Valentine’s Day is soon upon us, tis the season of love! What better time to listen to a playlist of hate songs? Hatred
has been something I’ve long striven to overcome. I’ve written about this struggle before. But every now and then, in a
fit of anger, I might regress. It’s only human. I try not to make it permanent. There will always be things I hate. I made a
playlist of songs for a mix CD some months ago; a collection of hate songs.
More for fun than anything else, and something to listen to when I’m angry as a way to vent. Part of an old habit. It’s another in my series of mixes which focus on one word or concept. Others I have talked about on the blog before are Cold, the Moon, the Sun. I have more coming up too, one about the Heart, and one about Time. But, it is interesting to listen to it and ponder the
concept of hatred, and the many different ways the songwriters use it in their
songs. The purpose of the mix is to first allow me to vent, then stew for a little bit, begin to calm down, and then lift me out of my bad mood, leaving me in a better mood than I was at the beginning of the mix. This just works for me. It’s like music therapy.
Here is the track listing. I will briefly discuss each song that I feel warrants discussion. I remade 5e mix in Spotify for those who want to listen along, but Spotify doesn’t have every song.
This is the first song I think
of when I think of a “hate” song. Often it would come to my mind when dealing
with difficult customers while I was working at the call centers. A song for someone you are just so sick and tired of being around. We all have someone we could dedicate this song to.
Korn
– Right Now
Right now, I can’t control myself I fucking hate you!
What originally drew me to this song was the music video, an animation of someone mutilating themselves in horrifically twisted ways. If you read my comics, you know I get that kind of humor. The song is also great to listen to when you’re angry. Sing along, rock out. Try it sometime, it’s really cathartic.
Twiztid
– Kill Somebody
This song builds off the energy of the previous. A song for those times when you’re so livid, when you’re seeing red, and your anger isn’t so much directed at one person but at everything. We all have those times. Some more often than others. Myself, more when I was in my teens, but still every so often.
Alice
in Chains – Love, Hate, Love
This is kind of a cool-down song after the last two. This song transitions us from the really angry songs to the dark and seething symphonic black metal songs to come. It is more contemplative, contrasting the concepts of love and hate.
Covenant
– The Dark Conquest
Don’t we all, at one time or another, at some point in our lives, wish we had ultimate power? The power to act on our hate without any consequences? This song taps into dark fantasy. Off one of my favorite albums of all time In Times Before the Light. I decided to go with the original version over the 2002 industrial metal version after the band changed their name to The Kovenant. It’s more raw, more pure. The remixed one is also longer, and I needed this mix to fit on an 80 minute CD. But both versions are good.
Dimmu
Borgir – The Serpentine Offering
I am hatred, darkness and despair.
Similar energy to the previous song. Dimmu Borgir is great at adding a symphonic element to their black metal, creating powerful dark music that could be the soundtrack to a supervillain. It really gets your adrenaline rushing, especially if you’re angry.
Cradle
of Filth – Thank God for the Suffering
This song is on here if for no other reason than for the chant of “Hate! Hate! Hate!” at the end of the song. This rounds off the black metal section of the mix, as by the end of this song my adrenaline will be spent.
[:SITD:]
– Brother Death
I hate you, you hate me, Brother Death is calling me.
This track kind of tones things down compared to the last song, but not too much. That “I hate you, you hate me” line reminds me a bit too much of the anti-Barney songs we used to sing in Elementary School though. “I hate you, you hate me. Let’s get together and kill Barney. With a great big axe and a loaded .44, no more purple dinosaur.” We all had such an irrational hatred for that purple dinosaur back in the 1990s. To this day I still do. I can’t explain why. I mean to be fair, Elmo from Sesame Street is probably even more irritating. My two year old has never watched an episode of Barney though, and it will stay that way.
Insane
Clown Posse – Hate Her to Death
This track may seem out of place with the others if you go by the band name, but it’s not exactly. It’s a song about hating someone for not loving you back. It is the kind of feeling you would only get as a teenager or something. But perhaps it is something I remember.
Orange
Sector – I Hate You
This is an essential hate song, for obvious reasons. Orange Sector has at least a couple good hate songs, this being one of them. The singer reminds me of Ren from Ren & Stimpy.
