describe an important aspect of music in general, and as such it is worth at least exploring this side of things.

In doing this, there are not many records more appropriate to the subject than Psychotic Waltz’s ‘A Social Grace’. It in some ways exemplifies the ‘atmospheric’ side of heavy metal, insofar as it takes to extremes some of the aspects of heavy metal most responsible for its atmospheric elements, a trait which forms a large part of the unique nature of the record. What other records touch on and orbit around, Psychotic Waltz takes by the throat and, well, waltzes around psychotically with. Indeed, given the powerful atmosphere of this album, supplemented with its extraordinary songwriting, you should probably buy it.

The focus of this post will not be so much on what Psychotic Waltz try to convey as on how they do so, or rather what Psychotic Waltz try to convey shall be approached primarily via the investigation of how they try to convey it. In the process, we may also bring up comparisons with other bands in terms of the use of atmospheric elements, although the primary focus will be ‘A Social Grace’. If you wish to bring up other bands in the comments in relation to the themes explored here, feel free to do so.

I. Atmosphere.

Music does not appear to us as something directly tangible and external to us, at least not in the same way as a painting or film. Even in loud concerts, where it does take on a quite pronounced physical effect, it primarily appears as simply a motive force, rather than as something objectified  outside of us. Music may cause a glass to vibrate, but the music itself is not encapsulated by the vibrating glass. In a sense, then, music exists as something internal, directly rather than indirectly located within the mind. This impression is even stronger in private listening, where the music appears in isolation from any particular performers and the like, leaving us with only the music and ourselves; indeed, with headphones and such modes of listening, it does become quite literally (well, in a figurative sense) something in our heads.

Music, then, exists in the mind. However, the interaction of the two is not simply akin to that of water filling up a container, with music just pouring itself into the mind. Rather, it may make more sense to look at it as a presence of mutual conditioning, with music seeking to shape the mind to fit around it, while at the same time this shaping is an active mental process. Nonetheless, it may still make sense to refer to it as a sort of active filling of the listener’s internal space, or thought process, which gives it a particular shape and character when the listener focuses on it and allows their mind to follow it; not simply a passive surrender to the music, but an active concentration upon it. However, at the same time, the music conditions the manner in which the mind must act in focusing on it, so that  both the mind and the music are the active participants in the exchange. Atmosphere is not simply a gas, which takes on the shape of its container, but rather describes a wider interaction, and atmospheric elements of music designate those which contribute to and condition the active immersion of the listener in the music.

(However, in order to have the mind so operate actively, the music must first of all operate in such a way as to focus the mind upon it, and hence ‘fill up’ its concentration so as to allow it to move the mind as it likes. As such, the reference to ‘filling the mind’ may be worth using, in order to designate the process by which music is able to seize hold of the mind and have it direct its own movement in accordance with the music itself; that is, by which the music is able to condition the mind so as to shape its movements.)

There are various ways to do this, but here our focus shall be upon the use of various layers of sound within the music itself. (The use of silence itself as a layer won’t be treated of in this post, although it may be later on.) The subject of musical layering is itself quite wide, and could encompass subjects like counterpoint, the use of additional instruments, differences between the right- and left-ear channels, and so on. All in all, however, it focuses upon music’s textural qualities, the interaction of various layers and instruments to create a coherent whole, with the mind itself having to establish and create this unity in the listening process.

Psychotic Waltz give these textural aspects a prominent part in their music. Their music is ultimately not written primarily to get across nice-sounding riffs or impressive vocal lines, but rather in a manner directed towards textural aspects of the music, created by the interaction of multiple semi-autonomous layers. Two main means of doing this are on the one hand the addition of additional tracks, that is, the overlaying of additional layers of music and instruments over the band’s core instruments, and on the other hand the general interaction between the various instruments themselves, as well as the vocals.

A notable example of the first of these is the song ‘Successor’. During the verses, a strange track sounding almost like a mechanised chanting plays in the background, paralleling the vocals. Despite its subtlety, it significantly increases the effectiveness of the track. In many tracks its addition would serve to distract from the instruments themselves, but here it contributes to the overall texture of the piece, through playing simultaneously with it and hence adding additional layers to the sound. It effectively creates another auditory stimulus which must be integrated into the whole, hence forcing the listener to focus their mind upon hearing all parts at once and putting them together, which allows the music itself to almost ‘wrap around’ them; this is enhanced by its being focused in one ear, meaning that one has different parts of the music in different ‘places’ of the mind, so to speak, and must weave them together. The result of this is that the music actively becomes a part of the listener’s own thought process, not simply in the sense that they focus upon it, but now in the sense that their thoughts now consist of the attempt to fit everything together. It’s no longer something external and focused upon, but rather internal. A similar effect is created by the sound effects used at the beginning of the song, which make it atmospheric in an almost literal sense, as if something suffusing the surrounding air.

The fact that the background noises parallel the vocals also means that one focuses on the vocals themselves in a different way, almost in relation to the background, making them more effective in the context of the impending danger that the song represents. Both of these aspects, the fact that one listens to one part of the music in relation to another, and its ability to surround and suffuse the mind, enter into the greater aim which this accomplishes, namely that of inducting the listener into the paradigm, so to speak, of the song, within which it can do as it likes; enveloping the listener in the song. Kevin Moore, in Chroma Key albums like ‘You Go Now’, doesn’t need to make the lyrics tell a complete story, or indeed much more than some phrases, precisely because of how effectively the music creates its own paradigm, using different channels, recurring melodies, and so on; he doesn’t need much more than words, and he doesn’t need a backstory, because the listeners are within the paradigm of the songs and are effectively experiencing the songs as their own thoughts, or indeed their own product (and here the artist-audience hierarchy breaks down), so that they really don’t need to be told about what is now their own past, or have their life narrated to them.

Of course, the difference between Chroma Key and ‘Successor’ is that Chroma Key is almost always first-person music, in the sense that the listener puts themselves into the shoes of the song’s ‘narrator’,  as it were, even when the song itself is addressed to a second person, or ‘you’ (who is not the listener, but rather is also a ‘you’ for the listener; another notable album which does this is ‘A Pleasant Shade of Grey’), while ‘Successor’ is legitimately second-person, in that the listener does not relate primarily to the computer narrator, but rather in fact takes the place of the ‘you’ referred to by them. This is emphasized by how the music mainly takes on a threatening aura, reflecting the threat of the narrator to the ‘you’, rather than reflecting the narrator’s thoughts; it relates to an external threat, albeit with an externality produced by the creator themselves.

Of course, the corollary of the mind being filled and occupied is that all else drops out of it, at least to some extent. It is hence emptied, in a sense. You probably recognize the feeling of having listened to a great album, and then its ending and leaving one suddenly in silence, in a way which almost emphasizes the power of the album. ‘Hey, you’re back to real life, but not as you knew it!’ Ordinarily, when listening to nothing, one’s mind may be wandering all over the place; here, coming off its singular focus on the music, the silence is different to an ordinary silence.

Of course, this form of ‘emptying’ is by not exclusive to music as such; for example, it forms an important part of what is known as ‘catharsis’ in tragic theatre, and may even have an equivalent in static visual art, although I wouldn’t know about that. Of course, as in drama, it’s mainly a feeling that one has after a more ‘weighty’ album, one heavy in terms of subject matter, and after an ending which does not simply do away with the previous troubles in glorious light, but rather incorporates them into either a dark ending or one which, though positive, does not simply forget earlier issues but rather incorporates them into it to create a feeling of not simply happiness, but also overcoming.

(This sort of emptying also forms a justification for the outro, as a winding down of the album which returns one to silence rather than ending on melodrama; if ‘Hamlet’ does it, why not ‘A Social Grace’?)

Psychotic Waltz do not simply fill the mind, but like to contort it in various directions. Of course, they can only do this because they have a hold of it and have filled it in the first place, but nonetheless after that filling it’s a bit of a rollercoaster ride. The music is highly active, with riffs which, if not techno-thrash riffs, are still close cousins, and hence drags the mind around whithersoever it goes. It’s not simply a matter of creating strange riffs flying everywhere and hoping that this will be effective, but rather Psychotic Waltz do the basics right, immersing the listener, and this allows their riffs to have the power which they do; indeed, they hardly seem overly keen to play complex riffs, and often don’t when their music doesn’t demand it. That they do this is not simply connected to personal idiosyncrasies, the desire to create atmosphere as such simply because it’s aesthetically good to do so, or a penchant for showing off, but is rather connected with the kind of atmosphere that is being conveyed, and the underlying conception and message of the album. This is akin in a way to what Kitto referred to as the ‘tragic conceptions’ of the Greek dramatists, in his attempt at explaining the individual styles of various artists not simply from personal idiosyncrasies, but rather from the vision and idea animating their plays.

In order to begin our investigation of this underlying conception, let us return to ‘Successor’. The effect of the background layer of sound is ultimately to create an ominous, almost sinister feeling, and this is effected in large part through its relation to the rest of the music. Through its position in the background of the music, lurking beneath the surface, it, of course, fits with the general theme of the music. However, in its role of creating atmosphere, and forcing the listener’s mind into a state of high activity, it gives the music an almost suffocating feeling, making it feel almost like an alien, dominating power. The song’s narrator isn’t attempting to take power because the inventor is a bad person as such, but rather there’s a sense of underlying inevitability; the computer does it because that’s what it does, and the person responsible doesn’t know what they have created. It is in that sense not simply karma, or the soul’s own suffering from sin, but rather an alien power. The listener creates it by listening to it; Psychotic Waltz aren’t a ‘fun’ band to listen to as such, but they are a powerful one. You’re listening to this, and there’s nothing you can do about it. (Well, you can turn it off, but that’s not an option ‘IC’, in roleplaying-speak. In any case, why would you turn off a Psychotic Waltz record, heretic?)

This ‘smothering’ is a result of a sense of ‘overstimulation’, where the mind is forced to fill itself with many elements of music at once, and the parallel between the vocals and background elements means that the two are brought into a single force and hence the vocals seem to almost echo, creating a sense of omnipresence and a resonance which is in no way sympathetic. The ‘emptying out’ of the mind is here the seizing of it, where its emptiness means simply that there is no escape; while Chroma Key and recent Fates Warning invite you to place yourself within them, Psychotic Waltz swarms around you and grabs you by the throat, and if Chroma Key have an ‘open’ sound, Psychotic Waltz have one which surrounds and assaults. As such, their music is also generally more ‘active’ and heavy, with its riffs running about and a sense of oversaturation in contrast to the aforementioned bands’ carefully constructed minimalism. It is perhaps worth noting that Fates Warning do dabble on both sides to a notable extent, and indeed this forms a major part of the power of ‘A Pleasant Shade of Grey’, but nonetheless when it comes to spaciousness there’s not much better; Psychotic Waltz, too, would move towards the other side more often in their later albums, and were by no means one-sided in this one, but nonetheless it does form their prevailing sound. You could also compare King Crimson’s ‘Red’ with ‘A Scarcity of Miracles’ in this connection.

This could also explain the ‘second-person’ feeling that the album has to a large extent, as if a communication with the listener, rather than the highly first-person and introverted feeling of albums like APSoG, where the listener places themselves in the shoes of the subject of the song, or the feeling of being practically an emanation from one’s own soul, as in bands like Echo Us, and occasionally Holocaust (most notably in songs like ‘Home from Home’, which I like to call their ‘prayer songs’. Holocaust are interesting in that they prominently use not only the singular first-person and second-person views, but also often include music based around the ‘we’). If a sort of alienated force is to be conveyed, the second-person perspective is appropriate, as it allows the music to constitute itself as something external and oppressive in relation to the listener; hence, while APSoG is highly personal in scale, bands like Watchtower and Psychotic Waltz are less so, the former often social, the latter cosmic. John Arch’s use of fantastic settings, and, for example, the representation of the internal journey of ‘The Apparition’ as an external journey in a foreign world (as opposed to APSoG’s internal journey, which is conveyed through, well, just that), gives the music a feeling of externality as well, which, especially in ‘The Spectre Within’, may reflect the thematic similarities with Psychotic Waltz.

