Monday, November 15, 2010

Murderer



I've been trying to think of something coherent to write about this song for a while now, but I keep coming up short, so I'm just gonna go for it and see what happens here.

Aside from being extremely well crafted musically and well performed, the unease and tension that this song evokes while remaining extremely beautiful is uncanny. (And if this live version seems tense, check out those unresolved drumrolls on the studio recording). And while the tune is creepy enough, it's the lyrics that really push this song from fairly dark to sublimely macabre.

I see a duality in the narrator here. He has convinced himself that he is truly a man of faith, and that he is willing to do anything God may need, even to do his "dirty work", which he suggests might involve murder. In a sense, he wants to be Abraham, to undergo a spiritual trial to prove his faith, a faith which (unlike Abraham's) is extremely weak and fragile; hence the desire for a chance to prove it. However, this longing for a proving grounds also is simply an excuse to justify the narrator's other motive, which is one of bloodlust. He has personal motivations in mind, but is seeking affirmation for his actions. He is a misguided zealot, a fanatic, and is someone who has cropped up all over history in various capacities and still is at large today, in every sect of western religion.

Part of what I often ponder with regard to this song what the narrator's primary motivating factor is: the need for spiritual affirmation, or his hunger for blood. If it's the former, the narrator is merely pathetic and in some sense pitiable, but if it's the latter he is simply despicable and exploitative. I'd like to think it's the former because then at least man is not truly base even at his worst, that William Golding was wrong and we're not intrinsically savages. The remainder of the song might have one think otherwise initially, however.

The truly unnerving part of the song is where the narrator begins to shed the test-of-faith motive entirely, going as far as to call out God and accuse him of not being quite as perfect as he might have us think: "Don't act so innocent // I've seen you pound your fist into the earth // And I've read your books // It seems that you could use another fool" I'm assuming the second line refers to Jesus flipping out in the temple in the new testament, the third line to the Bible in general (in my mind mostly the really crazy and cruel stuff in the old testament), and the last to both Abraham and also perhaps Job, whom God tested in pretty cruel ways if you ask me.

By pointing this out, it's almost as if the narrator is saying, "Listen God, I've got you figured out, and you're just as rotten as I am--look at all this stuff you've done before, you don't even follow your own rules. Now I'm not going to tell anyone, but we both know that you need rotten things done on Earth sometimes, and you need bad people to accomplish them. Well I'm a bad person and can't be any other way, so let's just stop beating around the bush with this and you tell me what you need done. I get what I need, you get what you need."

So is the narrator truly despicable, committing atrocities for atrocities' sake? Momentarily stepping back from the situation seems to indicate otherwise. The saddest part is not the violence committed (though that is pretty awful), but the narrator's resignation in viewing himself as rotten and evil, embracing this picture of himself to the point where he feels it's his purpose to be that way. In the same way that an addict throws their willpower out the window to become completely dependent, so too does the narrator totally succumb to the violence he feels drawn to, and now he has a justification for it (or at least thinks he does). So in the end the narrator is truly pitiable, despite all the despicable actions he willingly commits.


Ug, that was awfully heavy. The next one will be happier, I promise.

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