Life and Death When we dance, it looks just like fire When we sing, it sounds the same tone We all have hearts, we all have homes But when we die, we die alone
Oh, what a mess, as everything descends Oh, what a mess, but everything amends
Such it was so long ago We always tried but failed And now with new found consciousness We stand here waiting, waiting to die
Oh, what a mess, as everything descends Oh, what a mess, but everything amends
One of these days, you will learn to love again One of these days, he will learn to love again One of these days, he will learn to love again One of these days, he will learn to love again One of these days, he will learn to love again One of these days, he will learn to love again One of these days, you will learn to love again One of these days, he will learn to love….
When we dance, it looks just like fire When we sing, it sounds the same tone We all have hearts, we all have homes But when we die, we die alone When we die, we die…
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What happens? The war ends. Commentary is given on the nature of war and its effect on Hunter.
What’s in a name? ‘Life and Death’ — the name of the album. This song exemplifies all the ideas the album wants to get across, principally on the nature of war. As for what these words actually mean, that’s a little more nuanced and hard to decode.
Well, first of all, war is a place of just that — life and death. It’s an environment where people have to face their ever-present mortality. Soldiers go into battle knowing they could die, and frequently with the resolve to, with survival in many cases leaving you with the question ‘Why did I live? Why did they die?’. But these ideas also tie into the overall theme of rebirth in the acts, especially Hunter’s present killing of his own identity and adoption of the life of the Son. In that way it has the kind of tenor of, ‘war changes people’, but mostly I think it’s about the mortality.
Whose viewpoint? Omniscient.
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>When we dance, it looks just like fire BEAUTIFUL. This is where we first see the power of the lexicon Casey has established truly flexing its muscles. Using such simple words, it’s able to convey an extremely precise and and detailed idea with an elegance I can’t overstate.
So, we know that a ‘dance’ is something you put a lot of passion and genuine investment into, but that fundamentally conflicts with its stated goal. Ms Terri’s attempt to shelter Hunter was a dance (inherently doomed because she was still prostituting), Hunter’s attempt to pursue an untroubled relationship with Ms Leading was a dance (inherently doomed because Ms Leading was a prostitute), etc etc.
And we know that ‘fire’ represents a powerful force, born from love, that can and wishes to destroy evil. Flame is gone / Fire remains and all that.
So when you put this together, the ultimate sentiment is like, ‘we put a lot of investment into fighting in war, though we know that doing so is fundamentally a ruinous thing, with the attempted belief of doing something good and defeating evil’. Both sides of the war carry this sentiment — they fight to defend their country or uphold some kind of principle, but all war really does is bring ruin, traumatise those caught in it, disrupt societies, etc. But at least it’s ostensibly just.
>When we sing, it sounds the same tone / We all have hearts, we all have homes Both parties involved in a war have the same sentiments behind why they fight. The soldiers involved are individuals who love their families, values, or cultures and wish to protect them.
>But when we die, we die alone Underlining how soldiers die miserably on the battlefield, miles away from those things that they treasure, often without feeling that they did die for a cause that was worth it or felt loved by the institution they had trusted themselves to. Death is impersonal and does not care about what you treasure or what makes you you.
>Oh, what a mess, as everything descends / Oh, what a mess, but everything amends Here’s the life and death — though war brings great destruction, it doesn’t last forever. Periods of great downturn will be followed by stabilisation, security, and dare I say prosperity, though what that stability looks like might not be what the country was before. Rebirth on the scale of nations.
As it goes for Hunter, pointing to his prospects of a happier life as the Son.
>Such it was so long ago / We always tried but failed / And now with new found consciousness This must be Hunter speaking — really the earlier verses were probably Hunter’s takeaway from the whole war experience too. Hunter accepts that his previous attempts at happiness were failures, with his ‘new found consciousness’ being the maturation he’s been forced to have over the war as well as his new consciousness as the Son.
>We stand here waiting, waiting to die Hunter is in an inbetween state right now, waiting to return to the City so that he can properly assume the Son’s life and kill Hunter once and for all.
Shades of ‘scream at the sky and beg, beg for a reason’ in this?
>One of these days, you will learn to love again / One of these days, he will learn to love again Hunter’s experiences in war have destroyed his… not quite his capacity, but his faith in love. He is currently cynical and withdrawn from the principles that make Hunter who he is, but we are given assurance that Hunter will one day come to experience love as he had with Ms Terri or Ms Leading again. Rather, despite how Hunter’s turning away from it right now, love is still fundamentally what Hunter wants, hopes to find, and what powers him.
Poor Hunter. This whole experience has severely damaged him, so much that he can’t trust in the single thing he values most.
Father And what of the father? Will he analyze? And what about the mother? Will she discover The truth behind this lie we’re living?
(I knew that I kept this for a reason) (I knew that I kept this for a reason) Now everything we’ve ever had is here for us Now everything we’ve ever had is here for us
Don’t worry ’bout the father, you’ll take care of him And as for the mother, she always loved her son And you look like him
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What happens? Having assumed the Son’s identity, Hunter considers the obstacles that could ruin his plan. Though he dismisses the Son’s Mother as an issue, figuring that himself and the Son look enough alike that she won’t notice the swap, he decides the General is a problem. Using the bottle the Poison Woman gave him, Hunter kills the General.
What’s in a name? ‘Father’ — mirroring ‘Son’, to point to the Father/General as the subject who dies in this song and underline his relation to both Hunter and the Son, as it’s kind of like second half or immediate continuation of the train of thought left off in ‘Son’.
Whose viewpoint? Hunter, being devious.
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>0:00 – 0:28 Black Sandy Beaches Reprise Here’s that BSB smile through the pain again. This is the most peaceful and subdued that we’ve ever heard it, though, more in the vein of how it was in VVV than in BSB, so this time it strikes me less as trying to distract oneself from pure agony (though that’s still the fundamental thing that’s going on here), but Hunter finding a kind of small, warm hope and happiness in this plan of being the Son. For once he’s feeling something that isn’t just total misery. He’s happy that he feels the potential of being happy.
>And what of the father? Will he analyze? / And what about the mother? Will she discover / The truth behind this lie we’re living? Hunter considers the immediate obstacles that could ruin his plan. The Son’s father, that being the General, has interacted with both Hunter and the Son. Though Hunter and the Son look so alike that anyone could confuse them, the General has a frame of reference to know each one’s specific attitudes and mannerisms. It’s highly possible, if not within the first period of seeing Hunter as the Son, then at some point when they’re all back home in the City, that he’ll figure out Hunter has stolen the place of his Son.
Meanwhile, there’s the issue of the Son’s mother. Hunter knows from rifling through the Son’s postcards the rough family dynamic the Son has going on — the Son and the mother are close. However, she has no knowledge as to the existence of Hunter. It would be a far leap of logic for her to think her Son had coincidentally bumped into someone who looked so exactly like him, and stole his identity coming home, than for her to figure the Son just got rattled by the war as a way to explain away inconsistencies. Still, the fear she could figure it out is there.
‘The truth behind this lie we’re living?’ -> Hunter has already extended his sense of himself to be both himself and the Son. He’s asking himself this question both as Hunter and the Son.
>(I knew that I kept this for a reason) Referring to the Poison Woman’s bottle of poison that she gave Hunter. The Poison Woman is a character whose ‘thing’ is killing people without their realising and without facing accountability for it. Using her bottle means Hunter, too, will be able to commit a killing that nobody will trace to him and that he won’t have to face responsibility for. A consequenceless killing.
Hunter sounds so gooey and happy as he realises this plan will totally work. A lot of things have built up to this moment — Hunter’s hatred of the General, his need to escape his own life, his lesson from the Thief of compromising morals for personal gain, his challenge from the Poison Woman to find someone who is justifiable to kill, his abandonment by the world in WIMTBA, his disbelief in a just God after Mustard Gas, the lack of power of ethics and morals before the Tank — really everything that’s happened up to now. It’s the horrors of war sequence that gives him the (lack of) moral impetus to be able to do this, but thinking about it I think the biggest element (like aside from He Said He Had A Story + the cost/benefit hurt/comfort reflex) is actually WIMTBA, because WIMTBA had Hunter realise he had to be the one actively trying to get his life back on a happier course rather than trusting the world to do it for him, and he’s certainly taking proactive action here to make sure his little plan is flawless.
>Now everything we’ve ever had is here for us Hunter regards the plan of killing the General as perfect. He’s the only barrier between Hunter and a perfect life, and he shortly won’t be an issue.
I get the image of him smiling as he prepares a poisoned drink for the General, then goes on to find the General, sit with him and offer the drink. Again hearkening to WIMTBA; ‘everything you thought you had you lost’.
>Don’t worry ’bout the father, you’ll take care of him Man, are you hearing this? We didn’t hear much of it to have a great reference, but this is the Son’s intonation. Hunter stop trying to justify doing abominable stuff by imagining that the Son would want you to/encourage you to do it.
But yeah, the General’s not an issue, Hunter will just kill him.
>And as for the mother, she always loved her son And the Son’s mother? Also not an issue. Hunter has read through postcard correspondence how much she seems to miss and adore the Son, and without knowing that Hunter exists, will likely accept and dote on him as if he were her son. Hunter’s found another potential Ms Terri surrogate and is probably pretty pleased about that.
>And you look like him The big whammy and the big reveal of the album — Hunter and the Son look so alike, the Son’s own mother could mistake them.
Which is strange. Let’s talk about that.
So the general sentiment across the fandom is that the Son is Hunter’s half-brother through the General, though we have these two points from Casey nudging towards the idea that he’s not, and the relation is actually closer:
The “half-brother” is Hunter’s half brother, actually more than his half brother, but to explain that would be very hard right now. But it will be 100% clear in the graphic novel. But he is related to him, very close in age. They both have the same father.
Hunter and the half-brother look eerily similar for reasons that will be revealed in the graphic novel.
