"Fast car" is kind of a continuation of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run." It has all the clawing your way to a better life, but in this case the protagonist never makes it with her love; in fact she is dragged back down by him.
There is still an amazing amount of hope and will in the lyrics; and the lyrics themselve rank and easy five. If only music was stronger it would be one of those great radio songs that you hear once a week 20 years after it was released. The imagery is almost tear-jerking ("City lights lay out before us", "Speeds so fast felt like I was drunk"), and the idea of starting from nothing and just driving and working and denigrating yourself for a chance at being just above poverty, then losing in the end is just painful and inspiring at the same time.
Lifeless and sour from death and from doom.
In the soil of my tomb not one flower shall bloom.
Nothing but Death in this earth shall abide,
In this my pathway to the other side.
And thus I close my eyes...
On through the tunnels, darkness ablaze.
Passing through Naamah, queen of the gateways.
The jaws of her darkness they feast on my eyes
As the last of the earthly lights flickers and dies.
Dark are the dreams on the stone bed.
For no sunlight shall reach to the land of the dead.
As I journey through tunnels and blackened chasm.
In the realms of Death unbound.
Underneath the cenotaph.
Revelations revealed through crepuscular trance.
Shadows of demons in catacombs dance.
Luminous signs of impossible shape.
Traveling deep, no return, no escape.
Wonderous, prosperous marvels most dark.
I fall to my knees
And behold as I hark
The tongues of the ancients,
Damned and aflame,
Chanting in madness...
Closer and closer,
The flames reaching higher.
Trial by fire! Trial by fire!
Coalescence of high and low.
Hand in hand with the damned I go.
A dance in shadows...
The burning fears of the world beyond,
At the end of these snakelike trails,
Are the same as those which forged this heart
And so my birth through death prevails.
Dark are my dreams on the stone bed.
For no sunlight shall reach to the land of the dead.
In flames I shall at last become.
With fire I am one.
Underneath the cenotaph.
In the soil of my tomb not one flower shall bloom.
Nothing but Death in this earth shall abide,
In this my pathway to the other side.
And thus I close my eyes...
On through the tunnels, darkness ablaze.
Passing through Naamah, queen of the gateways.
The jaws of her darkness they feast on my eyes
As the last of the earthly lights flickers and dies.
Dark are the dreams on the stone bed.
For no sunlight shall reach to the land of the dead.
As I journey through tunnels and blackened chasm.
In the realms of Death unbound.
Underneath the cenotaph.
Revelations revealed through crepuscular trance.
Shadows of demons in catacombs dance.
Luminous signs of impossible shape.
Traveling deep, no return, no escape.
Wonderous, prosperous marvels most dark.
I fall to my knees
And behold as I hark
The tongues of the ancients,
Damned and aflame,
Chanting in madness...
Closer and closer,
The flames reaching higher.
Trial by fire! Trial by fire!
Coalescence of high and low.
Hand in hand with the damned I go.
A dance in shadows...
The burning fears of the world beyond,
At the end of these snakelike trails,
Are the same as those which forged this heart
And so my birth through death prevails.
Dark are my dreams on the stone bed.
For no sunlight shall reach to the land of the dead.
In flames I shall at last become.
With fire I am one.
Underneath the cenotaph.
Lyrics submitted by TheDirge
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