Flood I

Flood I begins with a quiet guitar drone, and on the album this is mixed in with the closing Sturm und Drang Wagnerian chant of Mother Russia rain down! from Mother Russia. Mother Russia's radioactive rain (and whether this is viewed literally or figuratively as a hail of Soviet missiles raining down is largely irrelevant) can therefore be seen as the cause of the Flood.

"And her hallway..."

Halls and hallways feature at especially dramatic moments in some of The Sisters' more libidinous songs. Some Kind of Stranger has "I'll settle any time for unknown footsteps in the hall outside", in Ribbons "her lovers queued up in the hallway/I heard them scratching at the door". Tenders are invited from sound Freudian psychoanalysts to sort this one out.

"At the head of the river/At the source of the sea"

Hamburg, at the head of the river Elbe.

"strange men rent strange flowers"

"What happens in Hamburg is that, at two in the morning, these Turks come round the bars selling roses to couples who aren't quite couples yet but might be by half past two. I rather liked the idea that these couples could rent these flowers until they became couples then they could give them back and they would be recyclable. The Turks would make more money and the couples wouldn't get burdened with these thorny things. Actually, I think it's a metaphor for ephemeral love." [ATF] -Andrew Eldritch

"Sackcloth and Ashes"

A medieval form of penitence, popular with monks and other religious types, which involved wearing sackcloth and presumably doing something with ashes. Collins Dictionary has it as "public form of extreme grief".

"Stolen guitars"

"The bitter comes out better on a stolen guitar/you're the blessed, we're the Spiders From Mars" -Hang On To Yourself, David Bowie Eldritch is a noted Bowie fan and often cites seeing Starman (also from Ziggy Stardust) on Top of the Pops as the reason why he became a rock star.

Source: http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Club/1217/

I'm always particularly captivated by the 'on a backcloth' verses... love the rhyme stuff, and of course we have Eldritch's usual wordplay... 'lashes' originally presented as 'eyelashes' ('lashes and eyes,' 'scent and mascara') but with the reference to 'sackcloth and ashes' as a form of grief or pentinence, it hints slightly at 'lashes' as whipping. And maybe the suggestion that all the regret--lashes, tears, sackcloth and ashes, secondhand passion--could be washed away by the waters of the flood.

I think that this is a song on a couple of levels - the flood is a metaphor for passion, but also a physical flood following a nuclear exchange (on the album, this song runs straight on from Dominion/Mother Russia, which ends with Eldritch imploring "Mother Russia rain down, down. down!").

Cheery, eh?

Oh! I always thought it was about heroin. he's waiting around in this crappy bar until she comes with the drugs so they can shoot up. The flood is the rush washing away self. I think it's about addiction and desire. he loves her and he loves the drug, but there is guilt and self loathing too.

As we all know, lyrics for The Sisters are laden with literary, lyrical, philosophical, theological and other types of references. I like them for that, and have long found myself reading up on topics that sometimes give me the source that Eldritch is referring to. For example, as a young teen listening to Floodland, I had yet to hear Dylan sing of "Stuck inside of Memphis" so when I first heard that song by Dylan it gave me a little more context for Elritch\'s wonderfully atmospheric words. \n\nFor years I thought his "sackcloth and ashes" were a reference to Savonrola (sackcloth) from Florence. \n\nToday reading up about Ninevah an ancient city, I side tracked onto the story of Jonah from the bible and found a direct quote (on wiki - duh! I have some shoddy sources :) ) \n\nThat quote: "The king of Nineveh puts on sackcloth and sits in ashes"\n\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah\n\nAnd:\n"The entire city is humbled and broken with the people (and even the animals) in sackcloth and ashes".\n\nI\'ve long adopted the idea from others that Floodland does cover the end of the world, so with that in mind these references seems to fit in with this idea, until I read that, I was lost on this songs meaning and think that in typical Eldritch style it might just be metaphorical. \n\nOn that last comment about "is it metaphorical"? I wondered to myself, \'Is this another song about his early relationships?\' A love life like Armageddon because of the pain it inflicted. \n\nWhat an incredible artist Andrew Eldritch is. Did I hear it in conversation, or did I see it? I cannot remember, but in my memory I always remember the idea that Alan Whicker (British TV (icon?)) said Eldritch was the most intelligent man he had ever met, and Whicker met with some astonishingly influential people throughout his career.