So for them to be closer than half-brothers under these circumstances, you can take two routes. Either they have the same mother, and they are full brothers, or their mothers are related. Whatever the case, the circumstances going on behind Hunter and the Son’s relation sounds to be very complicated. Let’s go through these scenarios.
Scenario 1: Hunter and the Son are twins born to Ms Terri. This would explain why they look alike; they are literally genetically identical. This also gives us an incredibly interesting scenario for Act I — Ms Terri impulsively deciding to escape with Hunter after being forced to surrender the firstborn. (Also puts a literal read into ‘you were born with the sun’).
There are some big questions with this, though. For one, it implies that TP&P had some arrangement with the General to hand off the newborns to him. While it’s fair to figure that TP&P wouldn’t want kids killing the mood around his brothel, how would he know that the children belonged to the General? Do they normally have contraceptive measures in the Dime, and the General specifically forsook those? And why would the General accept such a proposition? Blackmail? How was the General able to explain away the kid to his wife? Why would she accept mothering someone else’s child?
I guess on the topic of the General’s wife, the impression I get of her from At The End Of The Earth, the song she narrates, is that she loves the General more than the Son and sees the General in the Son. ‘And the Echoes of you / Rhyme like a distant verse on forgotten words’, echoes of you being echoes of the General being the Son. So she would love the Son largely because he reminds her of the General, that is, she accepts the Son because she loves the General and he is the General’s son. Maybe the Mother was struggling to conceive, or maybe the Son was already born before he met the Mother, and the General explained him away as being from a previous marriage?
I’ll also note that if the Son was listening back in He Said He Had A Story, unless the described encounter is chronologically set before he hooked up with the Mother, he just got to hear his dad bragging about cheating on his mom with a hooker.
Scenario 2: Ms Terri and the General’s wife are sisters. This makes the boys cousins and three-quarter brothers, which is a pretty convoluted state of affairs. Since the kids are close in age, the General would’ve been screwing his wife and Ms Terri around the same time, but it either comes down to coincidence that he selected Ms Terri, or he had some discontents with his wife and chose to vent them on a hooker that resembled her. This leaves massive questions about the relationship between Ms Terri and the Mother, though, which are hard to fill. Why is one of them suffering as a hooker while the other is living comfortably in the City? Are they not on good terms? You could maybe scrape evidence for this from Remembered, reading ‘met your life before us’ as referencing the Mother rather than the Dime… ehhhh possible?
Scenario 3: Ms Terri and the General’s wife are twin sisters. This makes Hunter and the General’s son for all purposes full brothers again, and is the same as scenario 2 except that the General would have absolutely made the connection between his wife and the hooker he bedded. Also explains why having visual depictions of the characters would make it clear.
In the end I can’t decide which of these I ascribe to, but one of these three scenarios is true. Place your bets?
>3:13 – 3:25 Black Sandy Beaches Reprise And a return to BSB to close us out. A little bit harsher, perhaps the General dies here?
Son We lay aligned, and move to disguise With a soul below, only the eyes above Slowly and silently slip away
Sleep now in the soil, the dust in the debris A stolen smoke ascends, leaving the shell to atrophy Meet with the earth, as the sober spirit sings
Leave, leave it behind, this truth is harming you Leave, leave it behind, set out and start anew Your life hereafter will cure all your troubles and recast a history Turn and walk away…
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What happens? Hunter buries the General’s Son, who died in the Battle of the Somme. Simultaneously, he steals the identity of the General’s Son, conspiring to escape the pain of his own life by instead living as the Son.
What’s in a name? ‘Son’ — tells us who this song is in reference to (the son died) and the dynamic this character has with the General (he’s the general’s son; first time you learn this). You know I’ve seen Casey comment that certain information is presented in clear or upfront ways but then it turns out he means things like how you’re meant to infer Hunter’s name from Act I and as I stare at this song I’m realising I have no idea how people figured out the dynamics of the Son and the General without getting it wrong fifty times first.
Whose viewpoint? (Switches out the dogtags) Sorry guys, Hunter can’t narrate this, he’s down there with the worms.
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>We lay aligned, and move to disguise THERE we go that’s more like it.
‘We lay aligned’ -> ‘With hands aligned,’ the corpses of the soldiers who died in Go Get Your Gun have been collected and arranged in lines for burial. Hunter is presently in whatever field or building they have arranged for the treatment of these corpses, likely having retrieved some from the battlefield himself.
‘And move to disguise’ -> This could be the living soldiers putting tarps over the corpses of their comrades, while likely also pointing to Hunter’s intentions. Hunter sees the opportunity here to swap his identity with that of the dead Son, since they look extremely alike. He rifles through the Son’s pockets for his postcards, dogtags, ID, etc.
>With a soul below, only the eyes above / Slowly and silently slip away ‘With a soul below’ -> The Son is dead, and it’s his corpse that Hunter is presently standing over.
‘Only the eyes above / slowly and silently slip away’ -> Hunter averts his gaze as if hesitant or guilty, but also as if checking to see nobody else is watching him. Indeed, the processing of the bodies is done and no other soldiers are around now.
I also hear this as Hunter feeling that his own ‘soul’ or ‘self’ is already dead or buried as he locks in to his plan; that is, he regards the person who has died as Hunter, and the body standing over the corpse belongs to an as-yet undefined entity that doesn’t have any compunctions about identity theft.
>Sleep now in the soil, the dust in the debris Hunter is burying the son’s corpse, simultaneously feeling to be burying himself.
>A stolen smoke ascends, leaving the shell to atrophy The ‘stolen smoke’ is the Son’s identity or ‘essence’; it ascends in the literal sense of Hunter straightening himself after being hunched over to bury the body, now being resolved to live as the Son or ‘having’ the Son’s essence in him. In the metaphorical sense it’s like, Hunter feels his own soul is solidly ‘below’, right, but the Son’s essence wisps out of the grave and feels to permeate the air before going on to Heaven. Hunter thinks the Son is a better person than him, is kind of in awe of or mystified by him, and thinks it better that the Son survives than Hunter, so on that level too he doesn’t mind trading places.
Leaving the shell to atrophy is the Son’s body being empty of its essence, now, and left to decompose in the grave.
>Meet with the earth, as the sober spirit sings The burial is completed.
‘Sober spirit’ is of course Hunter’s mood being generally low and grave after This Beautiful Life, but might also be pointing that he’s not putting on a mask of passive joviality as he was in Go Get Your Gun (a drinking song vs. being sober) anymore; these are Hunter’s proper, honest thoughts.
>Leave, leave it behind, this truth is harming you / Leave, leave it behind, set out and start anew Hunter tells himself to leave behind his old life and assume a new life under the identity of the Son. The way this is framed is like there’s an actual entity he’s talking to (the sober spirit) that is encouraging him to go ahead with this plan. Obviously, it’s just Hunter, but I wonder if he’s justifying it by imagining that the Son would have wanted him to proceed down this path, also.
‘One life for another’, ‘Take another life’ — once again we have Hunter destroying/abandoning his current life to achieve a rebirth. And ONCE AGAIN we have Hunter doing this as his go-to answer to pain. This one is the most severe, though, because it’s not just trying to send his self down an alternate course that might be happier, it’s that he’s given up on himself as being worth anything and thinks the only way to get away from the pain is to literally be a different person.
>Your life hereafter will cure all your troubles and recast a history Hunter you idiot you’ve done this twice before and both times it didn’t work out. But yeah, he thinks the Son’s life is a significantly more worthwhile, smooth, and happy one to be living than Hunter’s, so he’ll be able to get that stability and comfort he still fundamentally wants as long as he stops being Hunter. He doesn’t want any tie to his (miserable, sad, ‘I’m left with my…’) history anymore.
Note also that Hunter thinks he’s a bad person (’you, with this cruel and bitter heart’, ‘this suffering sends hope to the ground / but I never really had enough’, ‘I can promise you, my ego’s running me’) and seems to recognise a lot of the trouble he gets himself into is a side effect of his own thinking/personality, hence part of why he’d want to replace his usual script with someone else’s.
>Turn and walk away… Hunter turns and walks away both from the Son’s grave and from his own life.
Go Get Your Gun Go get your gun, get your gun, and let’s find out what it does Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot We haven’t won, and if we win, and if the morning light sets in We’ve cheated fate again
And to those who die, please try to understand That for those who die, we try the best we can With our one foot in the grave While the other one’s kickin’ its way right down to hell
Go get your gun, get your gun, imposing penance one by one You’ve got a virtue in a vice, it forces fate, you’re taking lives With all the history to guide, you’ve got a passion in those eyes So aim it straight and true
And to those who die, please try to understand That for those who die, we try the best we can With our one foot in the grave While the other one’s kickin’ its way right down to hell
Now, when this is over Then, we’ll raise a glass Straight up to the sun With our one foot in the grave While the other one’s kickin’ its way right down to hell
Go get your gun, get your gun, and let’s find out what it does Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot We haven’t won and if we win, and if the morning light sets in We’ve cheated fate again
And to those who die, please try to understand That for those who die, we try the best we can And to those who die, please try to understand That for those who die, we try the best we can With our one foot in the grave While the other one’s kickin’ its way right down to hell
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What happens? The General’s regiment, including Hunter, fights in the Battle of the Somme. The Son dies in the battle.
What’s in a name?
“Go Get Your Gun” is meant as a cheesy drinking song that’s been around in this world. It’s a novelty of the time, as if it has existed in this world for a long time.
Whose viewpoint? Hunter.
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Go get your gun, get your gun, and let’s find out what it does / Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot / We haven’t won, and if we win, and if the morning light sets in / We’ve cheated fate again Okay oh wow this song. This is one of those ones where I’m not sure how much I need to comment on it, because it basically is what it says on the tin and my takes on it aren’t anything special.
I suppose the most interesting thing is how I’m reading it as a framing device. Basically, I think what this song represents narratively is the Battle of the Somme. We know that the Son dies during, or shortly after this song with the aftermath of his death coming up in the next song, and know he died in the Somme (’hints of a higher hand / lost on the Somme’), so 1 + 1 = ?.
