It's pretty much certain at this point that Gently was originally written about a place in the role-playing game Werewolf: the Apocalypse, but what I really like about the song is how it's not so much about that specific place, but rather about the state of escape that a person can achieve...
It could be anything. Drugs... masturbation... the Umbra... or the role-playing game itself. But it's an escape from the shitty world we live in... which also ties into Iowa's (the entire album) theme of hating society and wanting to be separate from it.
What I find interesting is that while the lyrics are rather laid-back, the song actually gets louder, more intense, and more violent as it goes along. This leads me to believe that to Slipknot, the "world of pleasure" in the song has come to refer to playing their music, where they can ignore the rest of the world and just let it all go.
It's pretty much certain at this point that Gently was originally written about a place in the role-playing game Werewolf: the Apocalypse, but what I really like about the song is how it's not so much about that specific place, but rather about the state of escape that a person can achieve...
It could be anything. Drugs... masturbation... the Umbra... or the role-playing game itself. But it's an escape from the shitty world we live in... which also ties into Iowa's (the entire album) theme of hating society and wanting to be separate from it.
What I find interesting is that while the lyrics are rather laid-back, the song actually gets louder, more intense, and more violent as it goes along. This leads me to believe that to Slipknot, the "world of pleasure" in the song has come to refer to playing their music, where they can ignore the rest of the world and just let it all go.