The Tank
Eight wheels lusting for the lives of infantry (His bearings shift)
His turrets turning from accountability (He takes his aim)
We sing our final song and soon this verse is over
He makes advances ’till his wheels cease to roll (His God is smiling)
His God is smiling on his cold mechanic soul
His plot is perfect if it sees no contradiction
There’s no sign that he shows
A sign of slowing
You’ve stained your skin, and I won’t stick around, around
Long enough to count the hearts that hit the ground
So long ago, was I one of them?
Your urgency hastened by his ingenuity (It’s just a matter)
Matter of moments ’till your body is debris (So say a prayer)
His plot is perfect if it sees no contradiction
You’ve stained your skin, and I won’t stick around, around
Long enough to count the hearts that hit the ground
So long ago, was I one of them?
And still he moves on
Arm and iron conquer heart and soul
And what of those in silent disconnect?
Sundry souls akin in consequence
Begging for bliss beyond the pain?
Relief is just a turret’s turn away
You’ve stained your skin and I won’t stick around, around
Long enough to count the hearts that hit the ground
So long ago, was I one of them?
🌲🌲🌲
What happens?
A ferocious enemy Tank rolls onto the battlefield and slaughters Hunter’s squadmates. Before he can meet the same fate, Hunter flees the battle.
What’s in a name?
‘The Tank’ – pretty straightforward huh? It’s Hunter’s encounter with a tank, but there’s a little more to add here.
These next four songs — The Tank, The Poison Woman, The Thief, and Mustard Gas — each represent a horror of war that Hunter will come to face. These are the aspects of war that make it so uniquely terrible, so essentially, the worst parts of war. Hunter’s already dealt with the dehumanisation of conforming to political spin (Cauda), and experienced the pain and godlessness of active combat (WIMTBA), so how could it get worse? Oh, baby.
Of the horrors, the Tank represents Destruction. This is pure ruthlessness that has no regard for life, beauty, peace, love, history, humanity, or anything like that, but simply exists to destroy every asset the enemy has. Aside from the heartlessness of it, this is also the aspect of war that will desecrate historic monuments or landmarks, raze fields and forests, ruin inhabited cities, and generally crush whatever important or significant or sentimental things are around into dust. It can’t be compromised with because it doesn’t care — try to, and it just destroys you, too. Certainly, this is a step up from dealing with enemy soldiers, who are fundamentally human and can feel reluctance to harm other people or things.
Whose viewpoint?
Hunter.
🌲🌲🌲
>0:00 – 0:17 Instrumental
Man, what a horrible ‘hunting beast’ or ‘stalking beast’ atmosphere you get from just this sound. There’s an extremely good reason why this track is a common favourite.
So the enemy is revealed — a mighty tank, its turret scanning to and fro in search of prey. It spots the soldiers on the battlefield and beelines over, rumbling. I envision it like, the tank is so imposing and so massive that it feels like it’s moving slowly, but it’s actually so fast that the fact it’s gotten too close to outrun doesn’t register until you’re already doomed. I also see the ruthlessness of the ‘EIGHT’ in the next line being the tank firing off its first shot and instantly slaughtering a soldier before he’s even fully realised what this thing is that’s aiming at him.
>Eight wheels lusting for the lives of infantry (His bearings shift)
Wow okay okay okay. Every word here punches like a fist. Welcome to the horrors!
Where to begin here. The Tank is similar to Dear Ms. Leading in that lyrically it’s an extremely blunt, straightforward song (reflecting the nature of the tank it’s describing — blunt, violent, unsubtle, uncompromising, straightforward), so there isn’t too much storywise to divine here outside of what’s explicitly said: a tank shows up, massacres Hunter’s regiment in the most horrid, heartless display of violence (or perhaps even anything) he’s seen in his life, and rather than assuredly die fighting it, Hunter up and runs.
Still, there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on structurally. We have this very military call-and-response thing going on for one, similar to the sections in Cauda where Hunter was forcing himself to follow party line (’twisted beasts with a desire for disorder’) but more structured, which feels to confer the tank with the power of the entire enemy army behind it. Next, the character is the Tank, not the tank’s operator, who is acknowledged to exist but who is not the avatar of destruction in the utterly unsympathetic and mechanical way that the Tank is. Makes sense, since when you have a tank bearing down on you, you’re not going to be thinking much of the guy sitting inside it are you.
So that said, the line itself. The Tank moves with such mechanical precision and efficiency in how it targets a soldier, brutally destroys them, targets another, brutally destroys them, scanning for lives to extinguish, that Hunter characterises it as enjoying the process. There is absolutely no hesitation between it finding a target and destroying it.
>His turrets turning from accountability (He takes his aim)
The Tank does not see or care about all the pain it causes; again, even before the bodies it shoots can hit the ground, it’s already discarded that kill and is looking for another target.
To make a comment on this line’s relevance to Hunter: Hunter broke out of his indoctrination in Cauda because he recognised the pain he was inflicting (’with abrasive eyes, pain in plain sight’), so we can figure he felt accountable for it. Meanwhile the Tank doesn’t pause to give a toss; it just keeps going. It is truly evil.