With the Somme being a long battle, Hunter and the rest of the General’s regiment are going to be involved in multiple engagements during it, so basically I see it as… not quite a montage, but you get lots of scenes of them being mid-engagement, engagement ends, they stare over the battlefield, move through the trenches, joke around together, have time to kick back and sing songs and drink, engagement ensues again, etc etc etc ad infinitum. The morale of the regiment sounds to be overall good, and Hunter too seems to be letting himself get sucked into that energy. Of course, we know from This Beautiful Life that he’s already decided to go along with whatever the General’s regiment is doing and pretend to be jovial with them (’so let us force a smile and pretend we’re alive’), so I think his willingness to shut off his brain and go back into soldier mode here is mostly an extension of that. Like, he’s still not in a state to be thinking much about what he personally wants to do right now, so he’s just joining in whatever with his fellow soldiers.
Long and short lyrically it’s just the kind of thing soldiers would sing to themselves to hype themselves up and get morale flowing for the next battle. ‘You’re part of a legacy, you’re the good prevailing over evil, many will die but they’ll die as heroes,’ blah blah blah.
I mean I like it but by virtue of it being annoyingly effective as the kind of thing a barful of drunks could sing it’s not exactly the chewiest of high concepts for me here, you know?
Anyway, so that’s my deep insightful enthusiastic read of Go Get Your Gun.
>2:47 – 3:16 Doomy Ambiance The fighting ends and the soldiers, including Hunter, count up and collect the dead from the battlefield. Hunter finds that the General’s Son is among the dead.
He Said He Had A Story There was a silver circle sign And she was standing at the door We pressed our way right through the crowd Our pace was quickened to her floor There was a single feigning light And there was silk all on the walls She had a lot of love to give I was prepared to take it all (But what did she do next?)
She had disrobed and she was Waiting on the floor She asked me what it was I want I thought that I wanted it all (What did you say?) I said, “Stand up And move your body to the bed” She quickly stood and slowly turned And here’s exactly what she said
“Please be soft and sweet to me This life has not been good, you see It’s hard with such a history Buried in misery.” (And what did you do next?)
I broke a smile Reminding that I paid her well Her lips returned, and then I felt her hands Unbuckling my belt (So was it good?) It felt like Heaven But I’m sure she was in Hell I made it clear I’d get my money’s worth Out of the goods she sells
Break and bind yourself to me Deliver what you sold, you see that I will only take from you And use it up, I’ll use you up What was your name?
Break and bind yourself to me Deliver what you sold you see that I will only take from you And use it up, I’ll use you up What was your name?
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What happens? During a moment of respite at camp, the soldiers tell stories of their romantic conquests. The leader of the regiment, The General, joins in by proudly recounting how he raped a prostitute at a brothel called the Dime. Hunter realises in horror that Ms Terri was the prostitute, and this man is his father.
What’s in a name? He has a story! Let’s hear it.
Whose viewpoint? Hunter, listening to the General tell his story.
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>0:00 – 0:04 Instrumental The General swaggers over to a group of soldiers telling stories about their romantic conquests (the tongue-in-cheek joke about the First Lady at the end of Saved is our ‘conceptual’ transition into this; the soldiers are the type to have these conversations and make those kinds of locker room jokes). Off the bat, we can hear that he’s a very arrogant person, and sounds to be gearing up to blow the privates’ minds with something really juicy. The soldiers, including Hunter (who is likely still confined to camp for now), gather around to listen.
This is another song where the lyrics are extremely aggressive, blunt, and straightforward — even moreso than usual since it is literally a character narrating a story. Still, there’s stuff to note. A lot of stuff.
>There was a silver circle sign / And she was standing at the door / We pressed our way right through the crowd / Our pace was quickened to her floor ‘There was a silver circle sign’ -> The symbol of the Dime is a silver circle. As the General recounts his story, he’ll be noting the things that stood out to him — this one is the most important off the bat, since it establishes the setting of the Dime. Having been there himself, as Hunter listens along, he will begin to recognise the sights that the General is recounting.
‘She was standing at the door’ -> Ms Terri was soliciting punters to enter the Dime. Otherwise, the General targeted the first woman he saw upon entering.
‘We pressed our way right through the crowd / our pace was quickened to her floor’ -> Familiar scenes, huh? We got to see the Dime crowded full of patrons on the main floor in Bitter Suite II, with Ms Leading guiding Hunter upstairs in the same fashion. Note the use of ‘quickened’ — echoing ‘quickened cat’s feet’, the manner the General jumped on Ms Terri and raced to get to the sex was as aggressive and practised as TP&P is when he jumps on marks to exploit.
>There was a single feigning light / And there was silk all on the walls Describing Ms Terri’s room. The attention brought to the silk answers the question of what happened to the flame in City Escape, as noted.
‘Feigning light’ sticks with me. I’m not sure what it’s pointing at apart from describing the atmospheric lighting of the brothel’s room, but since the phrasing gets brought up again later, I think there could be something to it.
>She had a lot of love to give / I was prepared to take it all The General is here to fuck her raw and keep going ‘till she screams.
>(But what did she do next?) The soldiers listening are invested in this story, urging the General to continue.
>She had disrobed and she was / Waiting on the floor Interesting place to wait — is Ms Terri hoping to get away with, or at least begin with, just a blowjob? Either way it emphasises Ms Terri as reluctant and powerless before the General.
>She asked me what it was I want / I thought that I wanted it all The General is greedy for sex and completely uncaring of Ms Terri’s limits or desires.
>I said, “Stand up / And move your body to the bed” ‘Move your body’ is a phrase we’ll see reused as a shorthand for taking actions that you are unwilling but forcing yourself to do, or more precisely that you are coerced into doing. For now, the General does not regard Ms Terri as a person and is cutting out any foreplay that could ease her into what’s about to happen — he’s going straight into the rough sex.
>She quickly stood and slowly turned / And here’s exactly what she said Just wanted to note the really nice, subtle juxtaposition on ‘quickly stood’ to ‘slowly turned’. Ms Terri obeys this aggressive punter promptly and without question, likely aware that things will get even worse if she falters, then hesitates when she goes to request that he be gentle. She seems to know punters like him can be volatile, but is also so adverse to rough sex that she’ll risk making such a request anyway. Rather, she can probably figure from his demeanour that he’s going to rape her, and is simply hoping for him to see her as human enough to go easier than he first intended.
>”Please be soft and sweet to me / This life has not been good, you see / It’s hard with such a history / Buried in misery.” Even in these circumstances, it’s nice to hear Ms Terri again. Apart from this being sung in her gentle, sad intonation, every word here is a landmark meant to twig us back to the conclusion of ‘oh my god, it’s Ms Terri’. ‘Please be soft and sweet to me’ = ‘The cavalier, she hopes of him / in dissonance with experience’; ‘This life has not been good’ = all of City Escape basically; ‘it’s hard with such a history’ = ‘with a fondness for cooking history, revealing thoughts of Ms Terri’; ‘Buried in misery’ = ‘The expiry of misery’ & ‘Fatal fascination breeds a bloom of misery’. The whole verse of course rhymes with Ms Terri, too.
Ms Terri divulges to the General the broad circumstances that led her to the Dime. Apart from her struggles in the Dime itself, I sense the ‘history’ she’s alluding to goes back to things even before that, suggesting her life in general has never been great, hence how she wound up here in the first place. She is hoping that knowing more about who she is as a person will make him pause and be more sympathetic.
>(And what did you do next?) Love the energy of how the listening soldiers come back in after such a gentle verse. Yeah, don’t expect any sympathy — they’re all keyed up now to know how the General dealt with this conflict of the reluctant hooker.
>I broke a smile / Reminding that I paid her well The General feels that energy too, growing only more aggressive and eager to dominate her, and more proud to inform his audience that he successfully did so. Beyond his amusement, he seems vaguely irritated that she even tried wheedle out of this, since she is a hooker, this is a transaction, and she should be prepared to take this kind of treatment. Whatever kind of sympathy or gentleness she’s looking to get here, she sold away the second she made this her profession. If anything, her plea has only aggravated his desire to punish her.
>Her lips returned, and then I felt her hands / Unbuckling my belt Knowing this could get precarious, Ms Terri abruptly concedes the point and gets to business.
We’re getting the song version of this whole encounter, but remember that Hunter is actually listening to all of this as the General describes it. Do you think the General is going to neglect to brag about the way she screamed, or the faces she made, or whatever other bawdy indignities? Liquor in the front, poker in the rear… not nice things to be hearing about your mother.
>It felt like Heaven / But I’m sure she was in Hell ‘A failed life exposed the man / Who led her off into the flame / To cast her back to Hell again’ -> Entertaining clients in the Dime is Hell. The General is aware that Ms Terri hates this and is in pain, but he doesn’t care, since she is a hooker so he should have free rein to do what he wants. With money being involved, I’m not sure the General can even conceive of this being rape, or rather that if he was accused of raping Ms Terri he’d just laugh and note that she accepted the money.
Ms Terri is also an extremely proficient prostitute, I figure to mention, if she’s able to make him second-guess whether she was enjoying it or not even while she was in total agony.
>I made it clear I’d get my money’s worth / Out of the goods she sells Ms Terri may have tried to slow down the pace or ease the General’s rhythm down into something more resembling a romantic encounter, but he wasn’t having it and just molested and pistoned the fuck out of her. This aspect of control and domination was highly arousing to him and likely not something he could inflict on his !wife!, but prostitutes are sluts, so it’s fair game.
>Break and bind yourself to me / Deliver what you sold, you see that / I will only take from you The General describes how he was looking to utterly destroy this woman, and violate her beyond her limits from the outset, while in an EXTRAORDINARILY ironic fashion describing the event of Hunter’s conception.
‘Bind yourself to me’ -> While ostensibly it’s the General wanting to make a permanent mark on Ms Terri by utterly traumatising her, it’s actually priming us to make the connection that this encounter leads Ms Terri to get pregnant with this man’s child, binding her to him in that fashion. ‘I will only take from you’ -> Exquisitely done how THIS is the line that tells us he got Ms Terri pregnant. Because he’s totally, totally wrong — in his single-minded determination to violate her, he didn’t take anything more than what others have taken, while instead giving her Hunter.
