I love this song, especially the live version. It pretty much makes every other band's attempts to sound like doomladen harbingers of the devil look like cartoons. Here's my take on the meaning:
As noted by rock_hawk the placing of the song between 665 and 667 suggest this is the devil's song. So what does the old bastard have to tell us?
In the first verse we are reminded that waiting for us beyond our journey along life's road lies Hell. "The road between your house and home" is a very clever way of describing life as a journey. In a simple sense life's road involves leaving the house where we were born to find our own home, our own place in the world. In a more religious sense (hey, its the Devil speaking!) the house is our material incarnation, our body, the house of the soul. The journey of the soul through life and death is to leave this material house behind to find its true home, hopefully Heaven, or Nirvana or whatever. But the Devil claims that no matter what, beyond this road lies a churning storm of hailing burning bones: Hell. That will be our home.
Rude! Why? Well it turns out that the road is not so pleasant either...
We are born tiny babies, helpless and shaped by a world not of our choosing. We are pawns whose lives are served chasing profit. Capitalism.
We grow, become men and marry. We do what we can to make a home through work. This consists of collecting material things to build a home. The Devil taunts us by calling these 'stones' - in the long run, just a pile of worthless rocks. We worship these 'stones' (material wealth), consider them precious, and train our sons to be like us, to defend them by killing anything that threatens them. Sound familiar America?
So this is the wheel, that travels down that road, steering our lives round and round. Endlessly turning, but going nowhere but Hell. Ultimately it just crushes people, drives them into the ground...below the ground, into that churning storm of hailing bones.
Interesting interpretation but your quite off base on a few things. First of all, Soundgarden are not doomladen harbingers of Satan. They are not Satanic.
Interesting interpretation but your quite off base on a few things. First of all, Soundgarden are not doomladen harbingers of Satan. They are not Satanic.
They do not worship the Devil, unless ofc you take Cornell yelling "Jesus is my friend" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh20q3Dx8RI (singing this exact song mind you) to be "Satan", which if you do, you are quite daft, or deaf.
They do not worship the Devil, unless ofc you take Cornell yelling "Jesus is my friend" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh20q3Dx8RI (singing this exact song mind you) to be "Satan", which if you do, you are quite daft, or deaf.
Secondly, God does not let evil go unpunished. The world is inherently evil, along with things of the world, because evil has been allowed...
Secondly, God does not let evil go unpunished. The world is inherently evil, along with things of the world, because evil has been allowed to corrupt it to give us humans the ability to choose. It ultimately comes down to choosing between love, and love of God (who is love, and goodness, and all that entails), or choosing what has always been done, what we do, the things you talk about actually.
It's not a message from the Devil. I don't know why would think the devil himself would be critical of himself. This makes no fucking sense.
@tautai Capitalism is a scheme of the Devil that goes back 5000 years & the accumulation of wealth is probably his end-game. Money is a snare that drives people's sinful desires & leads them down, down, down---but it's not to Goblin town---but the Lake of Fire.
@tautai Capitalism is a scheme of the Devil that goes back 5000 years & the accumulation of wealth is probably his end-game. Money is a snare that drives people's sinful desires & leads them down, down, down---but it's not to Goblin town---but the Lake of Fire.
I love this song, especially the live version. It pretty much makes every other band's attempts to sound like doomladen harbingers of the devil look like cartoons. Here's my take on the meaning:
As noted by rock_hawk the placing of the song between 665 and 667 suggest this is the devil's song. So what does the old bastard have to tell us?
In the first verse we are reminded that waiting for us beyond our journey along life's road lies Hell. "The road between your house and home" is a very clever way of describing life as a journey. In a simple sense life's road involves leaving the house where we were born to find our own home, our own place in the world. In a more religious sense (hey, its the Devil speaking!) the house is our material incarnation, our body, the house of the soul. The journey of the soul through life and death is to leave this material house behind to find its true home, hopefully Heaven, or Nirvana or whatever. But the Devil claims that no matter what, beyond this road lies a churning storm of hailing burning bones: Hell. That will be our home.
Rude! Why? Well it turns out that the road is not so pleasant either...
We are born tiny babies, helpless and shaped by a world not of our choosing. We are pawns whose lives are served chasing profit. Capitalism.
We grow, become men and marry. We do what we can to make a home through work. This consists of collecting material things to build a home. The Devil taunts us by calling these 'stones' - in the long run, just a pile of worthless rocks. We worship these 'stones' (material wealth), consider them precious, and train our sons to be like us, to defend them by killing anything that threatens them. Sound familiar America?
So this is the wheel, that travels down that road, steering our lives round and round. Endlessly turning, but going nowhere but Hell. Ultimately it just crushes people, drives them into the ground...below the ground, into that churning storm of hailing bones.
@tautai
@tautai
Interesting interpretation but your quite off base on a few things. First of all, Soundgarden are not doomladen harbingers of Satan. They are not Satanic.
Interesting interpretation but your quite off base on a few things. First of all, Soundgarden are not doomladen harbingers of Satan. They are not Satanic.
They do not worship the Devil, unless ofc you take Cornell yelling "Jesus is my friend" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh20q3Dx8RI (singing this exact song mind you) to be "Satan", which if you do, you are quite daft, or deaf.
They do not worship the Devil, unless ofc you take Cornell yelling "Jesus is my friend" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh20q3Dx8RI (singing this exact song mind you) to be "Satan", which if you do, you are quite daft, or deaf.
Secondly, God does not let evil go unpunished. The world is inherently evil, along with things of the world, because evil has been allowed...
Secondly, God does not let evil go unpunished. The world is inherently evil, along with things of the world, because evil has been allowed to corrupt it to give us humans the ability to choose. It ultimately comes down to choosing between love, and love of God (who is love, and goodness, and all that entails), or choosing what has always been done, what we do, the things you talk about actually.
It's not a message from the Devil. I don't know why would think the devil himself would be critical of himself. This makes no fucking sense.
@tautai Capitalism is a scheme of the Devil that goes back 5000 years & the accumulation of wealth is probably his end-game. Money is a snare that drives people's sinful desires & leads them down, down, down---but it's not to Goblin town---but the Lake of Fire.
@tautai Capitalism is a scheme of the Devil that goes back 5000 years & the accumulation of wealth is probably his end-game. Money is a snare that drives people's sinful desires & leads them down, down, down---but it's not to Goblin town---but the Lake of Fire.