Last Letter

"your god" = America "homeless assassin" = 'homeless' here being a reference to America not needing a base as every new country it liberates acts its new home - taking a leaf from the 'wherever I lay my hat, that's my home' book. "who roams the world to save" = under the guise of saving when in fact... "he's digging for buried treasures" = oil "he's leaving nothing but fields of graves" = war

"the tears will fly like birds of vengeance" = tears of the wronged will turn into revenge "the sky will bury us all" = the sky will be crowded with "birds of vengeance" These lines read like a morbid prophecy of the 'reap what you sow' type. One often levelled at the Bush administration's percieved callous warmongering. The song was probably written during Bush's reign.

"the church bells will sound like sirens shrieking" = church bells are/were often used in many wars as a makeshift bomb siren in Christian countries (in WW2-era England for example). In this instance it is America's church bells tolling at the onset of the "birds of vengeance". Also note the tone of De La Rocha's lyricism is stepped up - the usual verb used in conjunction with siren is 'wailing', whereas here he opts for the more vitriolic "shrieking".

"the hole will be dug for the fall" = a mass grave? I take fall to be in the physical sense as opposed to what Americans call Autumn. "through the smoke its now getting clearer" = the smoke of battle "who led us into the burning theater" = the 'theatre' of war "in through the rain of bodies and ashes" = again things coming from the sky, this time bodies and ashes, reminds me of Lamb of God's similarly politically-toned album 'Ashes of the Wake' "and into the courtrooms of pitched blackness into the secret firing lines" = "courtrooms of..." evokes the recent Blackwater cases but this perhaps wasn't around when Zac wrote this. Possibly more of a general reference to the injustice of war and then the following line to the clandestine nature of some aspects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "into the barbed wire dug in around our minds" = the military references suddenly become personal metaphor for restricted thinking.

"your god is dying much younger than Rome" = comparison to the Roman Empire, similar to references expressed in Rage's 2nd studio album Evil Empire, referring to America as an empire. "he's killed so many he can't go home" = to go home after battle usually a glorious thing, here switched and remeniscent of the opening "homeless assassin" line. "your god's heart is a tumor now rotten" = reminds me of the line in Bulls On Parade "Tha rotten sore on the face of mother earth gets bigger", again referring to uncle sam. "born of a blood that's never forgotten" = native Americans

Ok that's my interpretation of the author's lyricism.

I love the intro to this song on the drums, Jon Theodore is quite the talented player indeed. Very catchy

openmike: I think you're pretty spot on on most points. I don't know about the last one, it sounds wrong.

Also, "burning theatre" could be a reference to a common metaphor for mass group panic overruling rational thought: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater

"This is my last letter to you...I'm walking the beltway...there's something I've got to do"

Obviously a reference to the Beltway Sniper John Allen Mohammed.

I think this song is about the end of the world and hell for all the freemasons in our government who create wars.