>What was your name? Gee! It’s a mystery. Har har har.
Only after he has ‘used her up’ does the General think to ask Ms Terri for her name, in a total afterthought, as if to have a way to categorise this conquest. This is contrasting Hunter in Bitter Suite I, who asked for Ms Leading’s name right off the bat because he liked her and wanted to know more about her. Given how uncomfortable Ms Leading was with the question, we can figure that the General’s manner of name-asking is more typical.
In terms of the General recounting his story, I figure this is where he namedrops the prostitute as Ms Terri.
>2:13 – 2:24 Instrumental Hunter is alarmed to hear this name, beginning to realise by the details of the General’s story that the ‘Ms Terri’ described might be his Ms Terri.
>2:24 – 2:36 Instrumental Stress and realisation building. Oh my God — it is his Ms Terri. The connections form themselves as scenes from his childhood align with scenes he has himself seen at the Dime, and that the General has described — his mom’s silver circle necklace, her visits up north, her quiet exhaustion, the revulsion of the Lake people, her refusal to talk about it… his mom was a prostitute at the Dime.
>2:37 – 2:45 Instrumental Furious anger towards the General. THIS is what she was hiding all this time… and maybe, for good reason! Hunter abhors this man for the pain he’s inflicted on Ms Terri, and for how casually he talks about it as if this isn’t the reason she killed herself. Hell, if he knew that, would he even care! Probably not, he’d probably brag about it and make it the punchline to his horrible little story. I think Hunter is already considering killing the General here, or at least is rumbling with a quietly murdery sentiment — the passage is extremely dark.
And the cherry to all this, really topping this tale off, is that this rapist is his father. How does Hunter know?
The dude’s son, the soldier who rescued Hunter, looks exactly like him.
(This is a stretch thing but it crossed my mind, I wonder if Hunter recognised his freakout towards Ms Leading in Red Hands is rather reminiscent of the way the General just talked about Ms Terri, at least in the sense of how willing he was at that moment to punish her by treating her like a tool and whore. Would make the whole thing even worse).
>Chorus Repetition Hunter has recognised and processed exactly what the General has done, focusing back on the dialogue going on as the General continues to showboat and bask in the admiration of the privates. Hunter is furious and perhaps asks him more questions to confirm the General as utterly irredeemable.
>3:19 – 3:30 Instrumental Hunter turns away from the circle, stewing in fury, as the story wraps up and camp breaks.
>3:31 – 3:33 Silence. Small timeskip.
>3:33 – 3:39 Drumroll Hunter is now well enough to join the regiment on the field. He is deployed back into duty with the General and the Son, marching out en route to the battlefield.
Saved Amongst the stone and smoke We never laid before Images floating all about Life in the afterglow
My decaying mind pretends None of this ever happened We either learn to live a lie Or we’re waiting here to die
And after all this suffering I could lie here for good But with a mind on fire I try and stand my ground
Illuminate and I will follow
Amongst the stone and smoke Rising above it all Broken but not beyond repair Let’s see how this soul fares
And after all this suffering I could lie here for good But with a mind on fire I try and stand my ground
Illuminate, and I will follow you (I will follow you, you, I will follow you) (Everything you thought you’ve lost you have now) (Who’s laughing now? Who’s laughing now? Now, now, who’s laughing now?) Let’s see how this soul fares
“The Private does what The General says The General does what The President says The President does what The First Lady says So-so they say…”
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What happens? Hunter, still collapsed in the field and barely alive after the Mustard Gas attack, contemplates his imminent death. Though tempted to let go and let it all be over, he ultimately determines not to surrender if there’s still a chance he could live. Rewarding this determination, an allied soldier comes upon him and brings him safely back to camp to recover.
What’s in a name? Hunter is dying but gets saved. Casey has mentioned that most songs have extremely literal working titles that sometimes don’t get changed by the time the album goes out. This is 100% one of them.
Aside from that. The horrors of war are now over, and this is a good time to note that we’re entering the second half, and second story arc of the album. There’s a distinct tonal and story difference between these two halves. The first half describes Hunter’s experiences in war, and describes what war is like, almost purely for character development, greatly shifting his worldview and loosening his moral rigidity, while shedding him of his naivety, forcing him to mature, compromising his belief in God, so on. The second half is a more traditional ‘narrative’ focused on Hunter’s personal character conflicts in the overall story rather than ‘what would Hunter’s response/impression be to this horrible war thing or that horrible war thing’, so it’s things like addressing plotlines from Act I and setting him up for Act IV.
Whose viewpoint? Hunter.
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>0:00 – 0:12 Instrumental What the hell is this, Morning Mood? It’s like he’s in some meadow with birds and bunnies and flowers all blooming and bouncing around. Wakey wakey, rise and shine!
Yeah, so Hunter comes to, having survived the Mustard Gas attack. He is still on the battlefield, not in a good enough condition to get up and go anywhere and in fact presently dying.
>Amongst the stone and smoke / We never laid before / Images floating all about / Life in the afterglow Oh that’s why it’s so cheery sounding, Hunter is presently totally delirious. Nothing happening around him is registering right now, or is only floating in and out as vague images, while his mind occupies itself with a happy little ‘life flashing before your eyes’, ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ imminent-death euphoria.
Which is what this song is, a description of Hunter’s near-death experience. In that way, it’s really, really straightforward.
>My decaying mind pretends / None of this ever happened The near-death state is casting out the pain and drawing Hunter’s mind away from any of the horrors he has experienced. He can barely think through this anaesthetic haze and these memories of happier times.
>We either learn to live a lie / Or we’re waiting here to die Hunter can either delude himself into thinking he’ll survive somehow, and sit here hoping for rescue, or he can be realistic about his chances and recognise that he’s going to be laying here in the mud for minutes or hours until he finally passes. In the latter case, he might as well not protract the suffering and just let himself die.
After all his experiences, he isn’t optimistic enough to believe life will provide him with anything nice, but he still has just enough faith to not want to die.
>And after all this suffering / I could lie here for good The option of surrendering to death and letting this warm current take him is extremely attractive to Hunter right now.
>But with a mind on fire / I try and stand my ground ‘Happiness is a knife / when the world rolls on its side / and your mind’s on fire’. Our first, and extremely indirect, tie back to Ms Terri in this song. While describing how Hunter is frantically trying to grapple onto consciousness and work up enough anger not to get swept away, it’s also priming us to think about her since Hunter is also going to be thinking about her very soon.
In a more wide-reaching sense, Hunter still feels he has urgent business he hasn’t attended to in his life. It likely isn’t so specific or conscious as ‘I HAVE TO FIND OUT THE SECRETS OF MY MOM AND BURN DOWN WHATEVER KILLED HER!!!’, but he is definitely having fuzzy impulses in that vein.
>Illuminate and I will follow Hunter hazily asks for a sign from God to point him on where to go. If God assures him that there’s purpose to his survival, and there’s worth in him fighting to live, then Hunter will fight to his absolute limit. Hunter felt abandoned by God as of WIMTBA and outright disavowed Him in Mustard Gas, but in this dying moment he is desperate enough to hope and want that guidance.
Simultaneously, he is asking to see Ms Terri. ‘I still see her face; her beauty, her grace / Transfixed like a light in front of me’. If Ms Terri can appear before him, then he will happily give up and let himself die so that he can join her.
>Amongst the stone and smoke / Rising above it all / Broken but not beyond repair / Let’s see how this soul fares Hunter is so close to death now that he has an out-of-body experience. He watches himself on the field with shockingly lucid impartiality, observing that even though he’s seriously injured, the injuries are not yet so grievous as to be fatal despite treatment. There is still a genuine chance he could survive this. Whether he does or not, though, is ultimately God’s hands — Hunter himself can’t do anything to influence the outcome. That said, he’s content leaving it to chance.
>Chorus Repetition Hunter resolves to stay alive for as long as he can so as to keep the option to live open.
>Illuminate, and I will follow you / (I will follow you, you, I will follow you) / (Everything you thought you’ve lost you have now) / (Who’s laughing now?) But Hunter’s will eventually flags as he gets that sign he was looking for — and it’s not God knocking, it’s Ms Terri.
We have this amazing buildup through this whole verse of absolute felicity and bliss as Hunter finds himself reunited in death with this vision of Ms Terri. He is so, so, so, so happy to see her again as his spirit turns to her, runs straight to her, and in the image I get, hugs her up to the ending of the verse…
‘I will follow you’ -> Hunter will follow Ms Terri into death. ‘Everything you thought you’ve lost you have now’ -> Hunter has Ms Terri back, as well as all the light, warmth, fulfilment, happiness, and love that comes with being in her presence. ‘Who’s laughing now?’ -> Hunter is! Screw your lame ‘life’ with its ‘suffering’ and ‘drama’ and ‘pain’, and alright he was dumb to get so dramatic about all that in the first place, because in the end Hunter got everything he wanted after all! Thanks God! It’s all okay!
But, before Hunter’s spirit can be whisked away into the loving embrace of Ms Terri…
>Let’s see how this soul fares some TOTAL JERKWAD comes on the scene and resuscitates him! Atrocious! The image of Ms Terri disappears as Hunter is yanked back into reality, illustrated by the abruptness of this line after all that buildup.
We can hear from the distinct intonation that this is a new speaker — the Son. He’s a soldier who belongs to an allied regiment. Right now, his platoon is scouring the battlefield left behind after Mustard Gas, retrieving the corpses and looking for survivors like Hunter. Hunter is truly hanging by a thread when the Son finds him, so the Son isn’t certain he’ll survive, but he’s hopeful.
>4:19 – 4:26 Instrumental Fade to black & timeskip.