Gwar
– Hate Love Songs
I hate love songs! I hate lovers! I hate, everything that I can’t have, so I hate love!
A great song for those poor souls who are single on Valentine’s Day. I ought to know, I have still spent the majority of my Valentine’s Days single.
Ayria
– Friends and Enemies
It’s okay to hate your enemies, it’s either them or me, just want to break their things.
The word “hate” doesn’t appear in this song much. Instead the main word is “bitch”, pronounced “beetch” in a Russian accent. I love the insult in here “your dick is under six inches”. What a burn.
Orange
Sector – I Spit on You
I spit on you, I spit in your face! I spit on you, I spit on your grave!
This song compliments the previous one by Orange Sector. “I spit on your grave” is an insult we don’t hear often enough.
This is a cool-down song, which Spotify does not have unfortunately. So you can find it on YouTube. I was obsessed with this band for many years. Not sure what they’re up to these days. But this song is quite catchy. Not as angry as the last several.
Buzz
Kull – Ode to Hate
Once again, this track is more catchy than angry. I like the lyric “The world I’m living in makes no sense”, because it doesn’t. Hate itself makes very little sense sometimes. Particularly when based on race or nationality.
Voltaire
– God Thinks
I hate people who blame the devil for their own shortcomings, and I hate people who thank God when things go right.
A very poignant song about how people in power twist the word of God to suit their own often hateful agendas. More of a rant set to music, really.
Diary
of Dreams – Play God
Why don’t you compensate all of my pain and hate?
Hate really isn’t the central subject of this song, but it is yet another calm down song. I needed a few of those after screaming along to Korn.
And
One – Save the Hate
Save, the hate, it’s another day. Don’t bring me down it’s far too late.
To me this song is about not giving into the hate, not letting the people who want you to be upset win. Just go on with your day, and save your hate for someone who has really earned it, at least. Don’t waste it on petty internet trolls the like. And it’s a great song to end the mix on for that lesson.
Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed the mix if you decide to put it together yourself. What songs would you add? You can go ahead and let me know over on Facebook if you will (you can comment on Blogger, but it never lets me know when I get new comments). If I end up liking the suggestions maybe I can include them on a longer 90 minute cassette version of the mix. Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
So I’ve talked about the job I
enjoyed having in my last post. Now I’m afraid it is time to discuss the worst
job I’ve ever had; working at a call center for a furniture and bedding
department, which I stayed doing for the health insurance for my pregnant wife.
It was a little over a year ago that I was finally fired from this job for
using too many sick days; not that they cared that my wife had just given birth
and needed extra help, nor that what pushed me over the limit was actually
coming down with the flu. I guess they wanted me to come to work and get
everyone else sick! To them, I was a defective cog in their machine and had to
be removed. But being fired was one of the best days of my life anyway. Fortunately,
it’s all behind me now. I’ve talked about it on here before, in my post about how the Oz books became my main coping mechanism at a job where I was belittled,
berated, dehumanized and yelled at 40 hours a week. Another thing I did between
calls was keep a journal. This was allowed because we weren’t handling any
confidential personal information. This journal chronicles my downward spiral
into madness, but more importantly for this blog post, an entry in it
chronicles my decision to make a mix tape out of the whole experience. Songs
that popped in my head a lot on the job, songs that were relevant to my
experiences. This is an example of how I use mixes and playlists as a form of
memoir.
Included on the tape are samples of
songs from the hold music I was tormented with, day in day out. How I grew to
despise these songs. They’re on here as a reminder, lest I ever forget. Of
course, it’s not the full songs. I would be on hold often, either to speak to a
team leader for help, escalate Karen the Furious Soccer Mom to a supervisor,
call in for NPT (non-phone time, I think is what it stood for; basically
permission to be off the phone so I could finish processing a refund or
whatever else). The songs were “Stockholm Syndrome” by One Direction,
“Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac, “That’s the Way it Is” by Celine Dion, “Chariot”
by Gavin DeGraw, and “Everlasting Love” by Howard Jones. These are my least
favorite songs in the world, and to this day if I hear them somewhere, I get
horrible flashbacks. The people who made these songs and sold them to a call
center company to be used as hold music deserve to be strapped to a chair and
forced to listen to the song they created on loop for 40 hours a week.I remade this tape as a Spotify playlist, but
did not include these songs, not only to spare the ears of whoever reads this
blog and wants to listen to my mix, but because I heard the artists make a tiny
bit of money when their song is played on Spotify, and I wouldn’t want that.
