Nemesis

Shriekback's music often refers to scientific theories, especially regarding paleontology (Coelocanth, the Naked Apes album, etc). Nemesis the song was written as a direct response to the Nemesis hypothesis, which was first proposed in 1984 and entered popular culture in early 1985. See http://tinyurl.com/bigblacknemesis

Nemesis is the name of a hypothetical red or brown dwarf star in a highly stretched, perpendicular orbit around our Sun. Most of the time it is so distant and dim that it has thus far gone undetected. However, every 26 million years it supposedly comes hurtling much closer (well outside the orbits of Pluto & friends, but in terms of stars that's really close). This surge of gravity would knock thousands of dormant comets towards the inner solar system, and some of those comets would smash into the Earth, causing mass extinctions (like the dinosaurs, hence the lyric about "the breath of reptiles").

The song is saying that our current civilization may feel great and powerful, but if Nemesis returned we would all die anyways.

The Nemesis hypothesis (as explained by @Foobar) was certainly the inspiration for this song, and part of the meaning. But there's more to it.

The narrator is arguing for the ends-justify-the-means morality of necromancy. Whether he's right or evilly deluded isn't decided by whether we're all going to end up with the great big fishes anyway in 9 million years. And that's a question we really should think about. The fact that our culture isn't permanent means that whatever worth it has is in the present, not the long run.

Meanwhile, the song juxtaposes modern science and industry with occult necromancy. Technology may work better than the occult, but it has the same goals. And I think the references to oil in particular (as mentioned by @jwpacker) are intentional, but only a sideline to the point: prospering on juices of the dying is what humans always do. We cannibalize the past and the present for the present, and for a future that may never come.

Of course the "good" news is that a few million years after we're wiped out, someone will rebuild civilization—using our remains as the engines of their industry—and thrive for a few million years before they too die in the cometary air strike.

What a great dance song. I really love to dance to this song. To understand how unusual this feeling is....I hate to dance

interesting lyrics, very catchy tune. I would have loved dancing to this one back in the day.

From the beginning, I have seen this song more as a condemnation of the things that civilized society has done in the quest for energy in the form of oil. Oil, in my interpretation, is the "big black nemesis" they refer to in the chorus."Evil is an exact science," "we drink elixirs that we refine from the juices of the dying,"

Barry posted his own explanation in 2012:

The seed idea was simply the notion that one could make a deliberate moral choice to do evil rather than good (you may recall the scene where Colonel Kurtz talks about the Viet Cong soldiers hacking off the arms of the Vietnamese children who had been innoculated by the Americans: 'I thought, my God, the genius of that... understand that these men were not monsters... they had wives, families, they fought with their hearts... yet they had the strength... the strength to do that'.) In Conrad's book it's more about embracing the savage immorality of Nature: 'the horror, the horror'.

It was a thought experiment and one that chimed with a number of other cultural moments: Eve eating the apple of course ('very little fruit is forbidden'), the Decadent movement of the late 19th century -- doing the Wrong Thing on purpose, essentially -- and the earlier Decadence of Imperial Rome. And -and! - the mighty Nemesis the Warlock from the 2000AD comic -an upright-standing deerlike alien with a nose like a harpoon.

Nemesis the Arch Deviant whose weirdness was persecuted by the fascist Torquemada ('be pure, be vigilant, behave!') but whose own morality was highly ambivalent. I decided to conflate the Greek goddess of cosmic retribution with him because, let's face it, while she embodies an important principle, she doesn't have a nose like a harpoon.

'Priests and cannibals, prehistoric animals' - I was imagining a procession of the primal and the gigantic; innocently terrible. All clumsily, heroically, marching into town along with the damaged and vengeful. To a good shoutalong tune which might, in a paralell, happier universe, be sung at football matches.

The three verses are divided neatly, satisfyingly into:

1: The Theory, our hero (me -hah!) is imagined as a mediaeval scholar gone to the bad -- we referenced the Durer woodcut 'Saint Jerome in his Study' as an image of the theological and contemplative life in which our man makes the decision to go for evil (as he demonstrates by spilling ink over the 'good' side of the God versus the Devil parchment and snuffing out the candle). The controls are set.

2: The Badness in action. We're obviously going for some Greek pagan/Roman decadence filtered through the painters Titian ('Bacchus and Ariadne', particularly) Boronzino and Rubens. I like very much the unplanned moment as the Rubenesque lady delivers the 'poison kiss' to the little boy. There's a lovely (or weird and sick, your choice) sense of dubious initiation which their faces probably accidentally, but beautifully -- register ('naughty aunty, how I would look forward to her visits..').

3: Consequences. We went for a green, decaying feel through lighting and make up and referenced Rembrandt's Belshazzar's Feast where the Babylonian king gets his commuppence from Yahweh for tooling around with His People (the 'writing on the wall').

The choruses were mock heroic in the style of dodgy filmmaker Leni Riefensthal (who you may remember from such engaging romps as 'Triumph of the Will' and 'Victory of Faith'). All swirling clouds and tracking. That and a drug fuelled amdram Gilbert and Sullivan production.

Then, of course, Nemesis arrives at the end to consume me and Carl's depraved little set up in his big krill-sifting choppers.

Be warned, kids.

My first exposure to Shriekback was this song. I became an instant fan, and purchased every album of theirs I could, although by the time I discoved them in 1989, their stuff was becoming hard to find. Even now, the song sends chills up my spine and all sorts of bizarre images dance through my head.

Surely a - critical - comment on the arrogance and self-righteousness of humanity, written from the perspective of the 'believers'/powers that be. Like most of Shriekback's lyrics - both Andrews' and Marsh's - very succinctly put.

I just read that this is indirectly inspired by the film, "Apocalypse Now": - a b-side version of this song has a sample of Marlon Brando speaking over a part of it. "Apocalypse Now" was, in turn, inspired by Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". Only now do I truly see how much of this song's imagery is about cannibalism...

To me this song has always been about the seductive evil of power. How the primitive emerges in the pretense of civilization. And how we have become those decadent empires of the past that we so like to despise.

the most telling part is this paragraph.

We feel like Greeks, we feel like Romans Centaurs and monkeys just cluster round us We drink elixirs that we refine From the juices of the dying We are no monsters, we're moral people And yet we have the strength to do this This is the splendour of our achievement Call in the airstrike with a poison kiss