The Evil Has Landed

To me this is about taking life by the balls and going for it, not letting anything hold you back!

Ever since Homme's near death experience prior to ...Like Clockwork, I think about ...Like Clockwork as an album with the theme of dealing with death when you've looked it in the face and now Villains is like not taking life for granted, living in the present, and appreciating every moment. Not taking the people, places, or experiences for granted. Death really changes how you perceive everything. Soon after ...Like Clockwork was released my Dad died suddenly. So that album really resonated for me. And now that I've had a few years of grieving and healing I feel like I'm ready to start living again. In a nutshell that is how I feel about this song:

"You don't wanna miss your chance, near life experience"

• I love that line, near-life experience. It's so true. So many of us are just going through the motions and it takes a real wake up call to change that and not let our lives pass us by.

"Faces making noise, say "be good girls and boys"

• making noise as in it doesn't matter what anyone else says because it is YOUR life. Society tries to tame and control us into following the path laid out for us. What about making our own decisions and living our lives the way WE want.

"It ain't half empty or full, You can break the glass, or drink it all, Dig it?"

• aka there's a third option. You don't have to follow any other path but the one you create for yourself.

I got that wakeup call so I just bought a cargo van and am converting it into a camper van and traveling the continent with it. Won't be no near life experience on my watch.

Thanks Homme.

I think this is about just being a band and having people look up to you whether you like it or not. How fame kind of inflates you and takes on a life of its own.

Might not be exactly the same but it reminds me of "Misfit Love"

Saw these guys in Columbus Ohio with Royal Blood and it was an amazing show!

The opening voice-processed section is evil-sounding. Come and see the horror.

I watched a documentary about a band which our songwriter played drums for now and again - and the shooting that occurred at the Eagles of Death Metal concert in France. I wondered how they'd cope, while I was watching Josh Homme being interviewed with the lead singer of that band. This song was inspired by those events.

Going on a killing spree is what the shooters did that day. But they haven't started shooting yet. They're going on a "living spree". Feeling a heightened sense of being alive, as they have explosive vests on and expect to have quite an effect.

The fans are mostly young and jumping around and excited. A mix of men and women can be seen in recordings. Don't fight back. "Be good girls and boys. Faces making noise". The killers dehumanise them as they approach. Not people with lives, only faces, and their hooting and hollering and talking with each other is just noise.

The "near-Life experience" is very much death. Not life. This is what the fans in the audience are offered. A play on the phrase "near-death experience".

(at this point, lets consider the awfulness of the Bataclan attack, and that this is a purging of the scene for Josh Homme and to some degree the guy who was on stage. His close friend Jesse Hughes saw/heard 90 people being killed). There was a possibility that Josh Homme might have been there with the band, as he sometimes did fill in. Not that it was a possibility that night.

The guitars of this song are very staccato. Automatic weapon fire bursts.

"A grand macabaret" is an invented portmanteau of "macabre" and "cabaret". The Bataclan is a Cabaret-type theatre.

What philosophy do the killers follow? The Glass Half Full philosophy is that you can look at plenty of situations as either a disappointment or better-than-expected. In this case, the killers believe you can either "drink it up" (the killers are using up all their time on this earth at once) or "break your glass", also meaning : throwing it all away. A sarcastic approach to say that the philosophy of the killers is twisted and destructive however you choose to look at it. As fans were holding drinks when the shooting started, this has a double meaning.

The high frequency synth stabs that are nearly hidden in the second half of the song inspire feelings of anxiety. Before the music shifts into a different gear, the synths disappear.

The end of the song reflects the moments just before the attack started. The opening of the concert when the shooting actually happened. "Here... we... go." Its time. The change to an Eagles of Death Metal style signals that The Evil Has Landed (which is a reference to the first spacecraft that brought people to the Moon, known as Eagle : "the Eagle has landed". In the 1960s that phrase was spoken and broadcast live from the Moon. Instead of being a joyous finale in a quest to achieve something new, in this song its a colossal evil that has arrived).

"We're all a little tangled

Corroded and mangled"

The video footage of the aftermath is what this looks like. Dead people lying in awkward positions. The corrosion is blood. The commonest corrosion we think of is rust. Rust, or iron oxide, is reddish coloured.

"here we come, get out of the way

matters not, what the people say"

I don't want to get too detailed. Some people questioned the 'why' of the attack while it was happening. The attackers didn't care that they were being challenged. You ask why we're doing this? We don't have an answer for you, and we won't stop until we're done.

Afternote : the fateful concert was re-held in the same venue some time later as a kind of middle-finger to the party-spoilers who would try to change culture through violence.