March of the Fire Ants Lyrics

Lyric discussion by jt11152940 

Cover art for March of the Fire Ants lyrics by Mastodon

The song is written from the darkest, most depressed and hopeless place imaginable

"as passion encircles the daily storm the heart bleeds and droughts do not"

Through the chaos and darkness of what the individual perceives to be life, he still has a passion and an ambition.

But no matter how hard he tries and how passionate he is, he gets nothing in return and reality doesn't reciprocate. A drought of reward and feelings of success

"bone grave bone engraved stone grave stone engraved"

Bone grave: I'm dead inside Bone engraved: I'm destined for failure and mediocrity, it's the fate carved into my bones Stone grave: After my drought and failure I'll die Stone engraved: I'll be remembered as a failure, it'll be on my tombstone

"all circles created with intention"

I'm fairly certain one of the boys had a bad acid trip when writing this song

This at once alludes to cycles, and the cyclical nature of the individuals perceived failure, as well as his perception that a higher power or nature itself designated despair and failure as hit fate. As if it was designed that way

"an ocean turns yellow it soothes the eye"

An ocean turning yellow isn't an allusion to how pissy life is. Water turns yellow when sand is very close to the surface of the water.

The allegory being that the ocean is life

He perceives life as extremely shallow and simple. There's nothing else to life, he's figured it out. It soothes the minds eye that he doesn't need to search for further complexity

Very. Dark. Shit

My Interpretation