>”The Private does what The General says / The General does what The President says / The President does what The First Lady says / So-so they say…” Hunter awakens in the Son’s camp to the unfamiliar sound of this wartime ditty on the radio. Some time has passed since he was found, and he has received medical treatment, though I figure he still needs some time before he’s at 100% again. He’ll be staying at camp for now while he recovers, and if he’s well enough after that he’ll join on as a member of this group, since his own regiment got destroyed by the Tank.
Another thing about this ditty — we’re at the Western Front and about to go into the Battle of the Somme, but these soldiers are plainly American if they’re talking about the President and the First Lady. I read this as confirmation that Hunter himself is American, rather than British, since we know he had to cross an ocean to get here, and the members of this regiment include his father and brother, who we can figure to be American and who also came from the City. There’s other stuff like the Dime’s closing coinciding with legislation on brothels tightening in America specifically, so I figure it’s another alternate history slip moment from Casey where he’s had America in mind as the setting the whole time, because why else is it showing up here when America wasn’t involved in the Battle of the Somme?
Mustard Gas Here they are; the wicked A panic floods the field Deliverance; unthinkable They play their part, performing oh so well
With empty cores they carry on (“A twisted soul”) “An apparition” Born of a beastly brand, they butcher purposely (Just have the sense to run away!)
Scream at the sky and beg Beg for a reason he would allow this Look to the sky and say “We would be better off without this” “Who would allow this?”
We’ve never felt alive But none of us can die just when we want to We’re stuck in this disguise With leather skin; these eyes designed to haunt you But do we haunt you?
Scream at the sky and beg Beg for a reason he would allow this Look to the sky and say “We would be better off without this” “Who would allow this?”
You’re on the other side You’re on the other side You’re on the other side You’re on the other side You’re on the other side You’re on the other side You’re on the other side You’re on the other side
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What happens? Following the Thief’s directions, Hunter finds himself caught on an active battleground in the middle of a mustard gas attack. Failing to escape it, the agonising gas cripples him so severely, he can do nothing but lay screaming and wait to die.
What’s in a name? ‘Mustard Gas’ — The final horror of war, this one representing Suffering. What’s there to say about suffering? It’s the horrible sensation of just pain and pain and pain and pain with no light at the end of the tunnel. It’s the absolute agony that makes you wish you were dead and didn’t exist so you don’t have to keep feeling it, and makes you loathe the very concepts of ‘justice’, ‘compassion’, ‘goodness’, or ‘mercy’ as bald-faced lies of the universe.
Whose viewpoint? Hunter.
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>Here they are; the wicked The figures that approached at the end of The Thief come into view, leading everyone present to think: we’re doomed.
It’s a group of enemy soldiers in gas masks, dispensing Mustard Gas over the field. Rather, they already have been dispensing it as heard at the end of The Thief, but only now upon seeing them are the allied soldiers making the connection of how they’re under attack. More than that, in their delay to respond, the gas has spread and saturated so escaping it is now impossible.
Off the bat, Hunter characterises the gassers as ‘wicked’. We’ll see he regards them as completely inhuman beings, similar to the Tank in that the outer visage of the mask makes it feel like there’s no human soul behind these actions, but if the Tank was evil for being ruthless and mechanical, the gassers are downright Satanic. The thing about them, which makes them so horrible, is that they still have the illusion of a human shape. It suggests that they may have once had, or should have, some reluctance to inflict the vast pains they’re inflicting. But they don’t.
Note that mustard gas itself is rarely fatal in the short term — its purpose is rather to cause such excruciating pain and injury that the enemy soldiers are too crippled to fight, inflicting long-lasting tortures over entire swaths of battlefield at a time.
>A panic floods the field The allied soldiers know they’re screwed — they don’t have gas masks. A mad rush back to the trenches breaks out.
>Deliverance; unthinkable But even if they get to the trenches, they can’t escape. All they can do is hide and hope the gassers don’t notice them. Still, the gas will proliferate wherever the wind carries it, so the answer to what they can really do to avoid the gas is ‘pray’. But there is nothing that will ease the pain once the gas reaches them. They are all going to be casualties, they are all going to suffer, and no merciful power is going to intervene to save them.
>They play their part, performing oh so well ‘They play a part and act a scene’? Probably not…
The gassers are methodical and obedient in how they administer the gas. Their willingness to adhere to their orders, and inflict such suffering, sticks out to Hunter — remember that Hunter broke away from the war machine in Cauda because he saw how he was inflicting pain (‘with abrasive eyes / pain in plain sight’). These are ‘people’ who have not and seemingly will not ever have their ‘Cauda moment’, and if they have, they’ve pushed that voice of conscience aside so they can continue serving as their masters demand. Such, their senses of morality and empathy have been so utterly subsumed by their training that they are basically soulless. Hunter bitterly observes how pleased their superiors must be with them, or how pleased they must be with themselves.
>With empty cores they carry on / (“A twisted soul”) “An apparition” / Born of a beastly brand, they butcher purposely The gassers proceed in spreading gas across the field, firing artillery anywhere they suspect there are soldiers.
Hunter’s impression of them continues to echo Cauda — ‘an apparition awoken with an urge to own and occupy’, ‘twisted beasts with a desire for disorder’. The Mustard Gassers are the final result of perfect indoctrination, the ‘twisted beasts’ that Hunter felt himself pressured into becoming at the start of the war. They don’t think for themselves, they don’t even think of themselves, they are simply pawns of their masters made to destroy the enemy’s pawns. They do this since it is their purpose, and their party line is telling them it’s morally right. Probably, that’s the only way to inflict such suffering and not be inconsolable.
Any human heart underneath the mask is surely dead. Overall language here frames them as being, basically, demons, or some other kind of metaphysical entity that parodies and preys on humans. The uncanny valley of the human silhouette under the vile masks is highly unnerving to Hunter.
>(Just have the sense to run away!) Hunter pleads inside himself for the soldiers to not try fighting the gassers, as his regiment tried fighting the Tank, and instead just run. Hunter, we can figure, is running as fast as he can to get away from this scene.
I can also weirdly read this as coming from the gassers, like even they want Hunter’s side to give up and save themselves, but it still doesn’t stop them from doing what they’re going to do.
>0:52 – 0:59 Instrumental The gassers advance, firing off another round of gas. Hunter is still distanced from the front lines of this fight, but close enough that he can hear the screams of the afflicted soldiers and for the gas to begin billowing its way to him.
>Scream at the sky and beg / Beg for a reason he would allow this / Look to the sky and say / “We would be better off without this” / “Who would allow this?” Echoing WIMTBA and Cauda: ‘With our hands to the sky / We extend our limbs begging “why oh why?”’; ‘we cannot allow this, this is terrible’.
The pain and horror of the mustard gas is abominable. Screams and wails of agony rise from every man caught in the cloud, leaving Hunter with this impression: a just God would not allow something as horrific as mustard gas to exist. We heard him plead for God in WIMTBA, but now he is condemning God as himself negligent or wicked for permitting men to suffer and die in such an excruciating manner.
Basically Hunter facing the question of evil: how can God be good when evil exists? And comes to the conclusion that, if God exists, then he is not good, but sadistic.
>We’ve never felt alive / But none of us can die just when we want to Now we get to hear what’s going on in the Mustard Gassers’ world. Unsure if this is a literal hard cut to them as narrators, or them just being close enough now for Hunter to see them clearly and append this perspective onto them.
And wow is their perspective something. Contrasted against all the suffering and horror, life for the Mustard Gassers sounds cartoonishly silly as they bumble around the field, firing off more gas. They are extremely divorced from the pain of what’s going on here, rather, they are aware they are inflicting terrible pain, but are so beyond the point of doing anything about it that their attitude has wrapped around and become disturbingly cheery from all the grimness of it.
The gassers acknowledge that yes, they are soulless. Hunter’s read that they have subsumed their hearts to the war machine is correct, so they have all lost their selves by doing things that have shattered their personal ethos to the dirt. For this, they feel dead, and don’t mind if reality catches up with that inner deadness. Unfortunately, since their superiors still have use for them, they still have work to do, so they can’t just let themselves get shot or whatever. In its own way, this inability to defy the command to torture others is also a kind of torture.
>We’re stuck in this disguise / With leather skin; these eyes designed to haunt you Driving in the point again that the soldiers are unable to behave with humanity or empathy because their superiors have forced them to become monsters. Even the gassers feel trapped and inhuman in this role — these horrible masks have, in a sense, become their faces.
>But do we haunt you? There’s the literal element of how frightening a gas mask looks, and how the image of it might linger in nightmares, but I think it’s also like, ‘do you think you could’ve wound up like us?’.
>You’re on the other side. So why are the gassers doing this? What justifies all this suffering? What justifies any of the atrocities that have happened over this war? Well, nothing, really, except that the other guy is the enemy. In the end that’s all it comes down to.
I like envisioning this as the gassers having broken through the previous front line and are now directly upon Hunter. More gas deployments go off and off all around him, fresh clouds bursting in front of him as he tries to flee. However he tries to avoid it or fight it off, he quickly succumbs to the choking effects of the gas and falls to the ground in agony, while the gassers continue along in their warpath, heedless of him or just uncaring.
That said, I could also figure him being gassed earlier, in either of the chorus iterations (so that his condemnation of God doesn’t just coincide with him seeing others in agony, but with him experiencing it for himself… then the gassers’ verse can cut in while Hunter himself is writhing there in front of them before they trundle onwards). But with the big energy of this verse it feels appropriate to imagine things coming to a head here… up to however you want to read it, I think.
>3:43 – 4:13 Instrumental Hunter faints. Thinking he is dead, the mustard gassers proceed on, leaving behind what is now a quiet scene.
The Thief Shrouded criminal An innovative mind (We watch spirits move)
Shadowed, they’re oblivious With plans awry (We watch spirits move)
Who can save us now?
Love seems baron when cash is king Wealth here for the bleeding, what good will bring More than I could ask from those who sleep A crooked mind, an honest heart, ancillary They collide…
I got time, I got time… I got time, I got time… I got time, I got time… I got time, I got time I got time, I got time I got time, I got time! I got mine, I got mine!