In saying this, we may also comment on another important factor in Psychotic Waltz’s music. On the one hand, unlike, say, APSoG, it doesn’t have any direct continuity as such, and is hardly a concept album; nonetheless, it is still united by its  underlying conception, giving it thematic consistency if not narrative consistency. This may be compared, in a way, to Kitto’s view of the relationship between Euripides’ and Sophocles’ methods of writing tragedy. Sophocles, famously enough, was practically the embodiment of Aristotle’s views on tragedy, and his tragedy was mainly focused on characters and their tragic flaws, so that he required both a strict consistency of character, and that events followed each other with, as Aristotle put it, the force of necessity, rather than simply being various episodes. Here, the universality of the play consists of the viewer’s ability to relate to the character and almost become them for the duration of the play, in the characters embodying things universal to humanity. This reaches its more modern peak in ‘Hamlet’, with its highly distinctive main character that we almost know by the time the play is over; or, at least, we may know him, although god knows the literary critics don’t. It also requires a protagonist who is not simply presented as ‘pathetic’, as suffering or oppressed, but rather has an inner strength of resistance, as it were a sense of resistant humanity, which characters like Hamlet certainly have, if not when acted out by Lawrence Olivier (for reference, I generally agree with Bernard Grebanier as regards Hamlet’s tragic flaw), and which is also shared by the narrators of APSoG and Sider’s ‘Labyrinth’.

Euripides, by contrast, used his characters simply as illustrations of a deeper, underlying theme, as one would use a leaf to teach a child what ‘green’ means. Of course, Sophocles didn’t simply develop characters for their own sake, at least not mostly, but nonetheless in him the theme was essentially immanent in and inseparable from the character and our relating to them, while in Euripides it is based upon almost an alienation effect, where we can stand somewhat separate from the characters themselves and view them as types of a greater whole rather than as themselves a totality. As such, his plays could take on a non-Aristotelian, episodic form, with a succession of events with no logical relation to each other, at least in the Aristotelian sense of necessary connection, but only a thematic unity. Hence, one could have some characters entering and exiting, or a new plotline arising later in the play, while in the meantime the chorus sang about the suffering caused by the Trojan War. The characters need not be as fleshed out as those of Sophocles, but can rather be types, illustrations, embodiments of certain unchecked emotions, and so on. The tragedy was not simply the tragedy of the individual, but of society or humanity in a collective sense (a tragedy of humanity for Sophocles meant one of the human individual).

We may place Psychotic Waltz on the Euripidean side of things, at least in this sense. APSoG-era Fates would probably fit closer to the first bracket. Psychotic Waltz’s songs are indeed more or less episodic, rather than forming a complete, singular narrative, but are not thereby patchwork. The inventor whom we are to take the place of in ‘Successor’ is not a fleshed out character, but rather is essentially pathetic in stature, the inevitable victim without a voice. The computer narrator does in fact have multiple dimensions (‘Give me a name’), as does the devil of ‘…And The Devil Cried’, but this is only, as we shall later discuss, so as to emphasize that ultimately the real ‘villain’ of this record is not someone or something malicious or evil, but rather simply an alien force of necessity, which operates regardless of sentiment, whether of human or devil. It’s not that bad things happen because the devil commands it, but rather the devil himself has no choice in the matter; that’s how things happen, deal with it. Likewise, Euripides’ Greeks are not irredeemably evil, even when the play circles around the suffering which they cause; while their victims are primarily pathetic, the play itself must give the Greeks multiple dimensions, so as to create a message transcending simply, “Greeks are bad,” which may be appropriate for propaganda but not for art.

In addition, this style is not only complemented by the second-person point of view, but also complements it. As most writers will know, one of the greatest problems with second-person stories is precisely that the reader is not actually the person written about; the ‘No, I didn’t go to that party and have sex with twenty guys’ syndrome. However, Psychotic Waltz, because they need not flesh out their characters, may also provide the listener with simply a generic role to fill, so that the focus is not upon their individual personality but upon the forces outside of them; the inventor does embody a type of human, but is given not that many more dimensions than as such a symbol. The music doesn’t ask you to be something that you’re not, but rather represents external forces that one can now feel in the music itself, and insofar as the role of the inventor is defined precisely by his position within these forces, one can enter into the role simply by listening to the music. You’re not an inventor? Well, you are now, deal with it.

This established, then, we must still establish the purpose of Psychotic Waltz’s alien powers and forces; not simply that alien powers may sound pleasant to listen to songs about, or make one appear aesthetically impressive, but rather what exactly they’re supposed to represent, and what this reveals about the underlying conception of this album. For this, we may turn to a more detailed examination of the songs themselves, as well as of their lyrical themes.

II. These devils that we accept as reality.

Interviewer: "Nothing" has a definite spiritual message in it...
     Brian: "It's like a lot of people aren't concerned with their spirit, just their body. We're trying to get people to see the difference there.  We're not preachers or anything though."
Dan: "It's like the bumper sticker that says, 'He who dies with the most toys wins'.  It's a pretty basic & stupid attitude to have in life."
   Norm: " 'You have to give back everything you borrowed in this lifetime', is one of the lyrics in the song.
Brian: "It's like, when you die, you wanna leave something behind for people to remember . You don't want them to remember you for being materialistic, or something people will look down on. You want to leave a positive message with people so they can remember you for that."

Psychotic Waltz’s music often features a feeling of hostility or oppression, but not one of maliciousness or evil as such. If there are external, alien forces, they are not simply cackling super-villains writ large, even when they are sinister; the point is not one of victimization by evil, overpowering forces, which may make for nice pathos but wouldn’t really convey much, but rather of powers which are neither malicious, at least not as a focal point of their character, nor autonomous. In a way, and this is something that we will elaborate upon through the investigation, they are quite similar to the spectres of early Fates Warning, both in their ultimate lack of maliciousness and their status as a human product. We have already discussed, for example, how the characterization in ‘Successor’ and ‘…And the Devil Cried’ serves to make sure that the focus is not simply on how evil the antagonist is, in the same way that Mary Shelley’s focus on the innocence and virtues of the monster meant a story almost completely different in significance to movies which removed these elements for the sake of horror.

Though the album is dark, its antagonists are not bad people, but rather, as said, alien forces. However, these forces are themselves portrayed as human constructs. The two most blatant examples of this are ‘Spiral Tower’ and ‘Successor’, which refer quite explicitly to human creation. The two can in some sense be grouped together, at least thematically, so let us look at some common features. In the first place, the characterization of the humans involved in the story is in one that of an inventor, in another that of the ‘architects’; hence, the focus is upon their existence as beings who create, and they are explicitly taken insofar as they are productive and active beings rather than simply passive receptacles. This does not, mind, make them tragic individuals in a Sophoclean sense, and indeed their characterization does not go much further than this of being architects or inventors; the focus of the song is not upon them qua characters, but rather upon their actions and their product itself, both times their creations rather than themselves finding a place in the title. Furthermore, both have a collective, rather than an individual, significance; the architects more directly, the inventor being referred to simply as ‘son of creation’, hence implying that the song is addressed ultimately to humanity as a whole.

Another common feature of the songs is the idea that neither ultimately knows what they are building, which strengthens the sense of the creations as alienated and autonomous forces despite their being created; that is, the people, through their action, produce something alien and unknown to them. The architects of ‘Spiral Tower’ are “still none the wise of what they’ve really done,” while the inventor’s lack of knowledge of the consequences of their actions in ‘Successor’ is a prominent theme throughout the song. Likewise, in both cases the punishment of the creators is not presented positively. In ‘Successor’, apart from the song’s dark atmosphere clearly placing the audience in the viewpoint of the inventor, humanity, rather than the scheming creation, the computer’s victory is not presented in a positive or triumphant tone, but rather in sinister terms of slavery, bowing at ‘microchip altars’, and so on. The inventor is no ‘evil genius’, but rather is simply presented as helping the computer to grow and so on, in other words as earnestly paving the road to hell. The ending is not to be exalted, but rather it is a human tragedy; the computer is ultimately given no motives, nor painted as particularly evil (sinister yes, evil no), but simply as powerful, so that ultimately their conquest is not a result of any of their character flaws, but rather the inevitable consequence of humanity creating and becoming dependent upon a power greater than and alien from themselves.

While ‘Successor’ certainly has echoes of Frankenstein, with the inventor ‘creating a brain’ and so on, this doesn’t mean that the creature created is akin to Frankenstein’s humanoid monster, assembled from human body parts. The stress is rather on the creation’s mechanistic nature, with the references to their ‘microchip altar’, and to their being a ‘thoughtless machine’ in which one inputs ‘data’. They are, rather, robotic or computeristic, with the idea of inputting data into them and their having microchips giving them definite parallels with modern technology. As such, we may place the robot as essentially a symbol of our technological and material creations which eventually leave our control and start to operate of themselves. Humans have, “allowed the very products of their hands to turn against them and be transformed into as many instruments of their own subjugation.”

Likewise, in ‘Spiral Tower’, the aforementioned tower is identified with “iron bars and bricks of stone,” with humanity’s material creations, their ‘temples of material things’, as ‘Spiral Tower’ puts it. In addition, it is also identified with money and greed, which hence enlarges the focus from simply products to the general focus upon the material, upon the appetites, in a manner paralleling the focus of early Fates Warning; indeed, ‘Spiral Tower’ is in some ways similar to ‘Damnation’.

Underlying all of this is the irony that human creations eventually turn into ends in themselves, standing over and above humanity; the architects ultimately simply produce for the sake of production, not ultimately building themselves up but only the tower without them. They produce for money, and hence money, this material thing, becomes an end which is itself embodied in the tower; they gain money for the sake of seeking more money, and ultimately their aim is not themselves, but rather simply to continually build up the tower, each time acting for money, which does not therefore serve them so much as they serve it in continually acting towards its demands. Money here is presumably used to represent material greed in its most generalized and condensed form; not any particular material, but the world of material things in general; the purpose is not any specific form of satisfaction, and hence nor is the target of the song simply a specific form of material gratification (as it would be if, for example, they acted for the sake of alcohol), but simply the material in the abstract.

The aforementioned irony is represented even more explicitly in ‘Successor’, where the titular character comments that they will ‘add to your strength’ and ‘quicken your speed’. A similar irony is expressed in Fates Warning’s ‘The Spectre Within’, with the man who, seemingly paradoxically, sacrifices ‘life for living’; the material was supposed to satisfy him eand work towards his ends, but now he must satisfy it and work towards its ends. Each satisfaction is temporary, and hence he must continually return whence he came, becoming hence dependent upon these forces, which thereby become a power over him. In this sense, ‘Successor’ could be seen as representing far more than simply a warning about how AI could be dangerous, and having instead a more universal message. A similar thing, the products of man’s hands growing into autonomous powers out of his control, could be what is expressed by the description of the destruction wrought by the spiral tower, and its eventual fall being a ‘surprise’. The ending, which states that the spiral tower falls to be ‘born again’, essentially treats the spiral tower as a subject, hence implying that the human beings themselves simply exist as servants of it; it is this sort of subjectivity, rather than the literal subjectivity of AI as such, that is probably the ultimate point of ‘Successor’.

Hence, then, these overpowering forces are the products of man himself. They, are, therefore, not immutable; to the contrary:

These devils that we accept as reality
Did not exist here before,
Nor do I think they were meant to be.

They are not sinister, cosmic forces which have existed immortally and torment man from without, they are rather his own products. When man was a ‘wiser thing’, they had no existence; now, however, they are so ubiquitous as to be ‘accepted as reality’. This latter is, incidentally, a rather interesting phrase;  perhaps it implies that humanity under the grip of the material sees these devils as inherent to human life, transhistorical, and as also representing their true self-interests, while in actual fact they are not real beings of themselves, but rather our own projections.  The illusions are immanent to our state of being, and the devils are only Brocken devils.

II.I. The songs.

II. I.I. …And The Devil Cried.

Well could you pay the price ,
If we rolled off the dice,
Just a piece of your soul down again;
The rules are simple as they seem,
Just roll a one or roll thirteen,
And all is back now, free and clear now.

