So this has been.my favorite song of OTEP's since it came out in 2004, and I always thought it was a song about a child's narrative of suffering in an abusive Christian home. But now that I am revisiting the lyrics, I am seeing something totally new.
This song could be gospel of John but from the perspective of Jesus.
Jesus was NOT having a good time up to and during the crucifixion. Everyone in the known world at the time looked to him with fear, admiration or disgust and he was constantly being asked questions. He spoke in "verses, prophesies and curses". He had made an enemy of the state, and believed the world was increasingly wicked and fallen from grace, or that he was in the "mouth of madness".
The spine of atlas is the structure that allows the titan to hold the world up. Jesus challenged the state and in doing so became a celebrated resistance figure. It also made him public enemy #1.
All of this happened simply because he was doing his thing, not because of any agenda he had or strategy.
And then he gets scourged (storm of thorns)
There are some plot holes here but I think it's an interesting interpretation.
Standing in a sea of sleaze
Devils come to bury me
Half way dead and half alive
Sickness never felt so right
And every year a few feet more
Creeping up the ocean floor
Crawling up the ocean floor
Crawling slowly to the shore
Evil lurks an evil pure
Rising up with an even cure
To swallow every living thing
Evil evil entropy
Drifting drowning death came pounding
Over under rape and plunder
And I can't swim and I can't breathe
Drowning on this drunken sea
Black black ocean creeping tide
Rise over me and then leave me to die
Hanging off the levee brink
I fell in with a crowd of freaks
Half were dead and half alive
Half would kill you the other half would try
Hooked and baited lined and weighted
Thrown in with the shit and brine
So when the Devil's time is due
And this Devil swallows you
When half a truth is half a lie
And sickness never felt so right
Shame throws down a deathly notion
Creeping up over black black ocean
Drifting drowning death came pounding
Over under rape and plunder
And I can't swim and I can't breathe
Drowning on this drunken sea
Black black ocean creeping tide
Wash over me and then leave me to die
Devils come to bury me
Half way dead and half alive
Sickness never felt so right
And every year a few feet more
Creeping up the ocean floor
Crawling up the ocean floor
Crawling slowly to the shore
Evil lurks an evil pure
Rising up with an even cure
To swallow every living thing
Evil evil entropy
Drifting drowning death came pounding
Over under rape and plunder
And I can't swim and I can't breathe
Drowning on this drunken sea
Black black ocean creeping tide
Rise over me and then leave me to die
Hanging off the levee brink
I fell in with a crowd of freaks
Half were dead and half alive
Half would kill you the other half would try
Hooked and baited lined and weighted
Thrown in with the shit and brine
So when the Devil's time is due
And this Devil swallows you
When half a truth is half a lie
And sickness never felt so right
Shame throws down a deathly notion
Creeping up over black black ocean
Drifting drowning death came pounding
Over under rape and plunder
And I can't swim and I can't breathe
Drowning on this drunken sea
Black black ocean creeping tide
Wash over me and then leave me to die
Lyrics submitted by lurkinginsagas
Black Black Ocean Lyrics as written by Eric Emil Bachmann
Lyrics © ROUGH TRADE PUBLISHING, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Man, this is one of my favorite CF songs. I can feel it washing over me.