Love seems bare of meaning when cash is king Wealth here for the bleeding, what good will bring Me more than I could ask from those who sleep A crooked mind, an honest heart, ancillary They collide
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What happens? Hunter comes upon a Thief robbing the bodies of soldiers. Though the desecration of the bodies angers Hunter, the Thief calms him by noting his petty criminality is inconsequential compared to the war. Accepting this logic, Hunter spends the night with the Thief, who then directs him onward…
What’s in a name? ‘The Thief’ — and for once we actually have a name for him! He’s Pierre and he’s our third Horror, Greed. So we have destruction, death, and… well greed is bad of course, but next to those two, is it really so bad as to be called a ‘horror’?
Pierre will show us yes. Absolutely.
Also with his name being Pierre we can pin Hunter to a specific location — he is presently in France, lining up with references to Hunter fighting in the Battle of the Somme later.
Whose viewpoint? Hunter and Pierre alternating, but mostly Pierre.
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>0:00 – 0:08 Instrumental Man, this song. I know it’s coming every time as part of the horrors of war sequence, but this is the first time I think I’ve really sat down to listen to it. Everything about how it’s written, sung, and structured is so shadowy and airy that it passes under the radar, which thematically I think is the point.
Just wanted to say that before the lyrics take over, and also say that the lyrics here are wild, in the sense of how odd the phrasing is and how much you have to extrapolate from tiny phrases and only vague ambiguous references to anything. I think I have some ideas though. Also this little guitar at the start here reminds me of something from Silent Hill lol.
>Shrouded criminal Okay, so here’s my best guess as to how to approach this song’s lyrics. We have two clear intonations that play through this song: an airy one, which is Pierre’s, and a ‘solid’ one, which is Hunter. The effect is more clear in the chorus and the predominant narrator across the song is Pierre, but the abrupt contrast on these two words is also playing with this dynamic.
‘Shrouded’ -> This is Pierre, in disguise as he stealthily picks through the bodies prepared for burial at the end of The Poison Woman. The soldiers who prepared the bodies have left, since nighttime is imminent if it hasn’t fallen already. He believes he hasn’t been seen, but…
‘Criminal’ -> This is Hunter noticing Pierre’s lone silhouette, realising he’s stealing, and accusing him of criminality by approaching and training a gun on him. Pierre has been caught, and now we know what he is.
Time seems to freeze on this situation as the first couple verses continue — the intonation on criminal isn’t actually Hunter’s (it’s like a combination of Pierre’s and Hunter’s), with the first couple verses going ahead to describe more of what the situation is.
>An innovative mind Is stealing from corpses really that innovative? I suppose it could be from Hunter’s perspective, if he’s never encountered the concept of graverobbing before (kind of like how he never encountered the concept of prostitutes even after bedding one), and for Pierre it might indicate that the war has given him opportunities to thieve prolifically where he couldn’t before. There’s only so many graves with so many valuables in them you can rob, right? Unless the guy literally died an hour ago and still has his uniform on and pockets full. His usual fare is probably living people but he’s seen easy money to be made on the war front, so here he is.
>(We watch spirits move) Clueless on every aspect of this — who ‘we’ is indicating (Pierre and Hunter?), what the spirits are indicating, and why or how they are moving. I’d figure spirits would point to the ghosts of the dead soldiers, but how would Hunter and Pierre be watching them? Just some kind of empathy/thought to how the dead soldiers would react, driving Hunter and Pierre’s responses to this situation? Or some kind of physical action with the bodies being moved?
>Shadowed, they’re oblivious Pierre confesses that no, the soldiers who prepared these corpses don’t know he’s here and that yeah he’s not meant to be here. He has probably been following platoons around and picking up their scraps for a while now. Could also be pointing to the corpses as oblivious — which of course they are, they’re dead. Hunter might be thinking about what the soldiers would think, but Pierre has an answer to what they actually think about this: nothing.
>With plans awry Probably just pointing again to Pierre graverobbing? Plans of cleanly burying the soldiers going awry because Pierre is robbing them? Pierre’s plans going awry because Hunter caught him, so he needs to think fast?
>Who can save us now? This is the dead soldiers speaking, or Hunter’s thoughts of what the dead soldiers would say. They’re being robbed and can’t defend themselves, so who can save them? Hunter. We return to him aiming his gun at Pierre and demanding that Pierre stop, drop everything, and explain himself.
>Love seems baron when cash is king / Wealth here for the bleeding, what good will bring So this is Pierre’s response, and his argument. What is the point of acting on sentimentality, and leaving the dead soldiers’ possessions for the dead soldiers to have, when Pierre can take those valuables and put them to proper use? Living people certainly need dollars more than dead ones. Especially Pierre, who insists he is too poor to worry about sentiment (love is baron); the money has to come first (cash is king).
‘Love seems baron’ -> Play on words here with baron/barren; Pierre’s greedy focus on money has made him unempathetic towards others, so he’s happy to exploit and use people’s pain to make a buck. Though he was able to see though the Poison Woman, the implications of what Pierre is saying here have not clicked for Hunter.
>More than I could ask from those who sleep Hunter’s voice interjects, receptive to Pierre’s rhetoric and so finishing his lines. Pierre is arguing that he needs the money; if he is not actually poor, then he is making himself out to be so well enough that Hunter is sympathetic towards him. What he’s getting from graverobbing is a bounty incomparable to his everyday wealth and he seems to appreciate this. So compared to actually killing people, or robbing living people, is what Pierre’s doing really so horrible? Hunter’s a soldier, who is he to throw stones?
>A crooked mind, an honest heart, ancillary Hunter accepts that Pierre’s methods are scummy, but fundamentally he isn’t that terrible. He puts away his gun and stops threatening Pierre.
>They collide… Hunter and Pierre decide to camp together for the night. There is obvious discord between Pierre’s worldview and Hunter’s, though Hunter has decided it’s not a big enough deal to reject Pierre.
>Cheating innocence / I’ve got the time tonight Meanwhile, while Hunter’s thinking to be a good camp buddy and not get on Pierre’s case over heartfelt grievances, Pierre is thinking about how to exploit Hunter. He thinks Hunter is gullible enough to rob and agreed to camp with him to facilitate that.
>1:35 – 1:45 Instrumental We hear this strong buildup as Pierre’s actual thoughts start to make themselves known.
>Tonight Pierre is anticipating the massive haul he’ll be able to steal tonight and becoming excited as he prepares camp, talks with Hunter, and graverobs.
>Got time, got time Echoing two things here.
First: ‘Left right, left right’ from The Lake and the River. That was Hunter mindlessly pushing himself to march out of the bounds of the Lake; here it works to illustrate Pierre going left and right to and fro from body to body to body, robbing them.
Second: ‘We’ve got the time if you’ve got the scratch’ from The Pimp and the Priest. What’s the point of this song? Why is an encounter with a thief included among such horrors as destruction and death in the context of war? How come this one’s so tame, such that even Hunter doesn’t seem to regard it as horrible once he thinks about it, but still relevant enough to include here?
BECAUSE THIS IS THE HORROR THAT ALSO DRIVES THE ANTAGONIST OF THE WHOLE STORY. DUHHH! Our little Pierre may be a smalltime crook in comparison, but his mindset is exactly as mercenary, heartless, and cruel as TP&P. He does not care what kind of hurt he inflicts as long as he gets his money and he will happily backstab others for his own gain. He says as much to Hunter’s face and still Hunter underestimates the utter parasite he is. The only reason he’s targeting dead people, and hence was able to rationalise himself in a way Hunter accepted, was because it was an easier profit. Why struggle with robbing living soldiers if they’ll die within the week anyway?
Probably the worst thing about him is that he isn’t so obvious. If the Tank showed Hunter that morals weren’t the most powerful force on earth, and the Poison Woman was challenging Hunter to find the boundary between justifiable and unjustifiable immorality, the Thief is the force that says it’s okay to compromise your morals for personal gain, and purely by being so lukewarm after those other horrors, Hunter actually accepts it. Hunter has done awful things before — like how he treated Ms Leading in Red Hands, or what he has done in his course as a soldier — but those were consequences of him being immature and indoctrinated respectively. It’s this moment, where he sits back and lets Pierre graverob, on the rationale that Pierre ‘has a point’ and ‘isn’t that awful’, that Hunter first allows wickedness to flourish simply with the sentiment of ‘eh’.
I wonder if Hunter actually joins in with some of the graverobbing too. I’m going to figure no, he doesn’t go that far yet (and Pierre would probably be irascible about losing profits to Hunter), but it feels worth it to at least float the possibility.
On top of that, I figure this ‘tonight’ and ‘got time’ section describes Hunter and Pierre having a conversation while camping — and we’re hearing it from Pierre’s side, where he’s conspiring how to manipulate Hunter into giving up his valuables. Meanwhile, the last two regiments Hunter attached himself to have all died over The Tank and The Poison Woman, so he needs directions to meet up again with friendly forces. It’s unclear whether Pierre could know an attack would be coming soon, but the directions Pierre gives are bad directions that almost get Hunter killed.
Which personally, I think was purposeful. Because then Hunter will be a corpse and Pierre can leisurely rob him. Got mine!
>Got mine, got mine! Hammering in the point; Pierre isn’t bothered an but about anyone or anything as long as he gets money. People can be left bleeding, screaming, dying — he doesn’t care, he won’t be there to help them. Escalate the scale of this sentiment from one petty graverobber to entire nations plundering the scraps of other war-ravaged nations, or encouraging the continuation of wars to benefit homeland industries — certainly, that’s horrifying.
Narratively, Pierre and Hunter have solidified their plan for Hunter to depart at daylight, across what Pierre seems to know is an active battleground. Aware that Hunter will likely die, and in fact hoping for it, they go to sleep. Dawn breaks with the next verse.
