A Last Time For Everything

the album's "killing time until it's time to die" deals with perverse motivations behind euthanasia and suicide in our modern, medically dominated culture. "we were born into this curse," i.e. our lives are woven together with tragedy and so therefore, you can't do anything to solve the situation. "there are no controls..." The Fear is a social album, emphasizing especially the modern dependence on technology for security, even spiritual security. That's what the "great strings" are. They are the technologies by which we attempt to control our fates. To sever them is to yield up a vulnerable existence to some transcendent power. The fear of that vulnerability is the very thing that prevents us to destroying ourselves in suicide, in war, in euthanasia. The so-called "culture of death" is a culture of insecurity, of incompatibility with basic human existence. Greek Mythology names the three sister-Fates as the beings that determine the times of our birth, the length of our life, and the time of our death. Our lives are strings, handmade by their care. That's why "time stops for one but not for another" but "in time we all cross-over". Divinity can weave a pattern from our lives if we are willing, willing to sever the strings that we make ourselves, in a futile attempt to keep what will not keep.

Was there any significance to the bass getting very powerful at the end and the quality of the music just sounded....pixelated. hm? was there a reason for that or was it just to close the album?

I don't know, I'm sure there is but I can't think of it right now, but it's possibly the best end to any album ever.

I think the increase in bass was just to build up to the climatic ending for when it sounds like a fuse is blown. They got the idea from an older band. I think that band held a heat lamp up to the fuses in the recording studio to get the fuses to blow and get the cutoff ending. I'm pretty sure Zao's chaotic ending was just Mr Albini working his magic.