In ‘…And the Devil Cried’, a life based around material things is compared to gambling with the devil, and when your life is like a modern Helloween album you know that you must be doing something wrong. However, let’s look at the intricacies of the game. In the first place, we gamble by laying down our soul; this reflects the sacrifice of soul to body already indicated in our prior comments and the quote on ‘Nothing’. However, this game is ultimately unwinnable; given that one can assume that it’s played with two dice, it would be impossible to roll either one or thirteen; thirteen, of course, is a number with another significance in this context as well, although the fundamental point seems to be that it is out of range of the dice. As the lyrics say, “You cannot win now; play again, now.” We keep on going, but victory is not a part of the game; each day we give up pieces of our soul, but we don’t win and have to play over and over again, the cycle already identified in the Fates Warning entry; the targets, 1 and 13, appearing always within our sight, yet still beyond the boundaries. The connection of the game to the search for material things is brought out even more explicitly in the following:

Taste of earthly pleasures,
See the harlots smiling,
Feel the evil passion,
Clawing, crying, crying on.

However, the song itself makes sure to focus upon our own self-created suffering, rather than on how evil the devil is. This culminates in the devil, seemingly the narrator of the song, himself crying. There is no external manipulator that we can blame, no Satanic embodiment of evil to pin everything on, there is rather our own desires and passions. As such, it is not a simple matter of exorcising some demons to make everything alright, nor can it be excused by simply appealing to the overwhelming force of evil, but rather it’s a fight against the devil within, so to speak. As if to ram home the point that the song designates the sacrifice of soul to body, the song ends with a reference to the lost fortune as ‘your soul and your mind.’

A similar point about the transitory nature of material ‘victory’ is expressed in ‘I of the Storm’:

I've seen the towers
Lying crumbled at my feet,
And I've seen the cities,
And the wastelands that remain,
And I've seen the victory
And the prize that none shall keep,
And the short time
That the glory hides the pain.

The transitory nature of the material, of course, gains its most direct existence in death:

Soon you'll have to give back
Everything you've borrowed for this lifetime
Only then you'll find
You have spent all this time
Struggling for the wrong things
And all of your works here have been nothing.

II.I.II. The softer songs: Halo of Thorns and I Remember.

However, it is hardly enough to simply portray antagonistic forces if a message is to be gotten across, rather than simple intimidation. As such, the songs ‘Halo of Thorns’ and ‘I Remember’ take up the perspective of suffering humanity, a human perspective, and because of this the churning riffs must be silenced, at least to a larger extent; from a purely musical point of view, this allows the listener to recover, while from the point of view of the album’s purpose it serves to introduce a human viewpoint into the procedure, so that we don’t simply look upon the music as something ultimately outside of us, as an external proclamation of our evils or a warning, but are able to latch onto an aspect of it and appreciate that the powers elsewhere mentioned do in fact have a concrete effect upon real humans.

‘I Remember’ ends with the powerful verse:

Let's take a look now what we've changed,
After all we're still so much the same;
After all this time,
Can't we make up our minds,
Must we all play the losing game?

(It changes to ‘guess we’ll all play the losing game’ for the final iteration.)

Again, we have humanity simply continuing to build onwards, regardless of human interests; we play a game that we must lose, but we simply go on playing it. That is the essential tragedy expressed by this album.

II.I.III. The world as illusion: ‘In This Place’ and ‘Nothing’.

‘Nothing’ initially seems to be an idealist treatise, but as the description of it in the interview above makes clear, it is not so much a treatise on metaphysics as on the fixation with the material. In counter to this, Cartesian and idealist imagery of the world being an illusion is used; not, then, in order to make a philosophical polemic, but rather as a way of showing rather than telling. The finite is nothing, and the mind is all that has true existence. The body is just a tool of the mind. Everything is nothing.

This conception is reflected in ‘In This Place’. Now, perhaps the most initially illuminating lines about the meaning of this song are the following:

Racer of the chase for pleasure,
Actor of the child at play
Lay down, it's time for nappie, baby,
Taking all your toys away.

This serves to illuminate the meaning of the rest of the song, the references to ‘the lies that you hear with your eyes’, the comment on how ‘I don’t mean to imply that you’d utterly lie’, and that ‘I can’t stand to face what I fear is real.’ Here exists the connection with ‘Nothing’, and just as much with ‘The Apparition’: the realization that the finite is nothing, that our ‘toys’ are necessarily taken away and all that we do rendered meaningless. The song, then, seems like it in all likelihood involves the narrator’s death, at least in some sense, which would seem to be implied by ‘Kiss me goodnight’; likewise, the person addressed seems to be assuring them, essentially, of the existence of the world and of what is apparent, as opposed to the realization that it is illusion. These illusions are the lies seen by their eyes. Likewise, the lines:

Take a look at yourself, take a look at me,
I believe you miss all there is to see.

Would seem to be a reference to the body/soul dichotomy, with the other person seeing them as a body rather than a soul. The narrator realizes the meaninglessness of their life, and that their life is now nothing; their interlocutor tries to assure them that material things are the primary reality and that they are alive. They have sold off their souls, but the other person can’t see that. Whether it is a description of physical or spiritual death, in either case it would seem to get something similar across.

III. Atmosphere: Layers.

Having looked in more detail at the conceptions underlying the album, as well as looking at some of its songs in summarized form, let us now look into some more specific examples of atmosphere, primarily those involving the interaction between the ‘core instruments’ of the band rather than additional sound effects.

To begin with, let us look at the interaction between the vocals and guitars in the verses of ‘In This Place’. The most immediately striking thing about these is how the vocals and guitars seem to be on almost different planes, with the vocals following their own path and taking their time while the guitars twist around beneath them. ‘I cannot stand to see what I see…’; meanwhile the guitars have been all over the place, seemingly out of sync with the vocals. However, nonetheless, the effect of this incongruence is not to make the music seem incoherent, but rather to lend it power; the ‘jerky’ feel of the riffs is made into a powerful force by our minds at the same time trying to follow the more straightforward line of the vocals, so that each twist in the riffs becomes a twist or jerk in the mind, which tries to keep its course and hence is made contact with. Simply having technical riffs does not guarantee such a conflict; rather, what is important is that they be irregular relative to the rest of the music, within the paradigm of the music, rather than simply irregular as such. The vocals, though not regular between lines, is continuous enough within lines to interact well with the music here. The listener experiences the strain of putting everything together.

Likewise, the drumming often incorporates sudden pauses and rests to complement the riffs; these kinds of missed beats tend to cause motion in the human body, and in Psychotic Waltz this motion is almost enforced, as well as irregular, closer to being thrown around, or to the throes of one enchained than to conventional headbanging. Sometimes, the drums are brought into the foreground, as for example between the first and second verses of ‘Spiral Tower’. There, the riffs follow a slower, repeated pattern, while the drums become the source of the music’s dynamism; this is used to convey a sense of emptiness, or degradation and decadence, which can be achieved precisely due to the guitars’ relative retreat into the background. While in combination with the riffs, the drums tend to complement their twisting effect, here they serve to provide a sort of break in the music, sounding almost lonely in their beats. The shifts of prominence of the various instruments can be subtle, but are still powerful; for example, in the chorus of ‘I of the Storm’, where the drums come out of their seeming obscurity, which assisted Lackey’s vocals in being the focal point, to the foreground; in that song, they vary noticeably from a more relatively laid-back approach during the verses to spurts of activity outside of them, while they do almost the opposite in ‘Strange’.

The effect of this kind of contrast is on the one hand to use all of the elements which Psychotic Waltz possesses, hence creating variety, but also to establish multiple layers which move backwards and forwards in the listener’s mind, hence creating an even stronger sense of dynamism. The momentary spurt of activity of the drums in 'A Psychotic Waltz’ ('in circles, in circles they spin…’) is all the more effective due to their discipline during the rest of the verse, jumping out of the background to force the listener’s mind to move along with it; likewise, when the guitar falls quieter just before the last few verses, this is stronger due to its prior riffing. The effect of this is a sense of constant motion and flux, which does not allow the listener to rest, but rather drags them onwards on the psychotic waltz. It is not here necessary to add extra layers, but rather a similar effect is obtained simply by shifting the distribution of the layers, keeping the listener’s mind filled through sheer dynamism.

IV. Escape?

I’ll cease to find the point in living
Only if I cease to dream.

However, is there any escape from this labyrinth in which we are trapped? Well, Psychotic Waltz offer no easy answers, but, like ‘The Spectre Within’, only struggle. The self-titled track attacks those who live in self-assurance, dismissing the problems of existence with established dogmas. The content of ‘A Psychotic Waltz’ is not one of simply criticism of religion, or an assured ridicule of it, but rather expresses the ridiculous nature it appears to have for one who has faced the problems of existence:

Looking at lost life and darkness,
My eyes shall not see;
Makes me laugh when he calls it all sin.

‘My eyes shall not see’; this is hardly a comfortable act of criticism. Indeed, a large part of the song focuses not on religion, but upon the struggles of the individual, on the psychotic waltz:

As the days pass by,
I watch as the net closes in,
As they circle around in my head;
Turning and winding,
In circles, in circles they spin,
Never ending, beginning the end.

Indeed, a song merely critical of religion would be out-of-place on an album with a general conception behind it like this, in the same way that ‘Valley of the Dolls’ would be out-of-place and detrimental on ‘The Spectre Within’. The focus is still upon the struggle. The criticism, then, is precisely that, ‘The priest shields his face from the wind’, that religion here is essentially simply a mode of evasion of the real problems of existence, which hence means that the means by which it must be criticized are precisely to display these problems, the ephemeral nature of being (‘lost life and darkness’ seems a bit similar to songs like ‘The Apparition’), which is in harmony with Psychotic Waltz’s general modus operandi.

In a sense, the attack on various ways to escape the problems of existence and finitude forms the major content of Psychotic Waltz’s work, the attempts to escape it both in material pleasures and in religious spiritualism. ‘Halo of Thorns’, on the other hand, from its human perspective allows a summary of the human condition, an illustration of these problems of existence; the sense of being small in time and space, the sense that the world is out of our control, and we are dominated by the immensity of the universe, like play-actors. This is also dealt with in ‘Another Prophet Song’, a song which essentially synthesizes all of the various elements of Psychotic Waltz’s album, hence being one of the most varied songs and likewise the song most capable of standing alone, tied together with probably the most powerful vocal performance on the album; due to this nature, it could well be more appropriate to treat it in a later post by itself, rather than here.

In that case, then, the reference to Socrates’ dictum that the wisest is he who realizes that he knows nothing is very much appropriate to the album’s content, and forms a very appropriate way of ending the album. Psychotic Waltz are not here to guide you, but to undermine your sense of security, and shake you out of your comfort zone; there is no easy route to life, and the problem must be faced and dissolved. Like Socrates, they do not pretend to know; however, they know of their own lack of knowledge, and this is a wisdom greater than all dogmas. The finitude of the individual, and of mankind as a whole (reflected in the occasional use of apocalyptic imagery), are things which must be faced; as Paul Tillich would comment, any true self-affirmation must incorporate despair and negation into itself.

However, Psychotic Waltz will not leave us with no hope whatsoever; Fates Warning, in the similarly-themed ‘The Spectre Within’, gave us ‘Pirates of the Underground’ to suggest the possibility of some sort of escape, while Psychotic Waltz provide us with the bonus track ‘Only in a Dream’. Here, the sparrow illustrates the restricted nature of the physical, is separated from the world and cannot see what is real. However, for all that, it can dream. Again, we have the dichotomy of mind and body; while Descartes may have been a bit apprehensive about the idea that a sparrow has a soul, nonetheless we can at least accept it as an allegorical soul. Here, it becomes clear that the mind, not the body, forges the way to escape from our despair; the ability to dream, to hence transcend the physical, points the way forward and indicates that our lives have purpose, even if it is not itself this purpose. Even if dreaming is not the answer to the question, and indeed does not escape from it, nonetheless it indicates that despite our finitude in space and time, there is something more; this, then, is why life’s worth its living at all.

Fates Warning are often noted for their use of ‘fantastic’ themes in their lyrics, to the point of, in ‘Guardian’, referring to ‘an endless dream’, a dream made reality and reality filled with the spiritual (not, therefore, merely a dream as a form of escapism, although even this form of escapism, if not a genuine escape, does point the way forward, although it must be brought into reality). Here, however, dreaming, fantasy, is identified as the basis of our hope of escape, of the autonomy of the mind in such a way that it, not being reducible to the bodily, may transcend the problems of finitude. However, such a realization is not enough, but rather must be translated into concrete, physical life, which hence must itself be transformed for us, or take on a transformed significance, compared to our previous view of it when lost in illusions. We must not only change our minds, but also our lives, as it were.