>Love seems bare of meaning when cash is king Pierre’s thoughts are revealed: he doesn’t see the point of love, or in broader terms, of being selfless, principled, or doing good for others when he stands to make a buck by being exploitative instead. So it’s not that he’s too poor to get by without resorting to questionable means, it’s that he’s an opportunistic vulture who would’ve been doing this either way. You know how Ms Leading singled out TP&P as being ‘alone’ in The Church and The Dime? Yeah, same deal for Pierre, try to imagine him with a woman, or doing anything heartfelt, and he’s sterile. Too busy thinking about how to get money from the situation.
Narratively, I see this verse as Pierre seeing Hunter off in the morning before Hunter departs. For now we’re sticking with Pierre’s viewpoint, contemplating on what he’s done by manipulating Hunter into danger, and not caring. Hunter has been friendly with Pierre and Pierre is also brushing that off as pointless.
>Wealth here for the bleeding, what good will bring / Me more than I could ask from those who sleep Subtle variation on the line changes its meaning, ‘what good will bring me more than <what I can get from graverobbing>?’ So basically, what virtue is so amazing that it should incentivise Pierre to prioritise it over money?
>A crooked mind, an honest heart, ancillary Pierre is the ‘crooked mind’, Hunter is the ‘honest heart’, ancillary points out to how they have ostensibly worked together by forming this plan for Hunter to get back to an allied unit, but said plan is really all to Pierre’s benefit.
>They collide Hunter leaves, unaware of how he’s been tricked. Could also be noting how Hunter has taken in Pierre’s lesson of ‘it’s ok to put aside scruples if you can tangibly benefit’.
>4:15 – 4:25 Instrumental Hunter sets off across the quiet battleground that Pierre indicated would get him back to an allied camp. Things for now seem peaceful, but there’s still an air of precariousness…
>4:25 – 4:48 Instrumental As Hunter proceeds, something begins to feel wrong… an odd yellow mist is forming across the field…
>4:48 – 5:01 Instrumental Someone dangerous is approaching — and with their approach, the yellow mist is growing thicker and thicker…
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.
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>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.
What It Means To Be Alone Oh, you were born with the sun And oh, you will die with the moon And everything you thought you had, you lost But now, you’d never lose what you don’t have Prayers from above, never answered quite enough Now the only one you have is
You, with this cruel and bitter heart You were cold and in love, left here naked in the sun Run, scared, from this cruel and bitter world This has only begun, as the bombs are bursting on
Smoke arose on azimuth glares, bodies brood in frigid winter air Where families’ sons are robbed beneath their feet, and hearts concede “Ab ovo,” the angel sings, “Ad astra”; our eyes to the sea We thought that we had a cause for suffering And reason enough to die alone
Oh, but you, with this cruel and bitter heart You were cold and in love, left here naked in the sun Run, scared, from this cruel and bitter world This has only begun, as the bombs are bursting off
With our feet beneath us, with our hands to the sky We extend our limbs begging “why oh why?” Don’t turn away!
Prayers from above, never answered quite enough Looking up never offered you too much Now the only one you have is…
🌲🌲🌲
What happens? Hunter, remembering his true wants and values, realises he has made a mistake in coming to war. He feels the absence of God as he fruitlessly prays to leave this pointless hardship, when a terrifying foe approaches…
What’s in a name? ‘What It Means To Be Alone’ — Something Hunter is coming to realise, as he finds himself utterly out-of-place and stranded in the middle of this war… but what does it really mean to be alone? Well, I’d say this: It means you have nobody to rely on.
Whose viewpoint? Hunter. And/or an Omniscient voice, but principally Hunter.
Actually I suppose this warrants more attention. A lot of this song is in second person, speaking with perfect omniscient knowledge of Hunter’s journey and motives, but the speaker does not have the intonation of the Oracles (it’s closer to Hunter’s) nor are they speaking directly to Hunter. Hence, the omniscient voice here is not the Oracles. Rather, the voice seems to be affirming various realisations Hunter is having about his actions and journey, with an incredible tone of compassion and mercy. So, apart from simply being framing for Hunter to introspect (in large part the realisations he’s making don’t sound like consciously wrought trains of thought so much as the scales dropping from his eyes), I wonder if the speaker is the ‘angel’ Hunter identifies in this song (and that features prominently in this song’s music video).
With there being no supernatural elements to the story though, I wouldn’t take it as a like, a literal angel appears and tells Hunter these things. It’s more like… we’re hearing the voice of every higher positive force that loves Hunter but that can’t stop him or impinge on his will being venerated as Hunter realises that wow, he messed up. Parties you could throw in that group would broadly include God, ‘the universe’, Casey, You the listener, the part of Hunter that wants him to have a good life and stop messing up, and to go really crack something like the ghost of Ms Terri in heaven.
Fundamentally though I think the voice is just Hunter, framed from a higher vantage to get the point across of how to approach this song; the things the ‘angel’ says are the things Hunter is thinking, realising, or intuiting, these being deeply true and positive things to recognise, without necessarily demanding strenuous conscious thought put on them (he is still on the battlefield in the middle of a lot of attention-grabbing chaos right now. Maintaining a level of dissociation/distance probably helps when he has to flip into combat-ready survival mode on a dime.).
🌲🌲🌲
>Oh, you were born with the sun / And oh, you will die with the moon Boy, what a pair of lines. Alright here’s my shot.
‘You were born with the sun’ -> Hunter’s true nature is that of a boy raised on love. As in tarot symbolism, Hunter is in a state of his greatest power, and greatest trueness to himself, when he is openly operating by the sentiments of pure love on which he was raised, given to him by Ms Terri. ‘Floating on wax wings / where is the sun?’ Ms Terri is the sun; so there is a literal element of Hunter being born to her, too — in short ‘Hunter! Stop letting yourself be a cog in the war machine and remember the sensitive, loving boy that you are!’.
‘You will die with the moon’ -> Hunter stifles himself, loses himself, and metaphorically kills himself when he abandons his true nature. The persona he took as a soldier in Cauda was not true to himself and was a form of killing himself; he has snapped out of it this time, but will come to discard his true self for more fake personae, leading ultimately to his non-metaphorical death. In the context of the war, if he continues to be a soldier, he realises he will likely die because he stopped thinking for himself. (Also to stretch a bit, and return to the idea of a Dime/Moon connection, you can also make a literal read of Hunter dying with TP&P, with TP&P being the moon to mirror Ms Terri/sun.)
Indeed, now that Hunter is thinking as Hunter again, we can see his actual opinions about this war, and they are certainly more vulnerable sentiments than the anger and belligerence expressed in Cauda.
Song as a whole has this amazing tone of mercy to it; I suppose that is what Hunter needs or is seeking right now.
>And everything you thought you had, you lost / But now, you’d never lose what you don’t have Boy, WHAT a pair of lines. Hokay.
‘Everything you thought you had, you lost’ -> What did Hunter think that he had? We can trace his obvious losses of Ms Terri and Ms Leading, but can probably go further — he’s lost his feeling of belonging here, of purpose here, of home here, of desire to be here, perhaps even his pride as a morally justified person…
‘You’d never lose what you don’t have’ -> Since what he lost is everything, what he has is nothing, which means he has nothing to lose. He has no attachments to anything going on in the war anymore, and hence no scruples against trying to distance himself from it, aka to stop thinking like a soldier. Further, since he has nothing, there’s a sort of liberation in that… he can pursue whatever he wants without fearing the consequence of losing anything else. It’s also kind of like, ‘do you feel comforted, having run from everything in your life? This is where you wind up when you do that…’.
>Prayers from above, never answered quite enough / Now the only one you have is / You Interesting phrasing.
‘Prayers from above, never answered quite enough’ -> Hunter has voiced several requests over the course of the Acts to reach a good ending, specifically in HHMHT and VVV with the ‘sing me to the lake’ reprises. While he has experienced some positives, the negatives have been far heavier. He does not feel his wishes are being heard, or rather, that the important part of them isn’t in any consummate fashion. He had a happy life with Ms Terri? She dies. He has a happy life with Ms Leading? It turns complicated. He sees prospects of comfort elsewhere? He’s allowed to try it, but it’s worse than where he came from.
Prayers ‘from’ above twigs at me though, wouldn’t a prayer usually be to above? I wonder if there’s not a double meaning in the sense of, Hunter feels alone because he’s realised that higher powers aren’t going to give him the perfect happiness he wants, while everyone watching along with the story knows that Hunter got himself into most of these messes and could’ve been fine if he’d just one thing different.
Either way, the nets are gone. Wherever he thinks to go next, he has to get there without relying on the universe to favour him.
Edit: Figured this one out. Prayers ‘from’ above is the demands of the Christian religion, which Hunter is saying don’t answer his major life questions sufficiently or suitably. Basically he doesn’t see how living as a good Christian, or accepting Christian doctrine, explains the realities of life he’s seeing in front of him, leading him to disillusion with the faith.
>You, with this cruel and bitter heart / You were cold and in love, left here naked in the sun ‘This cruel and bitter heart’ -> Hunter’s been cruel and bitter in his behaviour during Act II, but I think this is moreso pointing to his mindset as of Cauda; Hunter is recognising that his cruelty and bitterness is what got him into his current predicament. He was cruel and bitter leaving the Lake, cruel and bitter dumping Ms Leading, then cruel and bitter as a soldier… maybe he’s just the problem?
‘You were cold and in love’ -> Pointing to his treatment of Ms Leading; cold owing to the pain of Ms Terri’s suicide that he was trying to bandage (and his consequent edginess that made him flip so hard), in love because he was indeed in love. These two sentiments collided poorly, but Hunter sounds to be starting to recognise how it happened/maybe even forgive himself for it?
‘Left here naked in the sun’ -> Hunter was and is in an extremely vulnerable position coming to war. To be naked doesn’t just imply babelike innocence (he trusted the war machine to love him) or defencelessness (he has nothing to fall back on to get him out of this), but being naked ‘in the sun’ implies being completely exposed. Hunter cannot even pretend to like, agree with, or keep the rhetorics that training has battered into him, or that his pained ego convinced him were good ideas.
