The song is generally well known to be kind of a prelude to the rest of the album, setting up and foreshadowing the events to be chronicled in the other songs...the past, present, and possible, horrific future of mankind. Specifically, the song seems to be recounting a dream that the singer/narrator has, about basically the apocalypse. I think the song is referring to the detonation of one (or many) nuclear bombs - the "22-kilometer tombstone" and "Mushroom-scattered forever out of context." I'm not sure what the "huge numb buildings" or "Jet-black sinister architecture" are, but i assume they are metaphors for either the bombs, or the nuclear plants used to build them. The fourth verse seems to describe what the world would be like after a nuclear apocalypse, the "Sun-white pulverised desert stone," basically your classic nuclear wasteland. The last verse is chilling.
Can we identify them
As the flint buried in our reptile skulls
Or the time-bomb coded in our DNA?
Who is "them"? Perhaps the people who will bring an end to the world, build the bombs, etc. Not sure what the second line is saying. Whoracle talks about evolution a lot, and the reference to our "reptile skulls" suggests this. But maybe the "them" is the "flint buried" in our skulls. The "time-bomb coded in our DNA" seems to suggest that our very biological nature/evolution/genetics will lead us to destroy ourselves and the planet. This interesting connect with a line from "Brush The Dust Away" on 'Clayman' that says "Genetic, it seems to be..., we think we're in control then we become the things we hate, Lets re-unite and brush the dust away". Maybe suggesting that we have to fight not become what our DNA/genes are pushing us become - destroyers.
The song is generally well known to be kind of a prelude to the rest of the album, setting up and foreshadowing the events to be chronicled in the other songs...the past, present, and possible, horrific future of mankind. Specifically, the song seems to be recounting a dream that the singer/narrator has, about basically the apocalypse. I think the song is referring to the detonation of one (or many) nuclear bombs - the "22-kilometer tombstone" and "Mushroom-scattered forever out of context." I'm not sure what the "huge numb buildings" or "Jet-black sinister architecture" are, but i assume they are metaphors for either the bombs, or the nuclear plants used to build them. The fourth verse seems to describe what the world would be like after a nuclear apocalypse, the "Sun-white pulverised desert stone," basically your classic nuclear wasteland. The last verse is chilling.
Can we identify them As the flint buried in our reptile skulls Or the time-bomb coded in our DNA?
Who is "them"? Perhaps the people who will bring an end to the world, build the bombs, etc. Not sure what the second line is saying. Whoracle talks about evolution a lot, and the reference to our "reptile skulls" suggests this. But maybe the "them" is the "flint buried" in our skulls. The "time-bomb coded in our DNA" seems to suggest that our very biological nature/evolution/genetics will lead us to destroy ourselves and the planet. This interesting connect with a line from "Brush The Dust Away" on 'Clayman' that says "Genetic, it seems to be..., we think we're in control then we become the things we hate, Lets re-unite and brush the dust away". Maybe suggesting that we have to fight not become what our DNA/genes are pushing us become - destroyers.