And how? Well, Psychotic Waltz don’t know. Sometimes seeing the problem clearly is itself the road to the solution; we must not seek to conquer our fear through various conjurations and dogmas, but rather we must put up with its constant existence along our journey. Arcana is only a step away, and a step is a long way to walk.

V. Conclusion.

Psychotic Waltz’s music has many layers, not only on the scale of a song and the instruments used in it, but also in terms of the album itself. It has various songs, each one having on the one hand a surface of notes, lyrics, melodies and so on, and on the other hand an undercurrent of atmosphere built up by this, the victory of the machine on the surface and the defeat of humanity the hidden undercurrent; below all of these atmospheres lies a more or less single, uniting conception which realizes itself through these various atmospheres like a Hegelian spirit. The shape of the album is such as to ensure a movement between different styles in close proximity, the softer songs interspersed with heavier ones; ‘…And the Devil Cried’ followed by ‘Halo of Thorns’, ‘In This Place’ followed by ‘I Remember’, the hard-hitting ‘I of the Storm’ by the complex ‘A Psychotic Waltz’, and later also ‘Only in a Dream’, before finally going out with a bang on ‘Strange’ and ‘Nothing’, and later ‘Spiral Tower’ as well. Different types of music build upon and enhance each other, themselves as layers; the arrangement of the songs itself seems to be aimed primarily after musical effect rather than direct thematic resemblance. In a sense, then, Psychotic Waltz’s album is based to a large extent on meaning which is beneath the surface, just like a pun; this, by the way, is my excuse for the title of this post. And what is this hidden message? Don’t believe the lies that you see with your eyes; face up to your fears.

For all that, however, have faith. For that’s one thing they’ll never take away.

No Reflection at All: Arch-era Fates Warning

Flame is burning, centre of a fountain yearning,
Water spring eternal; spiritual water, physical fire.
Above the centre is sky: cold, cold neverness,
Just vastness filled with stars upon stars.

Introduction

‘The Spectre Within’ and ‘Awaken the Guardian’ are in many ways inseparable. While it is true that they are divergent in style, the overall sentiment behind them nonetheless forms a point of unity, and indeed we shall argue here that the latter can be seen almost as a response to the former. Given this connection, each album is equally integral to identifying the overall ethos expressed, despite them presenting it from different viewpoints, or rather in different aspects.  As such, an analysis of the two albums based on the tracing out of points of both connection and contrast between them may be able to shed light upon their overall significance, as well as to enrich our understanding of the music on each album through seeing it in terms of its place in the overall message of both albums.

The Spectre Within

And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

- Percy Shelley, ‘Ozymandias’.

If ‘The Spectre Within’ were to have a motto, it would probably be, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” The album predominantly expresses a sense of life’s futility, and the general atmosphere built is ultimately rather bleak. There is a deep concern with finitude, and the limited nature of life; in other words, with the consequences of the inevitability of death upon life. We shall begin by inspecting this aspect of the album, namely its presentation of finitude, and then connect it with other themes dealing with this side of the grave.

This aspect of the album is present from the very beginning, with the use of a clock striking in the introduction to ‘Traveler in Time’. The accompaniment of this with a deep, vaguely sinister riff creates the effect of time closing in, or, to use an opposite idiom, running out. The guitar doesn’t do anything particularly fancy, but rather simply repeats, along with a repeated drum pattern and the constant clock striking, with the effect of the repetition being essentially to create a vague sense of foreboding rather than anything particularly defined or malicious; what it expresses is not so much evil or darkness as simply a form of expectation, the sense that something is going to happen, but not due to any ill will but rather simply inevitability. It expresses not fear, which is more dynamic, but futility.

What impresses us about this passage is that its nature as an introduction to the song and album is in fact used in its favour, as its being an introductory section means that it contains some sense of expectation already, of a build-up and inevitability, and Fates Warning here simply build upon this already present nature to create atmosphere in a way which couldn’t have been done without the use of the introductory section. It would be interesting to compare this to the vast majority of introductions to first tracks (and, even worse, introductory tracks) in heavy metal, which are at best simply thrown in because it seems obligatory, without any real thought into the fact that it is the only chance that one will get to write an introduction to one’s album. Omnipresent bêtes noires aside, what is essential here is precisely the lack of malice, the sense of almost coldness present in this introduction, which forms a major part of the album. There is no antagonist, and time itself is not evil but simply present.

This atmosphere is supported by the riffing on the album, which can often be relentless, in a manner akin to technothrash in intent if not in style. For example, one may look at the guitar under the verse of ‘Traveler in Time’, which is deep, fast, rough and aggressive, more or less imposing itself upon the listener. This serves to give the sense of inevitability already noted in the introduction a more concrete and ruthless form, achieved essentially through the fact that the riffs, although dark atmospherically, are more or less emotionless, not angry or sad but simply there, which creates an effect which is not so much malicious as mocking. A cleaner production would probably harm this section, as it gains from the harsh edge granted by its production as it is.

John Arch’s vocals, which in this track essentially represent his usual style of vocal melodies speeded up a notch, compound this impression, with the speed of his vocals (‘Seeker of reea-son, reaperoftime’), along with their variance,  serving essentially to belittle, in a sense, the man who is a subject of the song. This is not so much belittling in the sense of making fun of somebody as the kind of belittling that one may find in weird fiction, where the size of the human body is compared to the universe and its life with eternity. John Arch is not laughing, but the universe may very well be. 

Through the speed with which Arch goes through his lines, he does not leave much space for the blatant expression of emotion in the vocals, and through this emphasizes the man’s weakness, rather than giving them time for sentiment. Rather than simply passing by in haste, the vocals express the same relentlessness which the riffs do, the same sense of time and hence life simply rushing by uncaring. Another technique used by Arch to achieve this effect is the following of high notes with a sudden shift to a lower one, for example in, ‘Rusty shackes of time / Burden his mind’. The high notes are cut short before they can express emotion, and finish with the almost mocking tone of the fast, lower vocals, reducing the emotion to one of emptiness.

The concern of ‘Traveler in Time’ is the extension of bodily life, and the obsession with the extension of physical existence as an end in itself. This obsession necessarily entails a one-sided focus on the physical, insofar as life is regarded only in its physical aspect and the extension of the body’s life seen as the confirmation and purpose of the man. Although man is in any case a physical being, and this allows him to act upon the world, in this case this physicality is taken one-sidedly; rather than featuring as the power which allows him to enact his will upon the world, it features as an end in itself. This theme, of the purely physical functioning as an end, and its consequences, is one which is quite prevalent in ‘The Spectre Within’ in its various forms.

However, the various forms of fixation upon the physical are not disconnected, as expressed in Seneca’s comment that, “when astray, your wanderings are limitless.” The aforementioned fear of death, for example, is inherent in what Socrates called the appetites, one major form of reduction of life to the physical, in which uncontrolled bodily desire by itself appears as the principle of life. We shall elaborate upon this, as the theme of fixation upon the physical is quite prevalent within the two albums, as for example in ‘Prelude to Ruin’.

The appetites essentially constitute impulses which find the use and consumption of other objects as their target and end. They take the form of a lack of their object as soon as they are unsatisfied; hunger, thirst, lust and so on. Without the object, there is a need for the object, and this is expressed in the form of suffering or lack, the feeling of need for the object which forms the actual impulse for the consumption of the object, as in addiction, hunger and so on.Without this suffering, or hunger, the appetites could not take the form of an impulsive need, as only because the lack of the object appears as suffering,  that is, is felt as a lack which must be escaped from, is there motivation to consume it in the realm of appetites. The lack of the object appears as suffering, and this creates the need to appropriate it.

Once the object is consumed, it gives physical pleasure; however, this pleasure is dependent upon the initial hunger, which constituted the appetite. It is pleasure from the satisfaction of the appetite, and hence presupposes that there was already a hunger for the object consumed. Given this, it is only relative pleasure, insofar as it is pleasure which exists only as the end of hunger, and which hence presupposes it. Likewise, with the object consumed or the use of it completed, the need resumes as well, and hence we go from a filled void to an empty void, and so on. Insofar as the appetite is an instinct, and caused simply by the lack of the object, it reappears again once the object is used. That is, hunger arises again, and this hunger, which constitutes the appetite, forms a prerequisite for the pleasure, giving it a cyclical character of continual external dependence. Without the initial suffering, there would be no appetite to satisfy, and hence no pleasure could arise. This forms a continual process of transient pleasure.

As such, the human body and its instinctive pleasures appear as the aim of life. The result of this form of pleasure’s transience is a sense of emptiness, that is , a futile search for pleasure which simply goes around in constant circles from pleasure to lack due to the purely relative nature of the pleasure, which requires emptiness before it may be filled. Insofar as one is in a state of lack, one needs the object for satisfaction; this, however, is only short-term and recreates the emptiness. As it were, the search is for absolute pleasure, as insofar as man seeks pleasure he does not seek its erosion, but rather its persistence; however, the pleasure attained is only relative, and exists only in a constant cycle. The result of this is that the search for absolute pleasure is carried out with a conception of pleasure which is in fact an inherently relative form, and therefore while on the one hand the search remains unfulfilled, nonetheless its apparent fulfillment remains always a mirage in the future in the form of absolute pleasure. One races on a treadmill.

This is reflected in a division between thought and the body, or mind and body to use the more famous phrase. The body is represented through impulses, through physical pain and pleasure, and indeed the demand of the appetites is solely the appropriation of the object into the body. This is inherently relative, and has no inherent telos or conscious intention, but rather merely impulses which switch on and off, as it were. Thought, by contrast, works towards conscious ends, and in that sense is teleological. The issue here is the mixture of teleology with a life that does not function towards conscious ends. Insofar as the appetites dominate the person, the person’s thought is reduced to simply giving these appetites rationalization in thought, precisely because thought does not by itself serve as a motive for action.

Insofar as practice is made up simply of seeking the relative pleasure of the appetites, this is translated in thought into teleological form through positing pleasure as one’s aim. However, by doing this the aim is fixed as absolute pleasure, or rather pleasure is given the role of absolute aim; one attempts to find pleasure, not suffering and lack, so that pleasure as such, as something absolute rather than only relative, and excluding suffering, comes into existence as one’s apparent motive in thought. On the other hand, this is in fact merely an illusory reflection of one’s actual existence, and serves merely as a teleological rationalization of something which is not rationally teleological. Its illusory character exists insofar as it represents oneself as pursuing absolute pleasure when, in practice, one is not doing so at all. Hence, thought and existence appear in conflict rather than unity, and as a result thought is excluded from practical life and merely reflects it in illusory form, hence in reality representing the appetites and transient pleasure despite its best intentions.

As such, as soon as age catches up, as soon as one becomes older and time begins to run out, time becomes one’s foe, because one has not achieved one’s purpose and it now becomes too late. This creates the basis for an increasingly aggressive struggle for pleasure as time comes to exert pressure, while on the other side of things this creates a desire for one’s own bodily immortality (or, what is the same, the fear of death) so that one may continue to seek pleasure in such action. In a sense, this wish for more time results from the fact that one becomes dependent upon one’s own, finite body and physical life for purpose, but death appears to end this completely; however, this life is already lived, and time travel is in contradiction with modern physics anyway.

This culminates at death, with the realization of one’s purposelessness taking perceptible form, as represented here through Arch singing that the old man of ‘Traveler in Time’ ‘realizes’, and cries before death, as well as in Faustus’ final speech in Marlowe’s play (which contains just about the most dark Ovid reference possible). As ‘Prelude to Ruin’ puts it, “Regrets illuminate.” An acute summation of this character of the appetites is found from the dying person of ‘Epitaph’:

So intense the pain that has crawled
From the bleeding corpse of pleasure,
That feeds the worm that writhes
Inside my brain.

As such, the characterization of the man in ‘Traveler in Time’ does not describe only a small subset of cases where people seek to live as long as possible, but may also serve to describe the condition of people who take the body as an end in general. The characteristic basis of the appetites is that on the one hand the human being appears only in the form of a body, and on the other hand the objects which they interact with appear only as external objects, whose externality is to be overcome only by incorporating them into the body. The conflict between thought and being, mind and body, means that thought takes on the role of simply trying to prolong and serve the body as much as possible, seeking its own satisfaction but only going round in circles. This situation is what prompted Socrates to argue that only when reason ruled over the appetites could reason take on real existence rather than that of illusions.