>Run, scared, from this cruel and bitter world Hunter recognises that the world outside his designated safe zones is dangerous and hostile. He wishes to return to the comfort and safety he had when sheltered by Ms Terri, which he found again in his relationship with Ms Leading. Simultaneously, Hunter is thinking about escaping from the war as soon as he can, to get back to somewhere more familiar (so the City or the Lake).
>This has only begun, as the bombs are bursting on This shot grounds us in the scene of where Hunter is: on an active battlefield, with bombs literally going off all around him and his unit. Though Hunter has been at war long enough to know he doesn’t like it, he also recognises that he broke quickly and doesn’t have the constitution to continue doing this for the full length of the war. Rather, knowing it’s Hunter, I bet what he wants is for the whole war to end the second this engagement’s over and he can return to camp — obviously, not going to happen.
Simultaneously foreshadowing the four horrors of war Hunter will face over the next four songs, which he is still naive to.
>Smoke arose on azimuth glares, bodies brood in frigid winter air / Where families’ sons are robbed beneath their feet, and hearts concede Transition lines from the omniscient voice to Hunter’s grounded, conscious voice. These are sights Hunter has witnessed that left an extreme impression on him, but the intonation is still that of the omniscient narrator — that’s how we know the narrator in both cases is Hunter. Really impressive how smooth the transition is here by the way, like it’s to the point you almost don’t notice it despite being so explicit. Rooted in the way the pronouns bounce around, from ‘you’ to none to ‘we’ with the physical scene transition happening from the illustrations of action in ‘run, scared’ and ‘bombs bursting on’ into an outright scene description ‘smoke arose on azimuth glares’ after all that thinky-feely stuff.
Another case of the softness of Hunter’s voice feeling like him being very honest and in-tune with himself; won’t last, but over the transition it’s there.
ANYWAY
‘Smoke arose on azimuth glares’ -> ‘Azimuth’ means the angle between a reference point (say, north), an observer, and a point of interest along a straight vector from the observer (say, a town); here though, it’s in reference to azimuth bombs or AZONs, an early form of guided bomb. Fancy language to describe smoke rising in the distance as infrastructure is bombed, with the added dramatic element of distant explosions and the trail of the smoking flares that were also characteristic of AZONs.
One thing to note though is that AZONs were WWII things, not WWI things. This might be another one of those ‘alternate history’ moments or they’re not literally azons so much as it’s just borrowing the language to get the idea across of what these bombs are doing — hitting infrastructure.
‘Bodies brood in frigid winter air’ -> Self-explanatory, Hunter recounts a harrowing memory of seeing exposed corpses strewn across a battleground. I think these may be dead enemy soldiers in this particular case that are getting to him? BUT let’s zoom in on the coolest thing here… it is now WINTER! Since VVV was set in summer, we now know the timeskip between Act II and Act III covered at least two seasons for Hunter to travel and get trained up.
‘Where families’ sons are robbed beneath their feet’ -> Hunter has shed the military view of soldiers being pawns or resources; he recognises all the soldiers involved in this war, enemy or not, are people whose deaths their loved ones will mourn. Given the nature of conscription, beyond the men simply being robbed because they get killed, they are literally robbed in the sense that the compelling force of a mandate steals them from the safety of their homes (to get killed).
‘And hearts concede’ -> echoes of ‘love decays (while callgirls perform)’ in this. Basically describing Hunter’s situation in Cauda again; the soldiers know that being soldiers means forfeiting their personal sense of right and shutting off their selves to become tools of the machine, and even though nobody wants to do this, they do. Simultaneously, the families concede that these men are likely not to return again. SIMULTANEOUSLY, carries the literal element of hearts stopping — the soldiers dying.
>And hearts concede / “Ab ovo,” the angel sings, “Ad astra” BEAUTIFUL line. Pretty layered one too, you know now that I have to properly think about them Act III has had a ton of these fat pithy lyrics and we’re only three songs in, it’s wack.
So, ‘ab ovo’ is latin for ‘from the egg’, used as part of a longer phrase ‘ab ovo usque ad mala’ or ‘from the egg to the apples’, with eggs being the first course of a typical meal and fruits being the last. The phrase then means ‘from the beginning to the end’, or in another sense, ‘in whole’, or ‘until it is completed’.
We’re not going to the apples though, we are going to the ‘astra’ — stars. With stars signifying the infinity beyond the earth, the fundamental meaning of the phrase stays the same: ‘from the beginning to the end’, but with the implication of going to somewhere higher and beyond this firmament, that is to say, to heaven.
The one singing this phrase is the angel: a divine messenger. Whatever the angel says carries the authority of God.
Finally, ‘and hearts concede’ blends into this line; it’s a part of it. So putting these elements all together, what is ultimately being described here is: the soldiers are conceding that god, or whatever fundamental force of the universe you want to say governs these things, will not intervene to stop the war and will not release them from it midway through. The war and the soldiers’ involvement in it will continue until it is complete, that being both the process of the war itself and its implications on the soldiers’ lives, which will definitely involve pain and likely involve death. This is how both the soldiers are conceiving it — they are not allowed to be freed from the horror of war until ‘the process’ is done — and how Casey is about to write Hunter’s encounter with the four horrors (and all of Hunter’s misfortunes in general actually; they never ‘stop’ halfway through).
At the same time, this is an extremely merciful line. It carries a promise that whatever is at the end is something greater, or something good, or some divinely-touched frontier we can only dream about scraping. The juxtaposition of ‘egg’ to ‘stars’ creates another image, of an infant at the beginning, then of man becoming dust and billowing out into the infinite cosmos at the end — somehow, there’s a method to all this.
>”Ad astra”; our eyes to the sea / We thought that we had a cause for suffering / And reason enough to die alone
‘”Ad astra”; our eyes to the sea’ -> Though the soldiers know the war will not end until it is ‘done’, and what ‘done’ may mean for them individually may mean dying, they are looking for an out. Screw whatever plan is going on, the soldiers want to run back to those steam ships and go home. Note the third person inclusive pronoun here; Hunter is talking explicitly now, and though he’s again framing himself as part of a collective mind of soldiers, we can figure this is him confessing that if he had the option right now he would say ‘screw this war!!!’ and go back to the City.
‘We thought we had a cause for suffering / and reason enough to die alone’ -> Another reference to the mindset instilled in Hunter in Cauda. Hunter’s military training told him that he would suffer this pain to defeat evil and protect the innocent, and that if he died that was a hero’s death. He has realised now it’s not like that at all. The machinations driving all this death belong to the politicians, not to the soldiers who are basically just ordinary people who in peacetime circumstances wouldn’t wish hurt on anyone. He doesn’t believe in his side’s unequivocal goodness anymore, hence doesn’t feel justified in what he’s doing or really see the point of it.
Moreover, Hunter knows what he really values is love. Implicitly, if he’s to suffer for a ‘cause’, that ‘cause’ would have to be love.
>Chorus Repetition The background vocals on this repetition are ‘Who’s laughing now?’. So basically drawing attention back to the attitude with which he left Ms Leading, particularly his mockery of her in Red Hands and arrogance he could find better than her in VVV — Who’s laughing now? Not Hunter. He completely messed up.
>With our feet beneath us, with our hands to the sky / We extend our limbs begging “why oh why?” Extremely evocative. The soldiers beg God to intervene and release them from this pain — the first explicit depiction of Hunter struggling with faith. We know that Ms Terri was ex-Catholic and struggled with the Church, so you can question how religiously she would’ve raised Hunter, but she also wanted him to integrate with the Lake and have a good sense of morals, with her own morals still being fundamentally Christian despite her experiences with the Church, so it’s possible he could still be basically Christian. I can’t tell if this is Hunter questioning capital-G-o-d God yet, because I’m not sure how much stock he put in God from the start, but it is certainly his view of the world being fundamentally a good place, that will provide for him, shattering.
Actually it’s probably both. So, starting, it’s a callback to 1878 and The Lake and The River, (’Branches twisting reaching for the sky / Hands extending reaching for the…’, ‘His branches reached so far before / His leaves were bold extremities with great control’) evoking the image of the Tree. The Tree is both a paternal figure for Hunter and a symbol of the boundary between the idyll of the lake and the danger of the world outside it; Hunter is now calling for a paternal figure (God) to demarcate the line of what is safe and what is dangerous and keep him securely inside the ‘safe’ zone of life, that is, for his life not to have pain or suffering, since God should be able to guard him from experiencing such things.
But of course, Hunter already left that safe zone when we went past the Tree to see more of the world outside. He is realising now that all of the world outside is not safe, and nobody is protecting him now. This isn’t yet the condemnation of God that we’ll see in Mustard Gas, but this is him realising what it means not to be sheltered.
With the Tree being a very masculine symbol too, really like it being invoked here in the context of soldiers. Don’t have much more on that thought but it’s neat.
>Don’t turn away! Beautiful! Hunter calls out for God not to abandon him. Can’t add much more than that; the singing here stands for itself.
>Prayers from above, never answered quite enough / Looking up never offered you too much This is a bit of a wild read here but I can’t help but hear the repetition of this first line echoing Ms Terri’s wish for Hunter to stay innocent and have a happy life, probably because of the reference to the Tree a verse earlier.
‘Looking up never offered you too much’ -> Getting a little sardonic. This is of course Hunter resigning that putting his faith in God to usher him into happiness so far hasn’t worked out, but also saying that his optimistic attitude towards finding things that would solve his problems (HHMHT, Smiling Swine, VVV) also never worked out. ‘I need to stop expecting things to go well for me’.
>Now the only one you have is… Hunter feels alone. Ms Terri is gone, Ms Leading is gone, and now it even feels like God has turned away from him. He recognises the only one who can get him out of the place he’s put himself now is him, when something catches his attention…
>4:17 – 4:50 Instrumental Rising from the smoke of the battlefield, the silhouette of this terrible machine instantly mutes all sentiments of mercy. As its mighty, wicked turret swishes side to side, the Tank, vanguard of the four horrors, draws nearer, and nearer…
空劫罰 祟りネコ | JP -> ENG / TDH 