Elastic

I think what the lyrics are describing is all that's left when you take away everything that makes a human human. The mind, emotions, soul, thoughts...

I think at the end that's all the songs on the album being played at once. That's what it sounds like to me at least.

"ProgPirate" is right; Using a bit of selective listening you can hear parts from every song (at the end). It's just every previous track layered on top of eachother for the last 5 minutes or so. What an awesome idea haha

In my opinion, this song is one of the best endings to an album. There's only a few interpretations that touch base on this album and Meshuggah's...insanity. The term "elastic" refers to the ability for an object to resume it's original shape after being stretched/distorted. The whole song seems to portray a walk into insanity and one's loss of mental stability from a foreign entity of their own creation, or undoing. Assembling dead, fragmented, and incompatible pieces to create newly regenerated life in attempt at understanding, resulted in a semi-cluster of floating, faltering thought. Inadvertently, thoughts become unthought as they are reflected/refracted upon themselves, through life and the organic normal. The view remains only through the side of the barren self, translucent from others while being reflected upon itself, visualized through light. A new entity void and inviolate of all existential standards ensues, personified by a liquid vapor cloud of thought above the barren self. The new entity swirls itself into it's own projection of life, removing the thoughts in the mind of the barren self and replacing it with static. By all standards of existence, the barren self has been undone. The song progresses in what I refer to as four states: State one refers to the lyrics. It's worth noting Jen's aggression when singing, and how it builds up to almost complete insanity by the end of the first state. Even the instrumentals create a bone chilling atmospheric effect. State two refers to what I call the descent. It resembles a descent into an unconscious state, progressing further towards a mental degradation plummet into hell. State three refers to the static. State four refers to the awakening. The whole album plays all at once in recollection, and the song ends. It seems Meshuggah emphasized heavily on pulling their concepts of each song together. From the listener's perspective, and perhaps the band's perspective, after listening to the whole album: Insanity ensues after each song comes together, forming a floating cluster of thought that is void of organic and social norms in attempts at understanding and projecting the illusion of what we call life. The light from the side of the barren self is the only thing reflecting back after listening, reflected by thousand watt obsidian bulbs. We become translucent foreign entities of our barren self because of this forming cluster of thought. The static is all we hear after descending into the pit of insanity, undone by our own doing from listening until we recollect as one from a sporadic mental overloading flashback. There's thousands of interpretations; the mind is elastic. Regardless, I still consider it to be one of Meshuggah's heaviest songs, and one of my favorite albums of all time.

One of the most hardcore songs because it evokes the sense of doom felt when a human mind becomes aware for the first time of a different reality that is chaotic, unfathomable, and unending. We humans ascribe our own belief systems to reality to make sense of what is going on. We project our life story onto reality. We idolize what is considered normal. All humans do this and the population set of beliefs form what is considered a sane view. In the context of this album, \'sane\' is thinking based on your life experiences and the views of other humans. \'Insane\' in this song is thinking outside this context and these constraints. Insanity is thinking beyond the needs of the human body, beyond this dimensional reality. DMT. Sanity can be thought of a delusion that we are attached too. In the insane state, thoughts resemble static in TV because the thoughts diverge from any conception of human reality. There is a certain experience in which a human becomes aware that thoughts related to any human conceptual grounding constitutes an infinitesimal percentage of reality. A human mind that is aware of this can be said to be elastic.

Man, that warble tone near the end reminds me of what I was hearing when I was under laughing gas...

WHat is the difference between insanity and imagination? This is one of Meshuggah's deepest songs imho.

I think there is dellusion expressed in this song. To defend the word dellusion is, didn't we think Einstein and others as insane while we laughed, scoffed at their ideas or thinking?

The other part of this song sounds like a psycho. Thousand Watt obsidian bulbs... no view but the barren self. A mind not filled with thoughts but a random flickering static, to me it means, it means something personal as in the sense that this may be part of me who is traumatized or sociopathic, like how a cop gets after becoming jaded.

The conclusion is that psychopathy (Sociopathy) is a beneficial trait to stand up against the world and the dellusional insanity as I call it come together to put together a "genius" state of mind that can overcome the world. Of course the dumbest person can have brilliant ideas, and applaud this dellusion of my own.

This song is strengthening.

Good god that last part after the 5 minutes of static is manic.

I always just assumed this song was about how organisms are created from dead material and that, in itself, was the brutality of the lyrical part of the song. We are only alive because something else died. We are elastic because of this, able to be altered and created because of dead things. It is Meshuggah though so there is obviously a metaphorical part to the lyrics. I think the metaphorical part could possibly be about breaking free from society and in a sense that goes along with insanity.. although it seems like the speaker is a silent drone, another part of society, "a mind not filled with thoughts, but a random flickering static. A soulless creature un-alive; I'm the un-human elastic." So in other words someone that doesn't think for his/herself and is controlled by what they see on T.V., hear on the radio, etc. etc.