>We sing our final song and soon this verse is over
Once the tank’s turret is pointing at you, you’re dead. Infantrymen armed with guns cannot take down a tank; everyone who attempts to fight it or even stays in its vicinity dies.
That said, the soldiers are not running. They are still collectively trying to fight the Tank, with Hunter (and the others too) realising that he will die in this engagement.
>(His God is smiling) / His God is smiling on his cold mechanic soul
‘Begging my God to make the wheels turn round’ — the God is the Tank’s operator, pleased with the Tank’s performance. The first call-response echo of this line reinforces the sentiment, though, to make the God simultaneously extend to the entirety of the enemy army, also pleased with the Tank’s performance.
>His plot is perfect if it sees no contradiction
Wait this line is kinda tricky. Essence of it though is ‘the Tank is never going to stop destroying, and is going to kill everyone here, because it doesn’t have a sense of morality that could stop it’. The ones who ordered the Tank be used are going to keep using the tank, despite the slaughter and heightened misery it brings, because it’s effective.
>You’ve stained your skin, and I won’t stick around, around
Second time in the album yet we’ve seen Hunter break out that ‘I’! Hello Hunter!
‘You’ve stained your skin’ -> Enough people have died for the tank to be covered in bloodspatter.
‘And I won’t stick around’ -> Hunter decides screw this, he’s not going to fight the Tank with the others, he’s deserting. This is why we hear the ‘I’ — he’s again breaking out of the soldier mindset, and this time from the unity he has with his regiment completely.
>Long enough to count the hearts that hit the ground
So many people are dying Hunter can’t even count them.
>So long ago, was I one of them?
Hunter has a moment of grim consideration; if he had faced this battle before he broke out of his indoctrination in Cauda, would he have been so trained and married to the war machine that he would have willingly flung himself at a tank the same way the other soldiers are, even though it’s obvious he would die?
>Chorus Repetition
Not too much change to note, but we’re hearing Hunter’s more ‘normal’/conscious tone show up here, like he can take a… not more objective view, but more of an outsider’s view of what’s going on here. In the sense of, dude, these people are throwing themselves at a tank. More of Hunter breaking away from his conception as a soldier — he has also put some distance between himself and the tank.
>2:40 – 2:44 Instrumental
Hunter is still on the battleground, but has secured a healthy distance between himself and the battle ongoing with the Tank. He either pauses and turns to see how the engagement’s going, or just glances over while still running, but either way he’s able to see how things proceed now that he’s not in immediate danger.
>And still he moves on / Arm and iron conquer heart and soul
The answer is, dumbfounding Hunter at the fact something so wicked even exists, the tank is still going. Why even bother? It’s obvious that the tank has won, the soldiers aren’t anything before it, but still it bothers to kill them!
‘Arm and iron conquer heart and soul’ -> The essence of what this song’s getting at, really. This technology is too powerful and too destructive for a human to even compare, enabling incredible slaughter that will be okayed, moral implications be damned, because it’s effective and useful for winning the war. It just kills and kills and kills and kills with no possible hope of stopping it. Sort of sounds like Hunter realising that principles, relationships, morals, ideals, feelings, so on and so on aren’t necessarily the strongest forces in the world. The Tank decimates these.
>And what of those in silent disconnect? / Sundry souls akin in consequence
Now we’re seriously getting Hunter’s usual inflection.
‘Those in silent disconnect’ -> The soldiers are coming to the same realisation that the principles and ideals they fight for mean nothing before the Tank, rattling their worldviews and sense of purpose. A lot of them are having a shellshocked Cauda moment, except it’s in the context of ‘what the hell am I doing! Why am I here!? Nobody here can stop this thing!’. Moreover, the realisation is properly setting in for anyone left that the opportunity to escape is gone, their fellows have unfailingly died before them without achieving anything, and they are also going to die in the same impotent fashion.
‘Sundry souls akin in consequence’ -> Fancy wording but basically ‘all the soldiers still near the tank, who will imminently die’.
>Begging for bliss beyond the pain?
The soldiers still left are already broken; the ruthless horror of the Tank and the war as a whole has defeated them. They simply wish for it all to end.
>Relief is just a turret’s turn away
The Tank obliges. They can’t even run or fight it — it’s pointless. They don’t just accept it, they look forward to it all being over. I get the image of the last soldier falling to his knees and letting it happen.
>Chorus Repetition
With the last of the soldiers being cleaned up, Hunter resumes running from the battleground. Strong (if harrowed) note of empathy on ‘was I one of them?’.
>4:23 – 4:39 Instrumental
Hunter has left the battlefield. What’s the scene here… we can hear some kind of door, or swing, creaking alongside several pairs of marching boots.
The creaking is likely to signal our next setting — a bar, or tavern, this being the opening of its rickety door.
The boots signal other soldiers — it sounds like Hunter has managed to find another allied group to attach himself to, and is going with them into the tavern.
空劫罰 祟りネコ | JP -> ENG / TDH 