It is on this backdrop that the themes of futility and finitude are developed. The old man seeks the extension of bodily life as his end, and hence takes a merely physical aspect of life as his end, and yet ultimately the physical is only transient. In other words, he lives his life for more life, for the physical and finite, and the presence of finitude therefore looms before him as the trivialization of everything which he does, just as in the appetites the finitude of pleasure turns the search for pleasure into a pointless spiral until death. In Arch’s succint formulation, he, “sacrifice[s] living for life,” until he dies.

Once on his side, time turns to defy.

Time, which used to represent opportunity and life, now reduces to a foe; not a malicious one, however, or at the least one which is only malicious in its indifference. The passage of time appears as an imposition, precisely because life is seen as simply a static state which nonetheless is eroded inevitably by time, rather than as something actively lived. Thought under the appetites seeks a static state of pleasure, brought passively through the object rather than through action, but the body exists in time and so do the pleasures. Not only do the appetites constitute a cyclical path, but in fact a spiral towards death, with aging being an inevitable form of development as a physical being. This is also brought out by the comparisons between the man and clock, brought up again in ‘The Apparition’.

This sense of trivialization of physical ends by time’s passage is what is represented by the aggressive riffing, in this song and in ‘Kyrie Eleison’, and other aspects noted above which contribute towards the sense of a cold hostility. This is not, however, direct malice. The point is precisely that nobody is malicious towards the man, nobody seeks his undoing, but rather he brings it upon himself, turns it into an inevitability. It is his own flaw which comes to stand over him as an imposition, his own search for more time as an end in itself which elevates time’s passage into a force trivializing him. If time takes the form of an all-powerful force, a spectre, acting against him, this is not purely due to its own nature, but rather his life. This is not, of course, a matter of passing blame on him, but rather the purpose of the song is directed at the listener’s own life; that is, the song is not focused on criticizing the man, but rather in simply portraying his condition as a warning.

The song ends with a powerful image of mortality: the man suddenly gives way to emotion, as everything begins to become clear and his efforts come to nothing, and cries; his tears rust the clock, a reminder that, “Nothing's forever,” and he dies. Something very interesting about the this verse is the presentation of his death, which, rather than being focal, is presented at the end as simply, “And he died as well.” ‘Oh yes, and that happened too.’ In the first place, it establishes a direct connection between him and the rusting clock (The full line is: ‘The tears rust the clock, and he died as well’), both being assertions of finitude, and hence equalizes the rusting of the clock and his death as manifestations of time.

On the other hand, the brevity of its mention, despite it being essentially the consummation of the whole song thus far, serves to make it so that not only is his death compared with the rusting clock, but it is in fact put on the same level; that is, the man is reduced to a mere physical thing by his own obsession with physical life, in his own eyes and in his actions, and therefore his passing is simply the inevitable exercise of time upon objects, essentially equal in significance to the clock’s rusting. This epitomizes the coldness of the song, and the triviality to which his life is reduced. However, the darkness and power of time is a creation of his own making. Time and finitude appear as invincible, powerful antagonists to the man, but this is because he does not accept them but rather struggles to gain more life as an end in itself, in other words he makes them antagonists when they are not by nature malicious, but rather simply present.

The general portrayal of flaws working out inevitably towards a person’s downfall is very reminiscent of the concept of the ‘tragic flaw’ in theatre and literature. In fact, this album, especially on the first and last songs, can be compared in many ways to Marlowe’s ‘Dr. Faustus’, a comparison which we may explore in a later post.  The sense of powers of one’s own creation ruling over oneself is perhaps what is expressed by the album title, ‘The Spectre Within’, probably a reference to the Brocken spectre (this is stated quite clearly on the Fates Warning website’s FAQ); the Brocken Spectre describes a phenomenon in which mountaineers on the Brocken have been known to see a strange, tall and shadowy apparition in the mist, which in actual fact is simply their own shadow projected into the mist, within which it comes to appear huge due to confusions of depth perception and a lack of reference points within the mist for judging size.

Indeed, ‘The Spectre Within’, unlike the previous album, contains no ghosts or powers outside of people’s own creation; it is still dark, which forms the basis of its stylistic continuity with the first album, but here the spectres which used to be without are now within, now one’s own product. While the changes in style from this album to ‘Awaken the Guardian’ may to some extent represent maturation, and the completion of the passing out of the simpler style of ‘Night on Brocken’ begun in this album, on the other hand it may well be that on some level the retaining of the more ‘immature’ style of ‘Night on Brocken’  is in fact quite intentional. This album is transitional, but this transition may be not simply one of growth as musicians, but also of thematic development; it represents the fact of the spectres being within through taking the same dark atmosphere as the previous album, but on the other hand developing it as something within.

Extract from Paul Tillich’s ‘The Courage to Be’

“What conflicts with the courage of wisdom is desires and fears. The Stoics developed a profound doctrine of anxiety which also reminds us of recent analyses. They discovered that the object of fear is fear itself. “Nothing,” says Seneca, “is terrible in things except fear itself.” And Epictetus says, “For it is not death or hardship that is a fearful thing, but the fear of death and hardship.” Our anxiety puts frightening masks over all men and things. If we strip them of these masks their own countenance appears and the fear they produce disappears. This true even of death. Since every day a little of our life is taken from us – since we are dying every day – the final hour when we cease to exist does not of itself bring death, it merely completes the process. The horrors connected with it are a matter of imagination. They vanish when the mask is taken from the image of death.

“It is uncontrolled desires that create masks and put them over men and things. […] [M]an’s distorted imagination transcends the objective needs (“When astray, your wanderings are limitless”) and with them any possible satisfaction. And this, not the desire as such, produces an “unwise tendency towards death.” ”

The Apparition

Having mentioned the album title, the next track to cover will be one which is also perhaps the album’s highlight, namely ‘The Apparition’, where the title’s imagery is perhaps most explicitly alluded to. In the first place, this is the point in the album where it becomes clear that John Arch should really be a poet. This thought raises the further question of whether he in fact reads poetry like he sings lyrics. To conclude this section of the investigation, Arch/Matheos really ought to make a concept album which consists of simply a Shakespeare play with Arch playing all of the parts.

That clarified, we may further examine the song in this light. The lyrics begin with the suggestion to, “Lock the world up tight, out of your mind.” (Well, alright, they really begin with, ‘Ahh ahhh ahh ahhh-ahhhhh’)  In other words, shut out the physical world for a moment and look at what is ‘deep within’. While the lyrics of ‘The Apparition’ take the form of a journey in space, it is really a description of a journey within oneself. If one is not to be absorbed wholly in the world of physical, finite things, one must look inside oneself to get a sense of perspective. If thought directed purely towards the physical succumbs to illusions about the nature of the physical, and imparts infinitude to what is finite,  then these illusions cannot be shattered without thought returning to itself and taking a critical look at itself, actually thinking, and seeing these illusions as in fact illusions. This can only be done by turning aside from a complete absorption with physical things, and rather thought functioning by itself and considering the nature and significance of these things with the aim of truth, rather than pure practical need.

In other words, thought must walk its own path, must shut out the world to find the world of truth. Only through this can the world’s real significance be grasped, and can thought come to exist as a power in and of itself, rather than as a mere rationalization of the appetites; one may compare this process to the famous Platonic analogy of leaving the cave, hence turning one’s gaze towards truth and the conceptual, the intellectual world, rather than the physical world by itself. Indeed, even in Plato’s cave analogy this is compared to a journey, to getting up and leaving the cave to see the sun-lit world; the journey analogy is appropriate precisely because it is not simply a matter of accepting certain algorithms or theories, but of really altering one’s thoughts and hence one’s real way of thinking and acting within the world, one’s whole perspective, and this cannot be achieved immediately.

To put it another way, once thought has begun to return to itself and to think with truth as its aim, it nonetheless has been restrained thus far to merely a servant to the appetites, and as such cannot rule as it is, but must rather develop into an appropriate form to do so. To do this, it must leave behind all of its previous content, and face facts which completely undermine its prior views and outlook, if only to allow for new views; it must negate what used to be absolute for it, reduce it to nothing, and only in this process come to see the world and life anew.

In Plato (or Socrates, if you prefer), this takes the form of being blinded by the light of the world outside the cave, and having to adjust one’s eyes to it before one can see, which is itself a gradual process. As Socrates comments, when one’s eyes are adjusted to the dark, light is blinding, while when one’s eyes are adjusted to the light, darkness is likewise blinding, in that one cannot see clearly within it. In other words, adjusting to the light requires one’s eyes adjusting to a completely different form, in which one does not see what one used to see with ease, but can now see other things. This also expresses the fact that this journey is by no means a comfortable one, but rather one of great discomfort; one goes into it with a perspective based around one’s previous life, around the finite and physical, yet must look directly at that which shows that one’s previous perspective was wrong, and that what one thought was one’s purpose is but illusion.

On the one hand, thought is prompted to follow this journey by its own nature, insofar as it searches for absolute pleasure but cannot find it, and hence is encouraged to think in order to find real satisfaction; on the other hand, the journey is not a comfortable one, as is reflected by the reluctant nature of the chorus of ‘The Apparition', and the call to, “Take me away.” One has to be willing to go through with it, despite this, as nobody else can do it for one.

This background established, we may now return to our previous analysis of ‘The Spectre Within’. We have already suggested that this spectre may consist of enemies and powers over one produced by a life devoted to the appetites and the physical, such as finitude, fate and so on. They hence ultimately exist as enemies only within oneself, as one’s own product, rather than naturally; they are not in reality malicious, rather simply existent, but nonetheless appear effectively so, as a power constantly and uncaringly thwarting us. However, insofar as they take the form of foes, this is not a product of the body, which could not really hold any opinion of them, but rather of thought. This is because they deny the absoluteness of what thought, in its illusions, thinks to be absolute; indeed, they are only foes insofar as they are the denial of this absoluteness. The finitude of the physical constitutes the refutation of the absoluteness of the pleasure of the appetites, and the finitude of life condemns the search for more life, for effective immortality, to futility.

However, the journey above described consists precisely in the unmasking of our previous illusions, in thought seeking truth and hence doing away with illusions. As such, it functions as precisely the acceptance of finitude and hence as the denial of what it had previously held absolute; rather than finitude appearing a spectre, an external power not understood and contrary to thought, it must be accepted as being the truth if one is not to continually bang one’s head against it.

In that case, the path of our journey is strewn with these spectres, but one must overcome one’s fear and walk on. Insofar as one is still in the mindset of the appetites, which will be the case until the journey’s end, these things will indeed appear in the form of spectres above one, of malicious powers, but nonetheless one may only progress by ignoring this antagonistic form until one finally reaches the end of one’s journey. Or, to put things in more clear terms, in undergoing the journey within oneself one will have to face truths which appear to trivialize oneself, and hence the closer one gets to truth the more vague whispers will arise of things which seemed antagonistic, of the fact of time and finitude. This aspect of the journey is probably what is represented by the second verse of the song:

Drawing near
Someone passes through me,
A silent entity;
Never looking back,
I won't dare.
Evil eyes staring through the walls of stone;
I fear I travel not alone.
Laughter echoes with the blatant wind,
I have passed the threshold deep within me.

Of course, at this point, the fear is still vague and undefined, as indicated by the use of references to ‘entities’ and ‘echoes’, and the reference to fearing that one travels not alone, in the sense of fearing that one is being watched, which is still an undefined fear which does not indicate the nature of one’s company. An echo comes from no definite direction, but rather surrounds one, indicating a voice but not its source. It is clear that something is wrong, but not clear what. However, nonetheless he wishes to know the truth rather than turn back, as expressed by the exclamation, “I want to know.”

It is worth noting that a similar portrayal exists in ‘Epitaph’, with the realization of death’s closing in:

Inner voices haunt my numbered days
Darkness calls me with her laughs.

However, what prompts the person from ‘The Apparition’ to wish to escape even more is what he then goes on to discover, in what is perhaps the climax of the song (and quite a climax):

In the four corners of life are the golden mirrors,
Reflecting what you are and what you are to be:
In the first is a young boy,
White dove in his hand,
In the second is a warrior in armour;
In the third is an old man,
Gold watch in his hand,
Fourth and last,
No reflection at all.

