As the song was originally titled Action Faust, it definitely relates to the Faust story, as you can see in the lyrics. The lines "Say it'll make you insane / and I'm bending the truth" address Faust's attitude of blaming everyone but himself for his situation, something which in the story he never gets over. In this, the Devil/Mephistopheles tells him "you're to blame / for all the life that you'll lose", because he was the one who agreed to it. Though perhaps the hidden clauses were in "the small print", that small print was always there; Faust could have considered the dangers more seriously had he not been clouded by his own greed.
However, the song is no longer called Action Faust. This makes me think that it's been deliberately changed to take the meaning away from the story of Faust and more into the realms of metaphor. I'd say it fits in with ideas about corporate bodies, especially the music industry; when people buy into these organisations and sign a contract, they're giving into the corporate power and selling out, so to speak. In this sense, one might say it's about how the world we live in forces us to make these deals with earthly, corporate devils, and we will all then claim ignorance of the small print when the truth of the deal hits us.
As the song was originally titled Action Faust, it definitely relates to the Faust story, as you can see in the lyrics. The lines "Say it'll make you insane / and I'm bending the truth" address Faust's attitude of blaming everyone but himself for his situation, something which in the story he never gets over. In this, the Devil/Mephistopheles tells him "you're to blame / for all the life that you'll lose", because he was the one who agreed to it. Though perhaps the hidden clauses were in "the small print", that small print was always there; Faust could have considered the dangers more seriously had he not been clouded by his own greed.
However, the song is no longer called Action Faust. This makes me think that it's been deliberately changed to take the meaning away from the story of Faust and more into the realms of metaphor. I'd say it fits in with ideas about corporate bodies, especially the music industry; when people buy into these organisations and sign a contract, they're giving into the corporate power and selling out, so to speak. In this sense, one might say it's about how the world we live in forces us to make these deals with earthly, corporate devils, and we will all then claim ignorance of the small print when the truth of the deal hits us.