I figured starting with one of my favorite albums as well as a classic would be good. Chuck’s social commentary and philosophy is fairly poignant and should provide me quite a bit of fodder for now. I’ll break down Symbolic, Zero Tolerance, 1000 Eyes, Crystal Mountain and address how they add to an overall theme of the album. Maybe touch on how they all relate to the title of “Symbolic.”
Interview with Chuck discussing the lyrics: http://www.emptywords.org/SparkMagazine07-95part2.htm
- Symbolic
Loss of Innocence. A major theme in literature, it describes the inevitable “ruin” of our childish joy and carefree nature. Having written many discussions of this theme for various English classes, to the point of the phrase being an inside joke, catch all answer for “What themes are present in this story?,” I find it very fitting to begin my analysis with this title track.
Relive the gift of precious memories
In need of a fix called innocence
How easy is it to catch yourself wishing for a better time, lost in nostalgia? We “don’t mean to dwell” but “can’t help [ourselves].” If fortunate, many of our childhoods offered a freedom from worry and responsibility. Fun and imagination were how we passed the time. Even young adulthood can have that fearless, almost indestructible, feeling of life couldn’t be more perfect, those “time[s] in life when years [seem] to stand still.” But there is always something that comes along and crushes us. Chuck says the change is “undetectable” and questions “When did it begin?” For me, being engaged, which should have been one of the best times of my life, was that change. Life was perfect until I experienced my first true betrayal and disappointment - a failure that had nothing to do with the amount of dedication and determination I put in. I imagine Chuck experienced a lot of that with the difficulties he had always seeking to push himself musically even if a lot of the disagreements were due to his perfectionism. In the interview I linked, Chuck states that this song is indeed about growing up and the loss of the simplicity of childhood.
The secondary theme here is that the best things in life are those that you don’t have to think about to enjoy. Childhood memories hold those “symbolic acts” that are simultaneously “vivid” and “invisible.” Chuck states in the interview that his parents were among the “heroes” of his childhood. The “symbolic acts” are those acts of love and care that we receive growing up that we don’t appreciate at the time but cherish when we are older. When we are young the more complicated things that go into making a simple life possible are invisible to us. It is only with the weight of age that those “precious memories” become vivid.
Not a very complicated meaning hear but the exploration of the topic is something familiar to all of us. I wonder if those of you who didn’t have an innocent childhood still have those “vivid” “precious memories” that you cherish and provide that “fix called innocence” that all of us need to get through the hard times.
- Zero Tolerance
This is one of many songs I think of in relation to religious hypocrisy but Chuck says it is more about people in general who twist things into something other than reality for the sake of their own agenda. I hear “In the dark of night... Abusing a portion of light” and “A serpent spews out fantasy - Unjustified blasphemy” specifically as the passages of religious hypocrisy. These are the people who take something good, “a portion of light,” and contort it into something evil. The abuse of a philosophy that is meant to bring peace to people in order to manipulate them for your own gain is completely worthy of an angry death metal song about “unjustified blasphemy.”
The declaration in the chorus that “There will be zero tolerance” for those who twist things just to harm others is a powerful testament of resolution. Leaving “Fate” as the “deciding God” is an excellent way to say ‘you people aren’t worth my time and I’m not wasting any of my energy on the garbage you are spewing about me.’ The explosion of the rhythm section and tempo shift after this chorus at the two minute market exemplifies the punishing force of this “Zero Tolerance” policy. The half-time feel of the solo over this part reflects the approaching judgement of “Fate” for those on whom “Karma comes crashing down.
- 1,000 Eyes
Yeeeeeeeees! Big Brother is watching. Another song that is straightforward in meaning but packs a heavy punch both musically and lyrically.