The last mirror, of course, represents the finitude of life, the fact that after death our body is reduced to nonexistence, and that the progress of the previous mirrors of life was one towards death. The reason for the use of mirrors in this context is perhaps to represent the fact that it is a reflection of the singer’s own life (or, rather, the life of the person whose perspective the lyrics are from), and how it will go if he continues on his current path, in other words self-reflection. They represent the connection of the future with the past and present, in that they represent different stages of life as the reflection of one man.

However, the other mirrors are of interest as well. Notably, they represent the various stages of life through physical objects as well as the person’s body; the white dove, the armour and gold watch, all mentioned in a manner which couples them with the stage (that is, each description of the person is followed by the object, forming a pattern). The objects are therefore symbolic. With the old man, the object is fairly interesting in the light of ‘Traveler in Time’, insofar as we are once more presented an old man with a clock. Again, this represents the gathering concern with time and fear of death, the need to keep oneself alive through a clock and attempt to gain immortality. On therefore becomes essentially identified with the clock, insofar as, rather than living, one’s life consists only of ticking over the minutes and going on continually, like a clock. Hence, the relation of the old man and gold watch in the verse; the old man becomes essentially reduced to a clock, ticking onwards continually, and hence reduced to a physical object.

Likewise with the warrior. To quote ‘Prelude to Ruin’, “War and temper tantrums [note the juxtaposition] are the makeshifts of ignorance,” in other ways they are stopgap measures implemented in ignorance as a response to real needs and purpose. The warrior in armour, just like the old man chasing time,  is only an expression of the need for purpose, in this case expressed through armour and war rather than the attempt to scrape out time, but nonetheless constituting an attempt to find purpose without seeking truth, hence encompassed in illusion. It is, in other words, an attempt to find purpose in something wholly external to one, rather than searching within oneself; the hope that somehow, through one’s fighting, one will find one’s purpose at another’s expense.

This, however, constitutes one’s reduction to a suit of armour, insofar as one is reduced to simply fighting continually in an attempt to find purpose through this, and hence see one’s life simply in terms of a suit of armour fighting others, rather than anything within. More importantly, one relates to others only as a hostile suit of armour, not as a human. As such, one once again seeks purpose through the world outside by itself, and hence reduces oneself to an object.

This warrior may refer not only to literal warriors, but also to the aforementioned ‘temper tantrums’, to the manifestation of the need for purpose through conflict and aggressiveness. By itself, this is merely outward-directed, and hence does not yet involve thought as such. The old man represents the end of the warrior as soon as time begins to catch up, the reduction from battle to a golden watch, while the final mirror represents the futility of even this. In other words, it represents finitude in its most direct form, the representation of the fact that one will in fact cease to exist, and become nothing. The existence of any one thing is just a prelude to ruin. We shall examine the interconnection of all of these stages further after we have examined the rest of the song, as well as the role of the dove in this connection.

Another notable image in this song is that of ‘spiritual’ water and ‘physical’ fire. The use of these terms in introducing the two suggests, presumably, that fire is meant to represent the physical, and water the spiritual. In the last verse of the song, we find:

Waters rise towards physical fire,
Voice says, “Tabernackle is forbidden,”
Never looking back, I won't dare;
If the water touches the flame,
Forever in darkness yes I'll remain.

Here, the person’s initial association with the physical and the appetites comes into direct conflict with the progress of their inner journey, in which their focus must turn to the spiritual and mental rather than the purely physical side of life. Thus far, they have seen their purpose and existence by the light of the physical, and derived their purpose from it, but now this is being extinguished, and if they do not escape they fear being trapped in darkness with nowhere to turn and no direction. This is perhaps analogous to being blinded by the light from outside of the cave in Socrates’ cave analogy. This leaves them the opportunity either of giving up and going back to the physical, or remaining within themselves, continuing their journey, and being forced to find new purpose despite their old light fading. Finally:

White dove flies from the young boy's hand
Through the mirror of the old man, only way out.

These lines are fairly interesting, and I can’t say that I have a definite idea of how to take them, so I’d be interested if you could offer how you interpreted them yourself in the comments. Nonetheless, I can offer a few ideas about them which I do have. In the first place, the final reference to the ‘only way out’ seems to refer to the mirror of the old man, suggesting that the only way to escape from the journey is to ultimately reduce oneself to the situation of the man from ‘Traveler in Time’, which is here displayed as essentially the inevitable result of continuing to live in the light of the physical. In other words, in order to escape and prevent the water from consuming the fire, one must return to living according to the physical fire once more, and hence return to one’s path to the old man.

In fact, in a sense, one would have taken another step along that road, as one has glimpsed one’s finitude, and as such the old man with the golden watch is simply the attempt to reconcile this pressing finitude with the continuance of the dominance of the finite by attempting to make the finite infinite. It could, in other words, be interpreted either as referring to the return to ‘normal’ life, which will eventually lead to the status of the old man, or becoming the old man already, regardless of physical age per se.

In addition, we could also make some guesses as to the white dove’s role here. The white dove, insofar as they are presented in contrast to the warrior in armour, could represent peace in some sense, perhaps the peace of childhood, where time is plentiful. However, insofar as one embarks upon the path of the physical as opposed to the mental (ie. spiritual),  this peace is eventually consigned to die out as time inevitably passes and one’s days for finding pleasure come to be numbered, leading in the first place to tensions manifested in the form of the warrior attempting to find purpose at the expense of others, in violence and sharp, unthinking emotion, as a manifestation precisely of the mind’s feeling preliminary pressures of time, sensing intuitively that time is catching up little by little; as this proves futile and time finally closes in, one is reduced to a form of submission, that of the old man, which is nonetheless mingled with denial insofar as one now tries to defeat time and struggle for infinitude. Time finally appears directly as the antagonist, but insofar as purpose is to be viewed as something physical, the physical must be seen as something absolute, and hence on the other hand time is denied, in practice if not in thought, through the attempt to scrape out as much life as possible.

Finally, one dies, and one’s finitude hence appears directly and perceptibly to one, so that there is no more hope of denial, and hence all that one has done thus far appears empty in this realization. Hence the realization on the part of the old man in ‘Traveler in Time’ when his time has come, and hence also his tears. This kind of death is associated with damnation throughout the album, from the reference to the path to hell in ‘Traveler in Time’ to the explicit references in ‘Kyrie Eleison’. Through the previous examination, we seem to have arrived at some form of explanation for the overall progress of the stages of life presented. As life goes on, we age, and hence finitude is asserted as a reality; as such, insofar as we live a life dedicated to the physical as such, finitude continually takes on a more clearly antagonistic form as time goes on and our remaining lifetime shortens. The spectre grows and becomes more visible.

However, while we are young and time appears nigh unlimited, this antagonism too is nearly nonexistent, and hence we live in some form of peace. As we grow, we become aware of time, although only as a spectre which haunts our thought insofar as it is not accepted by us (one could compare Faustus’ fear of God, or, in a way, even MacBeth’s degeneration as his end nears. As ‘Exodus’ puts it, it is a ‘dormant fear’). Our purpose remains unfulfilled, yet time slowly closes in as an unwelcome guest. This shatters the peace, and leads initially to the attempt to find purpose not through this no longer existent peace, but rather through war, that is, through acting not peacefully but in an increasingly desperate and aggressive manner towards the finding of purpose.

This encompasses ‘wars and temper tantrums’, as well as the search for pleasure at the expense of others in general. The essential point is that one could no longer live in peace, but must now seek purpose and pleasure aggressively under the pressure of time. Ultimately, however, this aggressiveness ends up dangerous and hence simply raises the risk of death more clearly, especially as one ages and becomes less capable of it. As such, we fall further into the state of the old man, simply accumulating time and living like a clock. The white dove hence flies into the mirror of the old man, and this path forms the only alternative to legitimately and honestly accepting finitude in thought, through seeking to find what is true rather than merely following the appetites. Finally, of course, one reaches death, and then one finally realizes, albeit a bit too late, and one accepts finitude.

In that case, escaping from this path requires facing death earlier than death, in other words seeing the finitude inherent in life, going into oneself and gazing upon the fourth mirror until the fire is consumed. Death must be seen as immanent in life, and only through viewing life through this lens can we see things as really finite and accept them as such. This seems at first to be the negation of life, its reduction to worthlessness, as it were a form of nihilism. Death is the negation of life, and hence insofar as life is seen in terms of death it would appear to be reduced to nothing. As such, it appears at first as simply darkness. However, this is only the annihilation of the physical fire. The point is to see that one’s current path leads to the dominance of time, and only through admitting this to face the issue with sober senses and attempt to transcend it.

Exodus, ascend the plane

We shall now move on to ‘Exodus’, due to the fact that its subject is quite similar to that of ‘The Apparition’. It again presents a journey, and one which is ultimately metaphorical rather than physical as such. However, it reflects the general difference between ‘Awaken the Guardian’ and ‘The Spectre Within’, in that if ‘The Spectre Within’ is more concerned with the assertion of death and the purposelessness of a life lived through objects, ‘Awaken the Guardian’ is concerned with transcendence, with seeing independently of the physical fire.

In the first place, the song sets up the general aim of the journey, namely to, “rise above the sands of time.” While ‘The Apparition’ consisted in the assertion of time, here we attempt to rise above it. This aspect may be understood in relation to the theme of fate already developed in ‘Prelude to Ruin’, namely that fate and time rule insofar as the existence of any one thing is but the prelude to ruin. The realm of time is the realm of the purely material, in a sense, where all things must die and hence meet their fate. Having seen this, the aim now becomes to transcend it, an aim represented through the location of Arcana.

It is worth noting that, in describing the journey to Arcana, Arch sings, “I travel starry spheres in trine.” Being ‘in trine’ is an astrological arrangement of planets signifying harmony, and represents powers innate to one in some sense, such as artistic and creative abilities; they are innate inasmuch as they deal with the individual in terms of their self-expression as such, rather than simply in the relation with the world, and hence are personal. Trines are also associated with inspiration in connection to the above. While I’m not how many of these aspects are being referred to in the song, nonetheless it is perhaps of significance that the act of ‘rising above the sands of time’ is represented through travelling through astral spheres which are in trine.

The desert is presented as essentially dry, devoid of all fruits. There are mirages, such as that of water, but ultimately the water is just sand, and one must, “Spit out the sand, [and] be on your way.” This may perhaps refer to visions of pleasure through earthly things as such, which are ultimately illusory, and whose following ultimately leads one to be further submerged in the depths of subjection to time rather than transcending it. It is interesting that once again the physical is represented through heat and fire, with the ‘blazing’ sun, desert setting and such, seemingly a reference back to the imagery of ‘The Apparition’. The mirages could in this case reference the fact that this heat itself produces illusions as a way to avoid the fear of fate and finitude, the fact that in avoiding the truth one must continue to live through continually seeking illusory pleasures, which appear as relief and purpose, water, but are not in fact so.

This could tie back to the use of water to represent the spiritual in ‘The Apparition’; in a sense, water represents salvation from the heat and the barren reality of the desert and time, and hence a sense of purpose in the purposelessness of time. However, this water is merely illusory, and reduces to sand as soon as one drinks it; it is an illusion, a product of the heat itself and a transient means of escape from its reality, and so long as one continues chasing these illusions one cannot follow one’s own path. Having noted this connection, however, it is also worth noting the difference between the imagery of the two songs as well. In ‘The Apparition’, the fire represented the source of light, and the victory of the water over it seemed a prelude to darkness. However, in ‘Exodus’ the fire appears in the form of oppressive heat, and water as a salvation from it; in other words, it represents the other side of the coin, the fact that the fire is not simply a light, but also heat, and that in actual fact water would not be condemnation but salvation.

The rather cold irony of the mirage is seen when the person who is the subject of this song sees reflected in the water the “blazing desert sun,” followed by the vulture of fear (more on him later) laughing at him. Of course, in reality there is no water precisely because of the blazing desert sun, so that the sun’s reflection in fact functions as a sign that the water is not in fact real. The function of this is to display the fact that salvation cannot be found in this desert, but rather only by transcending it, that is, in Arcana; given this, the apparent salvation of the desert is revealed to be illusory by its location.

