A Plateful of Our Dead

ok so, according to pth, the album follows three characters. The first 3 songs follow the prison priest, the second 3 follow the prison guard, the third 3 follow Kezia, who is assumedly a christ figure, and the last song kinda raps everything up. lets look at each song now:

1. No Stars Over Bethlehem (Prison Priest) Someone plunged a dagger deep into God's chest and When he groaned it laid our entire civilization to rest When he pulled out the dagger and marveled at the pain he could create We stuck another in his back to seal creation's fate This is the basic nitzchean philosophy that god is dead, or god, due to the evolution of human logicand knowledge, is no longer capable as being a logical, refutable source of morality.

Amen to the fools and the cossacks and the pulpits Amen to the people who think there's still a way to help us basically amen to those who try to keep the faith and maintain a flawed, yet simple set of moral codes

2. Heretics and Killers (priest) Here, the priest is simply stating how he constructed his faith and he is now coming to the realization that it can be easily destroyed or killed Built a temple in my life and used God to seal the pillars After twenty years of fighting young heretics and killers I watch my temple fall to pieces at the first signs of oncoming weather Fell to my knees like Jesus in the cave, knew I would die

I'm a parrot in a cage saying prayers to belong to a textbook Of my crying, lying, dying history

3. Divinity Within (priest) Divinity within (I watch my temple fall to pieces) If you think aboout it, faith is a necessary aspect of divinity because if one does not have faith in any set of morals or a god, then one, logically, would not believe that anything would be any more divine than anything else (the nihilistic idea that were just a bunch of atoms no different than, say, the atoms in dirt). After god dies and divinity falls to pieces, we get to the prison guard who represents nihilism

4. Bury the Hatchet (Prison Guard) I swear I have compassion I've just been trained to disregard the prisoner's life Because I am the prison guard The prison guard is a representation of nihilism and seemingly cold logic (only cold, though, in the sense of christian morality in which each life is divine and precious)

5. Nautical (guard) i dunno

6. Blindfolds Aside (guard) This basically represents the anxiety the guard is feeling before he has to kill god, aka Kezia. He kills god, though because that is his job and he needs to pay his debts and and children and whatnot.( greed resulting in dehumanization and ultimately "de-divinitizaion") Pull the screaming trigger and watch your carcass bleed me dry Or drop the gun and try to shake away the blindfold from your eyes?

Whta the guard doesnt realize is that his code based on logic and justice is inherently also based on faith(blindfolding him) and that he has a choice in whatever he does, there is no right or wrong. The anxiety and responsibility of being able to make your own choices regardless of anything is too much to bear though and the guard kills kezia.

7. She Who Mars the Skin of Gods (Kezia) i dunno

8. Turn Soonest to the Sea (Kezia) This is my favorite track, first off because it has an awesome message (respecting women and so on) but also because of its allegory. on one level it is the socio political statemetn of respecting women, but on another level it supports the idea that existence precedes essence (basically ones mere existence is divine and any actions one does doesnt matter because afterall, we're just a bunch of meaningless particles). Your flesh means more than you Your existence precedes your actions, your soul, you

This song is also saying that eventually men will realize their lack of divinity and superiority and be taken off their pedestal Know we'll all wake up one day with a gun to the back of our brains Mens gods will be shot

9. The Divine Suicide of K. Blindfolds aside I'd probably still close my eyes Resurrected to be killed and maybe born again I'll always be Kezia so long as any hope remains Right before Kezia dies, the only thing she can do is close her eyes and have hope or faith that eventually, when society realizes living without any form of faith or sense of divinity is an impossible task, god will have to be reborn in the form of the Ubermensch and as long as anyone has faith and hope, Kezia will live with them. There is kind of am "order, chaos, new order" cycle going on here.

10. A plateful of our dead (finale) Don't ever ask us to define our morals There's merit in construction when it's done with your own hands There's beauty in destruction, resurrection, another chance I'd rather kill a stupid flower and spread its seeds around Until a garden with our bullet-laden morals will be found

This should all make sense now

so wow..... i need a drink... and a life