| Blue Öyster Cult – Burnin' For You Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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Fire or Unknown Origin has a lot of elemental word play in the album. From just a very simple perspective, this song uses the image of elemental fire magic to tell the story of how someone "burns" for a lover, just to have something to live for, but quickly becomes burnt out. |
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| DragonForce – Disciples of Babylon Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I've got to say, I really enjoy reading a lot of these comments. I especially enjoyed the one that likened it to an abusive relationship. I agree completely, I think there are many different levels to DragonForce songs. On the surface they are mythical and video game-like, you got a little deeper and they tell a story, you take it even deeper than that, and you can find biblical and literary analysis that the general Guitar Hero player may have missed. There are so many ways to enjoy DragonForce. As far as this particular song goes, I've begun to see it as perhaps the most important song on Valley of the Damned, as it explains the sort of mentality that keeps a person trapped in the valley. To sum up what everyone else has hinted at, I'm going to connect all of these dots together. I'm going to take a quote from the Wikipedia page concerning the Babylonian captivity of Israel, which many people have already pointed to as the base of this song: "In the Hebrew Bible, the captivity in Babylon is presented as a punishment for idolatry and disobedience to Yahweh in a similar way to the presentation of Israelite slavery in Egypt followed by deliverance. The Babylonian Captivity had a number of serious effects on Judaism and Jewish culture. For example, the current Hebrew script was adopted during this period, replacing the traditional Israelite script. This period saw the last high-point of biblical prophecy in the person of Ezekiel, followed by the emergence of the central role of the Torah in Jewish life." "According to many historical-critical scholars, the Torah was altered during this time, and began to be regarded as the authoritative text for Jews. This period saw their transformation into an ethno-religious group who could survive without a central Temple" The way I interpret this song is three-fold. I believe that in many ways it uses biblical metaphors as well as video game imagery to tell a story, very much like the abusive relationship mentioned above. As you can see in the text I have presented, while the Jews longed for their salvation from Babylonian occupation, it had a significant effect on their culture as a whole. It changed their written language, their ritual, and even how they identified themselves as a people. Following their freedom, they carried these changes with them, even though they were no longer under Babylonian control. These elements became rooted in their culture and lead up to present day Judaism. My point is, whenever someone is the captive of another; be it Babylon, an abusive spouse, a video game dungeon, or even high school, their time spent as a captive as a significant effect. It changes who they are, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst. Even if their entire mentality is about escaping this captivity and gaining their freedom, the fact is, their time as a captive will become a part of who they are, and they will carry it with them after they are free. So if you look at it in this sense, even though the Jews were oppressed and held down by Babylon, in a strange way, given the cultural changes they absorbed, in someway they were almost disciples of this oppressor. Just as the video game warrior, the abused spouse, or the rebel teenager, they are disciples of their captor. They are Disciples of Babylon. |
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| DragonForce – Valley of the Damned Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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It's a song about growing up in a shitty hometown. But like most of their songs, it's got a strange mix between good and bad feelings. And the way I see it, they're basically saying that even when you grow up in the "valley of the damned" among ignorant and hateful people who don't even try to understand you, at the end of the day, it's still your hometown and you'll still feel nostalgic for it years later. I think most of the songs on Valley of the Damned are centered around this sort of loose concept. The coming of age/leaving your hometown. It's just told through the images of swords and dragons. |
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| DragonForce – Where Dragons Rule Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| It's a message about something that is bigger than you are, going against a situation that you have little to no control over. A case in which you have worked and faught but no matter how hard or how far you have gone, you still can't seem to change anything. This song is encouraging those to keep fighting, despite the fact that "Dragons" rule. | |
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