The mix starts with some hold music
before transitioning into “Work For Love” by Ministry, the tape’s namesake.
Love was the only reason I kept working at this call center, so it is fitting
in that sense. It makes me think back to my early days starting the job, before
I became traumatized by it.
Type
O Negative - I Don’t Wanna be Me
Next
is a song that often pops into my head when I’m trapped in some horrible
situation I don’t want to be in. This job really did make me not want to be me
anymore.
Brotherhood
- Damned
This
a song that often came to my mind on the job. The chorus “I’m damned if I do,
I’m damned if I don’t, there is no hope” spoke to me at the time. Being at the
call center did make me feel like I was damned. Surrounded by broken souls, in
Hell.
Weird
Al Yankovic - “Callin’ in Sick”
This
is a little break from the doom and gloom on the tape, a triumphant ode to
faking sick to take the day off from work, sticking it to the man. There were
days where I could call in sick in order to get a three-day weekend. Other
times, I just mentally couldn’t handle being there that day. Yes, this probably
contributed to my being fired for taking too many sick days, ultimately. I
guess I’m just not as good of a worker as a soulless robot.
Depeche
Mode - Enjoy the Silence
The next song on the mix is “Enjoy
the Silence”, which lyrically reminded me of the silence between phone calls.
On Sundays I could go a good twenty minutes in between phone calls sometimes,
so I would purposely try to work on Sundays. On holidays, there could be even
longer between calls. But more normally the calls were back to back all day. Eventually,
the silence would end with a horrible beep in my headset. ”Words like violence,
break the silence”. You’d never know when that beep would come and words would
break the silence. You never knew if you were about to get someone fairly nice,
or someone who was about to scream at you. The anxiety builds and builds. It’s
like Chinese water torture.
Mortiis
- Marshland
I’ve discussed in length Mortiis’ song “Marshland” before. It's kind of strange how often he comes up on this blog. I suppose he is one of my favorite musicians, as well as a bit of a role model for me. The next few songs follow the theme of “the machine”.
That is what the corporation is like. Cold, unfeeling, only caring about
profit, not people. “Nothing that I say or do, matters to the big machine.
Nothing that I think or feel, matters to the big machine. And if I’m dead when
tomorrow’s gone, the big machine will just move on.”
Kraftwerk
– The Robots
The
next song, Kraftwerk’s “The Robots”, continues the theme. The Russian lyric in
the song translates to “I’m your slave, I’m your worker”. I think this song is
about capitalism. When you work at a call center, you are just a number. A
statistic. Completely replaceable. They're listening in on your calls, they can check what's going on your computer screen, your bathroom breaks are strictly timed, and you will be lectured and derided by your team leader in coaching when none of their statistics are satisfactory. They own you. No privacy, no freedom. Paid the barest minimum the company can get
away with paying you. The only reason there’s health insurance is so that
you’re so terrified of getting fired and losing that insurance you’ll be their
completely loyal robot. Why do you think there’s no universal healthcare in the
United States? Because then no one would be stuck doing these shitty jobs,
that’s why.
The
Cure – Cold
This
song is here mainly because I listened to it a lot at the time I was working at
the call center. It conveys the depression I felt. I felt dehumanized and
hopeless. Its here more for the energy of the music than the lyrical content.
Pink
Floyd – Welcome to the Machine
This
song came to me again one day as I was writing in my journal and waiting for
the next terrible call to come in. I was here because my wife was
pregnant. Here in this Hell. Is this the world I was bringing my son into?
Where people are raised from the cradle up to be brainwashed and exploited?
