This song is about committing enormities. The first stanza is about twisting and breaking someone; perhaps she means emotionally, but it brings to mind a picture of someone burning the body of a murdered man - 'the coals went so wild as they swallowed the rest' (of his flesh?). She's twisting and breaking the man so that he can be eaten by the fire and she can be free from his 'throne on her chest', which makes me think she loved him at some point. But now he's destroyed.
In the second stanza, she's realised what's she's done and can't handle it - 'wrapped in the depth of these deeds'. She's trapped in a hell symbolised in 'the basement' - a place which is dark, subterranean and spooky. The last line of this stanza is one of my all time faves by Neko "A demon holds my place on earth til I die", which I like to think references one of the lowest circles of Dante's Inferno, where Dante comes across a man he knows to be alive on earth. When he inquires how this is possible, the man tells of his hideous sin and informs Dante that some sins are so awful that once one committs them, one's soul goes immediately to hell and a demon inhabits the body on earth until the body dies. So whatever she has done, it is bad bad bad.
The repeated "At night all I hear is your heart"s, I think of as another literary reference, this time to Poe's The Telltale Heart. She's killed him and detroyed the evidence, but the guilt is following her in the sound of his heart's beating.
This is one damn fantastic song. I heard her sing it live, with a totally unaccompanied start, and it gave me such chills.
This song is about committing enormities. The first stanza is about twisting and breaking someone; perhaps she means emotionally, but it brings to mind a picture of someone burning the body of a murdered man - 'the coals went so wild as they swallowed the rest' (of his flesh?). She's twisting and breaking the man so that he can be eaten by the fire and she can be free from his 'throne on her chest', which makes me think she loved him at some point. But now he's destroyed.
In the second stanza, she's realised what's she's done and can't handle it - 'wrapped in the depth of these deeds'. She's trapped in a hell symbolised in 'the basement' - a place which is dark, subterranean and spooky. The last line of this stanza is one of my all time faves by Neko "A demon holds my place on earth til I die", which I like to think references one of the lowest circles of Dante's Inferno, where Dante comes across a man he knows to be alive on earth. When he inquires how this is possible, the man tells of his hideous sin and informs Dante that some sins are so awful that once one committs them, one's soul goes immediately to hell and a demon inhabits the body on earth until the body dies. So whatever she has done, it is bad bad bad.
The repeated "At night all I hear is your heart"s, I think of as another literary reference, this time to Poe's The Telltale Heart. She's killed him and detroyed the evidence, but the guilt is following her in the sound of his heart's beating.
This is one damn fantastic song. I heard her sing it live, with a totally unaccompanied start, and it gave me such chills.