| In Flames – Only For The Weak Lyrics | 21 years ago |
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Listening to a version of the song where the parts in quotation marks have been left out, I felt that the is maybe not only against pity for himself, but against pity in general. The "infection" would then be the pity you feel for someone, which might really be kind of infecting. He feels "forced to have any regret". Then, saying that he has become "the lie, beautiful and free" in his "righteous mind" he might point at the distance that he has to all the things he should actually feel pity for. - "Far away" he hides and "the truth", the misery, is "locked away". He calls himself a "bitter man", that is, he is without any feelings. The last verse then reveals that it was pride which became the lie - maybe he felt too proud to have any pity? His bitterness propably also corresponds to his inability "to paint the coulds". Finally, there is the "you" which might indeed be his girlfriend. He fells drowned and later drained, a nice contrast. Indeed, there is also the contrast of "happiness" and "sadness", neither of which is tolerated. The "drowning" goes along with the "sandness", so maybe the "draining" goes along with the "happiness" - a picture which fits quite nicely, because of the wet tears which are 'drained'. On the one hand, he feels disturbed by the pity of the person this song speaks to and on the other hand he feels disturbed by the happiness, the cheering up, which makes him feel "guilty". "Everytime you run, I fall behind" - he is unable to follow the happiness of the person he speaks to. The "slow-motion dark day" brings to me the idea of a depression: unable to enjoy life, he has "lost the ability to paint the clouds". And he feels even worse being encouraged. |
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| In Flames – Embody The Invisible Lyrics | 21 years ago |
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The song starts off questioning the "right to the throne" which "we", the humans, take for ourselves. The author does not exclude himself from this criticism, because he himself "want[s] it all". Then, the next stanca seems to be a description of evolution - the picture of the river running into the sea fits quite nicely: evolution is an ongoing stream of creatures and species who slowly mutate, die out or become. The "fast" standing earth builds a strong contrast to all this dynamic movement. This is really a relativation of man's position in nature. The third stanca is where things become a bit fuzzy, I think. The "lonliness" is a very important part of the song - it corresponds to the "silence" and the "untouched spring" mentioned in the refrain. Men are said to be wandering "alone through the years" and maybe the author points to the strength every human pretends to have - nobody likes to "show his wounds", i.e. to reveal his weakness. Still, the refrain cries for the listener to read "what is written in the soul", to "understand" the authors inner conflict, his "burdens", but without getting "near": the author is himself not able to show his weakness, he is also human. There is the wish to be "two steps ahead" - even more than just in the future, but really far ahead, leaving all the worldly pain behind. Death is not really seen in a negative way here - rather the time before death, because his body, the material part of his life, "will be bent from the burdens", so maybe there is even a positive view to death and a wish for what will be afterwards. |
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