Turned into obedient workers? That’s the whole point of school in this country
after all. And am I supposed to lie to him for his whole childhood about how
horrible the world really is? This song is about doing just that I think. It’s
about giving your son a sheltered childhood, and then introducing him to the
soulless real world when he reaches adulthood. I still struggle with these
questions, even if I’m in a somewhat better place now.
Sadie
Killer – The Working Dead
This
is where Side B starts, Side A ending with a sample of crappy hold music. So yes,
I’ve watched the cartoon Steven Universe, and that’s where this song is from. An
anthem to those who hate their dead end jobs, it is all too appropriate for
this mix, and a song I came to listen to a lot during my short breaks. Steven Universe is an unexpected source for music that speaks to me, but here we are I guess. And Spotify even had it.
The
Kovenant - Mannequin
This
song reminded me of my poor, broken co-workers, drowning in a sea of cubicles,
especially the ones who had been there for years, for whom any hope of a better
life had dissolved, any dreams they once had, pulverized to dust. “You’re just
another faceless mannequin, you’re just another fallen star.” You lose your
identity, your very sense of being, working in a call center. You are merely
the face of the company. Merely a recording. A robot. I could have become one
of them. I almost did. The journal entry I posted up above shows you the moment
I realized it should be on this mix.
Gwar
– Sick of You
And
the next few songs are dedicated to those horrible customers. Oh, how sick I
was of them. Their entitlement. Their first world problems. The ones who just
would not shut up. I would sing this song to myself sometimes after putting
them on hold and transferring them somewhere.
Twiztid
– Kill Somebody
I
would get this mad sometimes. There’s only so much abuse I can take. Some
people forget they’re talking to human beings. I’ve been yelled at, called a
retard among other things, treated like shit. Working at a call center is like
being a urinal. You’re just there to be pissed on by random people. You’re not
a person, you’re an object, there to serve the purpose of being pissed on. Sometimes
people will throw a wad of gum in there or something even worse. They’re not
supposed to, but who’s really going to stop them? When I reached my limit, I
would sometimes hit the phone or the computer screen. One time I tore my stress
ball into tiny little pieces. And that’s what this song is there to illustrate.
The
Sweeney Todd Soundtrack – Epiphany
“There’s
a hole in the world like a great black pit and it’s filled with people who are
filled with shit, and the vermin of the world inhabit it. But not for long.
They all deserve to die…” This song illustrates well the darkest depths that
this job pushed me to. This job made me hate humanity. It made me long for an
asteroid to just smack into the Earth and wipe everyone out.
Faderhead
– This is Your World
The
second song that bashes the world which led me to be trapped in this job, at
least until I was finally fired. “This is your world, I don’t wanna live here.”
And I really didn’t, when I worked here. I wanted to go live in Oz. Or at least
Armenia.
White
Ring – IXC99
This
song is kind of a calm down song after the previous two. A song I liked while I
was working at the call center. It’s still dark, but a little calmer. Save for
the shotgun blast in the background.
Audiotherapie
– Devil’s Mind
“Consumption,
is that enough to satisfy your needs? All the things you learned, he is going
to earn. Money is your religion, money rules your world.” This is a song about
the kind of world we live in, where corporations and the rich rule, all that
matters is money, and we’ve all been brainwashed into consumerism. The kind of
world where, even though I wanted to be an author and artist and got a Master’s
degree in Creative Writing, I was still trapped in a job I hated, stripped of
my dignity and pride, berated, and nearly destroyed. The artist has no place in
this world, where everything has to be quantified, and if it is not useful to
the billionaire class it is discarded and treated as if it has no worth. Money
is a religion, especially in the United States. Money is God. Money is how the
powerful stay powerful. I hate money. I hate, to my very core, whoever it was
in history that came up with the idea of money. Hate them. Let's go back to bartering.
This one
isn’t on Spotify or YouTube as far as I can tell. I first heard it on the Communion After Dark podcast. So, I’ll just link to their
Bandcamp page.
This,
like “Cold” by The Cure, is kind of only here for the energy of it. But lyrics
like “Broken people, hollow and feeble” describe the people who worked at this
call center. So it fits. The song reminds me of when I would just give in to
the despair. I would lose the energy and will to be angry or sad. I would stop
feeling anything, and just accept my fate. Become the robot. A faceless mask. A
bard no more.
