Sounds to me like it's about someone who loves to make music for the sake of music trapped in a place where everyone around him seems to want him to pump out stuff and make money off him. The line "If I were dead would my records sell? Could you tell?" sounds like it's referencing how record companies will release things after an artist's death to capitalize on their legacy. Plays into the same theme as discussed before. The idea of someone being pressured to make music to make money. Being trapped in a heavy metal machine and being willing to die to escape. "Let me die, rock and roll". Also the lyric' We're the metal in their metal machines further drills the same point in. They are simply just a cog in the corporate "heavy metal" machine> So to boil down everything I just said, this song may be about the pains of being a mainstream music artist being forced to push out music for the sake of making the record companies money. A droning scrap of metal in their heavy metal machines.
Sounds to me like it's about someone who loves to make music for the sake of music trapped in a place where everyone around him seems to want him to pump out stuff and make money off him. The line "If I were dead would my records sell? Could you tell?" sounds like it's referencing how record companies will release things after an artist's death to capitalize on their legacy. Plays into the same theme as discussed before. The idea of someone being pressured to make music to make money. Being trapped in a heavy metal machine and being willing to die to escape. "Let me die, rock and roll". Also the lyric' We're the metal in their metal machines further drills the same point in. They are simply just a cog in the corporate "heavy metal" machine> So to boil down everything I just said, this song may be about the pains of being a mainstream music artist being forced to push out music for the sake of making the record companies money. A droning scrap of metal in their heavy metal machines.