An effect used quite interestingly in this song, and a fairly rare one in music, at least to my knowledge, is the alternation of first- and second-person perspectives through the verses. This alteration takes quite a prominent part in the song, with Arch on the one hand taking the part of the person on the journey, and on the other hand representing somebody essentially guiding and advising them on their path, perhaps a ‘guardian’. When Arch is voicing the traveler, his voice is less assured, and often oscillates widely, while on the other hand when advising his voice is more assured and controlled; for example, compare the earlier portion of the second verse (in which the traveler sees the mirage) to its end on ‘Spit out the sand, be on your way’ and the soaring chorus. It’s quite notable how Arch seems to be more effective at this character changing than, for example, Geoff Tate on ‘Mindcrime’, and this is perhaps because Arch’s vocals are more oriented towards involved vocal melodies, which means that he can change ‘characters’ simply by changing the pattern of his singing.

The reluctant and inconstant nature of the traveler’s vocals may be representative of the challenges of their journey, and their fear. In the second verse, fear is presented in the form of a vulture. Now, vultures are not a novel image in this album, and in ‘Prelude to Ruin’ we can find a reference to how, “Vultures scavenge the subconscious of our wandering minds,” to make us fall and yield our minds. In ‘Exodus’, there is a reference to the ‘vulture of fear’, while in ‘Pirates of the Underground’ we find:

Tuned out in neutral vegetation, prime time
Bleeding hearts howl at the moon.
Foul temptress, oh she sings seduction,
As vultures feast forbidden fruit.

It is clear that vultures here have a metaphorical significance, and also that they are represented negatively, to get the more obvious facts out of the way. The vultures here seem to represent emotions and feelings which feed upon our minds subconsciously, and lead to the further degeneration of our mind, hence ‘feasting forbidden fruit’ in the sense of promoting the negative tendencies of our mind. The vulture of fear is represented as laughing at the traveler in ‘Exodus’ when he tries to drink the illusory water, raising the traveler’s resentment. There is also a reference to fear in the book of the dead of the ‘false guardian’, which states not to bear children because, “they will inhere the dormant fear in man,” so that the theme of fear is linked here with that of predestination.

Given that the vulture of fear arises to laugh at the man after they attempt to drink the water, it could represent two aspects of fear. On the one hand, the traveler followed the mirage due to fear occasioned by the thirst, as reflected in their statement that they are going to, “drink it dry.” In other words, the fear of being unable to quench their thirst and hence dying out. On the other, the fall of the illusion will have simply replenished this fear due to the apparent hopelessness of finding salvation and purpose, which could be what occasions the laughter of the vulture; the traveler attempts to escape from the fear by alleviating their thirst, but ultimately this is futile. In a sense, then, insofar as  the water represents the finding of purpose to some extent, or at least the illusion of it, the vulture represents fear of purposelessness, or indeed fear of time and fate. This forms a motivation for following mirages aggressively in search of fulfillment, and hence feeds forbidden fruits.

However, as we have seen, this fear is ultimately inherent to life within the desert, life insofar as it resides purely in the finite. The attempts of the warrior and old man for purpose and immortality represent merely attempts at conquering this ‘dormant fear’ within the desert itself, but ultimately simply work to sustain it. Ultimately, they cannot end it, but rather merely hide it and pretend that it does not exist, rather than facing it head-on; in other words, they do not admit its existence in practice, but rather continue seeking their mirages, while ignoring the fear that they must pass. The fear existed, for example, as a necessary result of the journey of ‘The Apparition’, and they escape the fear only by avoiding this journey and hence not facing it explicitly. The solution to this fear is ultimately not to seek to hide or get rid of it, but rather to admit to it and resist its temptations towards mirages (in ‘The Apparition’, represented through the person’s will to be taken away from the journey due to the fear occasioned by it) until one is able to finally transcend it and enter Arcana. As such, when the traveler shouts to the vulture, “You’re mine one day!” the ‘guiding’ voice is forced to intervene, in a calm and advisory tone, and state:

Spit out the sand,
Be on your way.

In other words, rather than being preoccupied with trying to stave off the fear, resume one’s path towards Arcana (we shall investigate another instance of this view in the next paragraph). The fact that this is spoken by somebody other than the main character is made quite clear here by not only the shift in tone from anger to a more calming tone, as if addressing somebody to calm them down, but also more explicitly by the use of the word ‘your’, so that it becomes clear that it is somebody addressing the traveler. This then segues into the chorus, which is also addressed to the traveler and urges them to follow the path to Arcana, hence implying that the chorus and ‘Spit out the sand’ line are delivered from the same perspective, and from one addressed to the main character rather than this character themselves.

The treatment of fear above described is brought out more explicitly in the lines:

The power of good will not be shown by
conquering fear;
Let it be known, its a constant resist
Til your transformation

Here, arrival at Arcana is compared to a transformation, bringing out more clearly that the journey through the space of the desert is metaphorical, and that Arcana in fact represents a change in life rather than a location in space as such. It is also identified with seeing the power of good (akin to grasping the ‘form of the good’ in Socrates), so that arrival at Arcana is essentially being shown the power of good and the resulting transformation. In order to arrive at Arcana, however, we cannot simply try to ‘conquer fear’, which will not show the power of good, but rather to simply resist it, that is, not to run away from the journey, until the power of good is shown precisely through its ability to give one a new light. During the journey itself, the spectre of fear cannot be escaped from, but rather it’s a ‘constant resist’ (as in ‘The Apparition’, where the character continually feels the urge to escape but nonetheless continues on their path) until one finally reaches one’s destination, Arcana, and the spectres dissolve due to one’s own complete transformation rather than any attempt at conquering fears; the fears are not conquered, they simply cease to have sense for our transformed selves (or, to be facetious, the fear is not abolished, it withers away).

This leaves us with two important questions: on the one hand, what exactly Arcana represents, and on the other hand what the guardians represent. To do this, we must turn to the song ‘Guardian’ itself, to shed light on the further meaning of ‘Exodus’.

Guardian: Sovereign servitor.

The main theme of ‘Guardian’ is probably seeking salvation through others, as perhaps noted most clearly in the final line of the chorus, “Answer me, save my will.” This theme is also present in ‘Giant’s Lore’, which we shall discuss in good time. One of the first things done in this song is to get rid of the boundaries between reality and the world of guardians:

Entities pass in the night; Guardians and the
Reaper fight, the will to live shall win;
Mares of hope ride through their dreams,
Blinding light awakens sleeping dawn, it seems
It was all a dream, an endless dream.

The last line at first seems to establish that the guardians and such were simply a dream divorced from a colder reality, mere fantasy as it were, an impression strengthened by Arch’s delivery of the first part of the line. ‘It seems it was all a dream’ seems to represent essentially a sad realization through Arch’s restrained and somewhat melancholy vocals, as if the wake of light has ended the dreams of night. However, this is then countered by the last part of the line, ‘An endless dream’, a fairly subversive phrasing which in fact implies that this dream does not in fact end with daylight, and is not merely a form of escapism and an illusion, but rather constitutes reality. Early Fates Warning are known for their fantasy lyrics, as opposed to ‘realistic’ ones, and this perhaps constitutes a statement that in actual fact the boundary here is not as sharp as one could think.

In that case, Fates Warning, through describing their guardians, journeys and so on, describe phenomena which in fact exist for us, albeit spiritually rather than physically. Fates Warning’s intention here is to undermine the view of the spiritual as merely fictional and fantastical, and to rather display that it exists as a part of our lives just as much as the physical. For example, it is clear that, if we appreciate music, we do not see it as simply a succession of  sound wavelengths, but rather view it as having a greater significance which cannot be summed up simply through physical description.

If something is beautiful, this is not a purely natural characteristic, but has a subjective element; on the other hand, one may hardly some up our experience of a moving piece by simply describing the key it was written in. Indeed, to some extent most music, even that which portrays reality, must bring in this subjective element; for example, while ‘A Pleasant Shade of Grey’ is more or less down-to-earth, nonetheless its purpose is not simply to describe a situation, but rather it portrays this situation through certain emotions, and hence through a certain, human perspective. In a sense, it cannot be reduced to simply describing physical things, but rather it portrays this situation through a certain coloured lens, and hence gives not only reality but also reality as it is interpreted and coloured subjectively.

Ultimately, humans may only discuss human reality, as our language is a reflection of our reality. However, this subjective element, which gives a certain shade to the world, is just as much a part of our world as the physical objects; one may compare this to the fact that a certain piece of wood may represent a chess piece for us, in our world, but this is not a physical characteristic as such. The subjective character of the world is therefore what may be described, in some cases, as its spiritual side. For example, if an art piece inspires one, then this takes on not only a physical, but also a spiritual character, and hence changes the shades by which you see the world in general (for example, through reading Lord Dunsany one may learn to see nature in a different way, reflecting his own affection for it). As such, it takes on a spiritual existence for one, and may come to act as a guide or advisor in one’s general life rather than merely a physical thing which stimulates limited pleasures and which one relates to only physically. The same, of course, applies to one’s relations to people.

To return to the song, the chorus seems to essentially express a wish for salvation through helping another and being remembered by them, expressing the duty to the person as being a “penance.” However, more interesting in relation to our current focus are the references to the ‘silent black’ and guardians later in the song.

I'm a fire without a flame, helpless child without a name,
With broken wings; catch me, I'm falling.
I'm a question with no answer, who are
You that takes my life away from me?
Unveil the boundaries of the black.

I had a dream I was you, strong as the fire
In my veins, and when I called out your
Name, I would remain to witness the pain;
I am beyond silent black, I will be back
As your guardian.

The first reference to the ‘black’, in the first verse above, occurs within a context of helplessness. The verse deals with the sense of having “broken wings” and falling, being helpless in resisting the force of gravity. A sense of purposelessness is expressed through the image of being a ‘question without an answer’, and hence incomplete, unable to answer the question of life with a purpose. The image of broken wings is used to suggest an inability to work against a stronger force by oneself, and is quite reminiscent of the following section from ‘Exodus’:

Sovereign the force, more than emotion,
It controls your destiny at hand.

Here, it is a reference to “predestination,” and fate. Insofar as one lives similarly to the man in ‘Traveler in Time’, there is no real question of freedom, because one’s aim is merely one’s own life being extended, so that ultimately it is governed simply by fate; as Arch puts it, the thread of life is sensitive, and in any case gets cut eventually. As such, it appears that one is ruled over, predestined, by the fates, precisely because one’s aim consists in something simply material, rather than spiritual, and hence one which is inherently finite and passes away by its own nature. It is ultimately not due to any external imposition, but due to the workings of and development of the body over time that it dies.

Of course, insofar as one sees it as an end in itself, one sees it independently of this finite nature, just as the pleasure of the appetites may only be made an aim through giving such pleasure an illusory, absolute character. However, insofar as this nature is ignored, it appears as an external imposition upon one, hence an act of the three fates or predestination, for example; in other words, as a sovereign force which is unconcerned about one’s emotions. While the body may die, however, this does not translate into predestination of our lives on the whole unless they are dedicated towards chasing more time, in which case the outcome is indeed already given. The fates sing only to the ‘reapers of reality’ (‘reaper’ presumably in the sense of people who gather crops from a field, which would be appropriate given the reference elsewhere in the song to ‘Walking in the devil’s field, sowing his seed.’ The word was also used in referring to the ‘Traveler in Time’ as a ‘reaper of time’. It seems to essentially represent covetousness).

As such, in ‘Exodus’ Fates Warning reject the ‘prophecies of tyrant guardians’, and call to ‘traject the esoteric sisters’, because they are ultimately ‘mythical’ (compare Seneca’s statement: “Undisturbed by fears and unspoiled by pleasures, we shall be afraid neither of death nor of the gods.” As Paul Tillich comments, “In this sentence the gods stand for fate.” The esoteric sisters may perform a similar role here). Now, the verses in question deal with the ‘black’, and more specifically with escaping it, or rather going beyond it (as such, the person wishes for the boundaries to be unveiled, so that he is able to see them and hence move beyond this black). This connects into the overall theme of transcension in this album. In the first place, the imagery of a ‘silent black’, as well as the statement that ‘I will be back’ have connotations of death. The ‘silent black’ here could represent death, seen as fading into nothing and absolute darkness; this calls back the imagery of ‘Epitaph’, where the dead man is said to be, “lost in silence [and] swallowed in vastness,” a similar image to that of a person submerged in a ‘silent black’ which appears boundless and hence to swallow them (so that they request for its boundaries to be revealed.) This passage could, then, refer to the feeling of falling helplessly towards death.

