This is my favorite song on the album and also the one I least understand. But I'll try anyway.
To me it's about someone who has a drug problem that they're trying to get over but can't no matter how hard they try and how badly they want to. He can't control and can't hide their need for it, and "every inner fiber aches" for it.
"As I shed my skin ..." sounds like right after he's taken the drug and feels good, even though it's a "regeneration of human sin". The need for the drug is a "lure of flesh" - as in something that his body needs - but at the same time it's a "rush of death" meaning it'll kill him someday. It awakens a sickness in him - physically or mentally? - that's killing him. And it "resurrects the lowest throes ..." in his body, the violent and intense cravings that he's "a slave to" and that "lusts to control".
He knows what it's doing to him - thus why his guilty conscience is playing on repeat - but he still can't control it, thus his "shameful defeat". And he "swore I'd conquer this disease" - get over the addiction - but the war is still raging inside of him between his body's lust for the drug and his mind's knowledge that it's killing him. The war rages like "a fire that begs on its knees for more kerosene" - kerosene only makes fires larger and more destructive, thus him begging for more drugs is also destroying him.
His past mistakes keep recurring - he knows that taking the drug is a mistake but he does it anyway. His "depraved path" - his decision to keep doing the drug - is like a "transparent mask" that shows he's trying to hide his problem, but the fact that he does so actually reveals that fact. And he's telling us to take it all in one more time because he might never be back - aka dead from drugs.
Or something, I don't know. The second verse is tough to understand.
This is my favorite song on the album and also the one I least understand. But I'll try anyway.
To me it's about someone who has a drug problem that they're trying to get over but can't no matter how hard they try and how badly they want to. He can't control and can't hide their need for it, and "every inner fiber aches" for it.
"As I shed my skin ..." sounds like right after he's taken the drug and feels good, even though it's a "regeneration of human sin". The need for the drug is a "lure of flesh" - as in something that his body needs - but at the same time it's a "rush of death" meaning it'll kill him someday. It awakens a sickness in him - physically or mentally? - that's killing him. And it "resurrects the lowest throes ..." in his body, the violent and intense cravings that he's "a slave to" and that "lusts to control".
He knows what it's doing to him - thus why his guilty conscience is playing on repeat - but he still can't control it, thus his "shameful defeat". And he "swore I'd conquer this disease" - get over the addiction - but the war is still raging inside of him between his body's lust for the drug and his mind's knowledge that it's killing him. The war rages like "a fire that begs on its knees for more kerosene" - kerosene only makes fires larger and more destructive, thus him begging for more drugs is also destroying him.
His past mistakes keep recurring - he knows that taking the drug is a mistake but he does it anyway. His "depraved path" - his decision to keep doing the drug - is like a "transparent mask" that shows he's trying to hide his problem, but the fact that he does so actually reveals that fact. And he's telling us to take it all in one more time because he might never be back - aka dead from drugs.
Or something, I don't know. The second verse is tough to understand.