Privacy and intimacy as we know it
Will be a memory
Among many to be passed down
To those who never knew
Written in the mid-90s this idea has only gotten worse with the explosion of social media and smartphones. It’s not hard for the government to track us nowadays with our internet presence and meta-data collection. So many people post their lives publicly that secret surveillance isn’t even necessary. Private life and serenity are disappearing simply in a cultural sense and in a lot of ways is spurred on by intentional, personalized marketing, that in a way can control you simply by observing what you show interest in on the internet. This is why I am still a major advocate of unplugging every once in awhile and getting out in nature. I love atmo-black/folk nature worship like Agalloch and Panopticon for this very reason. Blogpost aside, this song correctly predicted how our culture is now inundated with “out of sight [...] advanced observeillance” in which “all the mistakes and secrets cannot be erased.” It is all out there in the open for many to find. Seriously make sure you know what is publicly viewable on your social media accounts.
The best part of this song is always the fiery chant of “We are enslaved now…” amongst the whirlwind of Gene’s drums.
- Crystal Mountain
Oh ya… this is the one about religious hypocrisy. As a Christian, I completely agree with Chuck that America is full of bigoted, narrow-minded people, who use their religion to hurt people. I won’t get preachy but I do want to apologize that many Christians don’t follow or seem to know Jesus’ love. Alright, I didn’t focus much on the lyrics in 1,000 eyes so let’s see if I can dig deeper here. I think this one might have some actual symbolism in it and I’d like to take a crack at identifying the “Crystal Mountain.”
I think the crux of the message is here:
Twisting your eyes to perceive
All that you want
To assume from ignorance
Inflicting wounds with your
Cross-turned dagger
The only way I can understand the hate that comes from at least Christianity, is that these people are “twisting [their] eyes to perceive.” Their messages of intolerance and judgement don’t sound anything like the faith I was raised on so I can only assume that “from ignorance” they take whatever preconceived idea they want and twist scripture into their “cross-turned dagger” to attack people different from them and impose their self-delusional superiority. It is a disgusting practice and very fitting for a death metal song.
So the chorus is:
Inside crystal mountain
Evil takes its form
Inside crystal mountain
Commandments are reborn
The quatrain has an interesting parallel to the poetry structure in Psalms, in that the 1st and 3rd line are the same and the two couplets are really just reiterations of the same idea. Repetition is one of the most effective literary tools to emphasize a message and theme and was heavily used by Hebrew writers. The surface level meaning of “crystal mountain” is physical church buildings. These are places where evil takes form when scripture (“commandments”) is twisted and reborn into something grotesque and damaging. To me the crystal reminds me of stained glass windows. Going deeper “crystal” could refer to the supposed purity of the church. The church is supposed to represent the goodness of God and his will on earth. A common idiom used in at least the states is “crystal clear.” Yet, the majority of crystals I can think of in life aren’t actually clear. Quartz is often fairly opaque and muddy looking because of the way it refracts light. Very few crystals I made in my organic chemistry labs were clear. Think of how amazed people were at the clarity of Walter Whites’ ice in Breaking Bad. It is rare to actually see clear crystals. So the supposed purity and clarity of the church body of believers is actually pretty muddy because of our sin and in ability to perfectly reflect the light of Christ. The idea of a mountain referring to the church can also be connected to the idea that Simon, the disciple, was renamed Peter by jesus, meaning rock, and was the foundation of the early church by being the first church leader and eventually recognized as the first pope. So the magnitude to which the church has grown today makes it a mountain and in many ways, that mountain is as overbearing and imposing an obstacle as the Himalayas.
Overall Album:
Based off these four songs I’m actually surprised at how little symbolism there actually is here. Yes, the title track refers to moments of innocence that are taken for granted in youth as “Symbolic Acts” but that doesn’t really contain any literary symbolism in the lyrics themselves. I’d say the meaning of the words “Crystal Mountain” is the only symbolism I found. There are 5 other great tracks here that I didn’t touch on so feel free to call me out there because I didn’t look into those any deeper than I have during my many listens to this amazing record.
I’d say the overall lyrical theme that ties this album together is the things in life that make life hard to live. There are many forces fighting against us that seek to cause the loss of innocence addressed in the opening title track. The first sentence of a short story or chapter of a novel often set the scene for the entire work so the first song presents the theme of innocence lost and the following 8 tracks reveal the different aggressors that cause the hardening of our souls and awakening to the real world.