This section of the song may be taken to represent death, or at least the threat of it. In that case, the next verse represents its transcendence. It begins with the recounting of a dream, in which the person singing the song presumably takes the place of the person whom the chorus is sung to, and they hence cease to see them as merely external, an acquaintance whom they see for some time and then leave, but rather ‘remain to witness the pain’.

I had a dream I was you strong as the fire
In my veins and when I called out your
Name I would remain to witness the pain
I am beyond silent black I will be back
As your guardian

The reference to remaining after calling out their name may perhaps refer to their calling out the person’s name on leaving them. In that case, this would represent a sense of empathy, that is, of a concern for the other person in themselves, rather than simply a concern about one’s interaction with them (essentially, caring about another person for their own sake rather than simply in terms of their effect on oneself; as such, caring for their condition even after one leaves them). This sense of empathy, however, provides an avenue to escape from the ‘black’, namely becoming a guardian. In that case, transcendence is associated with guardianship. The person returns from death, in some sense, as the other person’s guardian.

This could be compared with the guiding voice of ‘Exodus’, which exists for the traveler as a voice of guidance. In a sense, perhaps in aiding another to overcome their problems, one also takes the form of a guardian for them, in other words they remember one, and one’s guidance continues to exist for them in their own journey. One therefore takes on a spiritual existence for them, as a part of their life independent of one’s own physical form as such, and hence continue to exist as an active guardian for them. This may also apply in the case of art, for example, insofar as it is a form of self-expression through which the artist expresses themselves and gives their subjective views and feelings a physical form, through which it may be transmitted to others and form a part of their own view of life.  As such, rather than having simply physical existence for others, and hence a passing existence only as an acquaintance, one gains spiritual existence, and therefore an existence which plays a part throughout their life as a guide.

To some degree, it could be said that most major artists and such play the role of guardians for humanity, insofar as their art serves to inspire people to transcend ordinary existence and reach for Arcana. Of course, in order to help or guide another, one must of course have physical existence; one may not talk without a vocal organ, listen without ears, and so on. In the case of art and such, this physical prerequisite is extended to the necessary materials, such as pens, paper, paints, and so on. Likewise, we must act in accordance with physical necessity; for example, we must have black paint if we are to paint something black, although on the other hand it is only because we know of this natural necessity that we are able to express ourselves through it (for example, only because we know that certain chemicals combine naturally to give a certain paint can we freely make the paint to use).

Nonetheless, here the physical does not appear as the alpha and omega of action, but rather simply as a basis for the spiritual, for self-expression and free action. One is not struggling for more life, but rather living the life that one has; not against nature, but rather in tune with it and working with it to express oneself. Or, as a certain text which walks a very thin line between having a point and being unintentionally hilarious puts it, “life is really capable of producing and reproducing itself according to a plan, not as and end in itself but as an actual way of living.” Guardianship is therefore one aspect of the transcendence represented by Arcana.

The spiritual nature of guardianship is expressed also through referring to ‘guardian angels’ in ‘Prelude to Ruin’, a parallel also brought up here:

Angels in white, you have sacrificed, you witness
and bury the pain,
You walk hand and hand with the fear stricken child,
Strengthen the weak and the lame;
Have you seen beyond the unborn, the
pillars of penance and lore?
Perpetual journey into the realm, the
sovereign servitor.

Significant here is the reference to the ‘unborn’. The word is also used in ‘Prelude to Ruin’:

Time, Time, Time, an imaginary line; mine, not
Yours, nor yours, mine;
They lead the blind back to mothers womb,
Tomb of the unborn child

The ‘unborn’ here seems to refer to the ‘blind’, the nature of which could perhaps be illuminated through another line from ‘Guardian’:

Pace the hallway, blind man, for a million miles of stars
His mind has seen. Think you may he lives in darkness;
We're the dark, he's seen the light of dream.

This blindness is not literal blindness, but rather blindness to the light of dream, hence blindness to the spiritual and imaginative side of life and a fixation on the physical by itself. The point about leading the tomb of the unborn child could again be a reference to the sacrifice of living for life, and connected to the fact that after death one essentially returns to the same state of non-existence as one was at before one was born, so that insofar as one’s life is not lived, but rather one simply covets time, one simply gets lead back to where one was, and are in that sense ‘unborn’. As such, the aim of the journey to Arcana is to see beyond this. The connection of these ‘angels’ with the journey to Arcana in ‘Exodus’ is established further with the reference to the ‘Perpetual journey into the realm’. The nature of the guardian is summed up through the phrase ‘sovereign servitor’; through helping others, they gain sovereignty. Hence, becoming a guardian is one part of journeying to Arcana, and on the other hand makes one part of another’s journey likewise.

Giant’s Lore: I will remember knocking on the cold side of your door

Isolation forms a common theme in the two albums, from when the man is ‘Traveler in Time’ is said to, “Waste in seclusion,” despite the writing on the wall, to the statement in ‘Orphan Gypsy’ that:

In this lease of life I entered as one
In the end I leave as one.

There is also the beginning of ‘Epitaph’, in which it is declared that, “Isolation freezes my life.” In ‘Without a Trace’, a contrast is drawn between the social aspects of the boy’s existence in the day, represented through their dreaming of the girl whom they killed, suggesting some form of social relationship prior to the act, and the anti-social aspects of their existence, represented by nighttime, in which impulse is given full sway and hence they end up killing the girl. This impulsive nature  is represented through the comparison of the boy with a machine, for example the reference to him as a, “defective unit,” and the description of the murder with the statement that, “The switch is triggered once again.” The boy is ultimately empty of life, or at least of spirit, and hence mechanical; a similar comparison is made for the man of ‘Traveler in Time’. This is also expressed by the reference to them as an “empty soul,” one with no real affection or thought. A similar theme is brought up in both ‘Orphan Gypsy’ and ‘Epitaph’, where the subjects of the song are compared to stone (the person in ‘Epitaph’ is also referred to as a ‘barren soul’).

They are capable of following social mores in their usual life in the day, and indeed of acting normally, as represented by the statement that, “The hawk in the sky hides in the sun.” However, under this surface lurks a soul given to  impulses, which in the night ends up, “running wild.” This side of their existence is, however, hidden, as noted by the fact that the murder is done without leaving a trace. However, these actions do not bring satisfaction, but rather disgrace, and the sadness implied in the statement of his dreaming about the girl which he killed.

The theme of isolation is probably dealt with most completely in ‘Giant’s Lore’ off ‘Awaken the Guardian’. The song is a reference to Oscar Wilde’s story of the lonely giant, in which a giant builds a wall to keep children out of his garden, and hence causes summer to leave it, until one day children enter through a crack in the wall. The beauty of the garden is expressed very well through Arch’s delicate vocals when singing, “The dawn of autumn playing in the garden of the rising sun.” When the giant aids a child who was having trouble climbing a tree, he redeems himself, and eventually the child returns with injuries on their hands and feet to take him off to paradise (the allegorical content of this last bit is probably clear enough not to require elaboration. In this connection, it’s probably worth noting that Christian themes are also quite common on ‘The Spectre Within’, although John Arch has mentioned in interviews that he’s not Christian.)  Of course, the theme of locking others out is also quite present in ‘Orphan Gypsy’, where the title character says quite explicitly, “I can lock you out.”

Here, the more general moral of the story is noted through the chorus:

Kings, Queens, pirates, giants,
Castle walls and dungeon doors;
Bound to earthen treasures, sunken heart
To the ocean floor -- I will remember knocking
On the cold side of your door.

There are two things condemned here; on the one hand, being bound to earthly treasures, and on the other selfishness, or the lack of emotion and feeling. The first aspect has already been touched upon, insofar as it constitutes the desire for one’s own pleasure through external objects, ultimately leading to a pointless quest which ends with one’s own death. On the other hand, the corollary of this quest for pleasure through worldly possessions is that one’s heart ‘sinks’, that is, one becomes fixed upon one’s own pleasure through the world and hence set off on a quest from pleasure excluding others or treating them only as means. One’s conception of pleasure becomes merely personal, one based upon the interaction of objects with oneself, and hence akin to the giant’s garden when the children are walled off.

The giant is not concerned only with his own pleasure, but not with bringing about what is good in others. However, as Socrates pointed out, if one’s aim is what is good, then this must be one’s aim in interacting with others as well, namely to lead them towards being good, to spread the good as it were. On the other side of things, one may only be a good person through acting upon the world, and hence through acting upon others well. As such, one is good through others insofar as one makes them good, or becomes a guardian for them, although on the other hand one may do so only by encouraging them upon their own journey. Insofar as one is to have purpose here, this can only have to do with one’s own transformation into a good person, to bringing about what is good, and hence interacting with others rather than keeping one’s garden for oneself.

However, it is just as much the case that, in order to share anything with others, one must have something to share. This could be the significance of fantasy here. In fantasy, one may see the world through a different, more profound and striking lens, and hence see a degree of beauty in it; it constitutes a way of seeing the world. Only once one sees this world of fantasy can one share it with others, and hence guide them towards it. On the other hand, if one is to see the world aesthetically in reality, this means that one feels the need to act in accordance with this, in other words to act well, or be a good person, and hence to bring oneself in unity with nature insofar as it is seen in its spiritual and beautiful aspects. An ‘aesthetic’ world-view is not separate from things such as sympathy and empathy; one is not in reality another person, so that the singer’s identification with the other takes the form of a dream in ‘Guardian’, but on the other hand the point of ‘Guardian’ is to undermine the gap between dreams and reality, so as to show the ‘light of dreams’.  Just as an artist seeks to make a good painting, so does one aim to paint a good person, and hence to awaken the guardian within oneself. “You’ve got to let your spirit go.”

“I guess my religious beliefs lean pretty close to what the Native American Indians believe in. Just being in tune with nature and god’s name is nature and the powerful force...and there’s a higher force that created it and, to me, just being kind to people. Just being a good person. To me, those are my beliefs.”

- John Arch.

Your force is ours, there are no hidden lies

‘Pirates of the Underground’ is about heavy metal and its stigmatization. It is addressed to the ‘endangered species of the megahertz’, and attacks the attempt to find hidden, backwards messages in music and such, and the whole conception behind them. Heavy metal is not a means of lying, or of trying to manipulate people into evil cults. Rather, we have a pretty interesting portrayal of heavy metal in general:

Pirates of the underground, mutiny is in the air.
You're the wind in the sails mother ship.
Drifters at sea remain to be, till
Land which speaks our tongue is found
On our way cut the tongues of dragons
Breathing fire!
Ride the waves through the air down below
The mire.

We’re not evil, we’re just seeking what there is to be found. Drifting underground, searching for land which speaks our tongue, a land where fantasy is present and not exiled from reality. The sentiment here seems quite similar to that of Manilla Road’s ‘Metal’, probably one of the best of the many ‘metal anthems’ that seem to sprout like weeds in the metal scene. As Manilla Road put it:

We praise the blood that metal brings,
The essence of creative quality,
Is life so pure we cannot seek
Our hopes, our dreams to make our fantasies reality

‘The essence of creative quality’? But this is heavy metal; it isn’t serious music, it’s just people screaming about Satan! Well, yes.

I consider Geoff Tate very good at screaming about Satan.

In this song, we have a depiction of present society in a manner fairly similar to that of ‘Prelude to Ruin’:

Tuned out in neutral vegetation, prime time
Bleeding hearts howl at the moon.
Foul temptress, oh she sings seduction,
As vultures feast forbidden fruit.
Live an abstract life in your hibernation.

One could also compare this to the following:

Red, white, black, in city masses,
corporate buildings spread like rashes,
stacked upon each other forty high.
Stabbed each other in the back,
you money-hungry maniacs,
dig up the earth and spit it in your eye.

So, what to do?

Climb aboard this man of war
She'll take you far away
To a land of fantasy in your imagination.

Transcendence through heavy metal, that’s where we’re at.

- Zero.