Voltaire
– Underground
“Six
walls of wood, to keep them out. The smart remarks, the screams the shouts.
They scream, they shout. There’s only one way to drown them out.” Yes. There
were days, when the job pushed me to these depths of sorrow. Days where sleep
was my only escape from the nightmare that my waking hours had become. Days
where…I wished I could have stayed asleep. Just to drown out the smart remarks,
screams and shouts.
David
Bowie – I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday
This
song to me represents the dreams that I had and still have, which kept me alive
for those months I worked at this call center. I wasn’t going to be one of those
people stuck working there for ten years. I couldn’t give up. I didn’t know
when I was going to get out of there, but I knew it would happen eventually.
Just like I don’t know when I’ll be a successful author and cartoonist, but I
know it’ll happen one day.
So
there’s a takeaway from this mixtape, even though it chronicles a very bleak,
hopeless time in my life. Nothing bad lasts forever. Every storm runs out of
rain. Your present situation isn’t your final destination. All those feel-good
slogans you can think of that mean that the torture will eventually end.
Now
the day I got fired, I knew I’d used up my attendance credits. I wasn’t going
to say anything; I was going to make as much money as I could before I was canned. My team leader wasn’t there for a couple days, so I actually
worked a couple more days before she arrived; forty-five minutes into my shift,
she called me up, let me know I’d overused my credits, and told me to clean out
my desk. I grabbed my stuff, and left. It took a while to sink in that I was
finally free. I went home, laid in bed, and just tried to come to grips with
it. I checked my subscriptions on YouTube, and the synthwave channel New Retro
Wave had just uploaded the song “Let Go” by Kalax. It seemed to fit the moment.
This tape had already been made and is only 90 minutes long, but if it were
possible to add to it without recording over another song, I’d have had this as a bonus track. The song signaling
the final end of my time at this awful call center. It was time to let go of
all of that negativity and move on with my life. I worked in two other call
centers after this unfortunately, but neither of them were as bad. I’m still
haunted by the experience but I am in a much better place now.
One night I was looking for the song "Cold" by The Cure on my computer. I
typed the word “cold” into the search bar on Windows Media Player, and it came
up with a list of songs that had the word “cold” somewhere in the title. I
started listening to the list, and realized a lot of the songs went well
together. Each has a unique way of using and defining the concept of cold. I
then started a playlist and added songs that use the word “cold” in their
lyrics somewhere too. I probably should have been doing something more productive
with my time, but, that’s how the idea for this mix came about, as well as
others I plan on making centered around other concepts. I may do an extended
cassette version of the mix later on, but for now, it’s a CD mix.
The Cure – Cold
“I
was cold as I mouthed the words, and crawled across the mirror. I wait, await
the next breath, your name like ice, into my heart.”
This song is darkly beautiful. As
far as my tastes in music goes I prefer The Cure’s darker albums, such as Pornography
and Disintegration. Their pop music is okay, but a bit more shallow, in
a way. "Cold" in this song is more of a feeling, an emotion, than literal cold.
Perhaps it’s a song of lost love. The lyrics are hard to comprehend, but I
think that’s what it’s about. What would it take for someone’s name to be like ice into your
heart? Like being stabbed in the heart with an icicle? If even the mere mention of a name brings
such an association to mind you’d have to have very strong feelings, either
negative or tragic. Perhaps of a lover that left you or died. Or perhaps not of
a lover at all, I could be way off. The singer doesn’t have to be singing about
a woman, or even a person.
I can’t find the lyrics to this one
anywhere, and since the title is in Spanish, I probably wouldn’t understand
them either. But this is a very atmospheric track, the last one on Obscura
Undead’s UnObscured 2019 compilation, which I’ve discussed numerous times already.
The description that came with the digital album suggests this song wouldn’t be
out of place in a fog-shrouded cemetery, and I have to agree. Although the
image that I get listening to this song is a desolate, frozen tundra, lit only
by moonlight, whipped by freezing winds. It continues the energy of the
previous track.
Coldwave Kids (South Park Goth
Song Cover) – Accumortis
This song may be cheating, because
it has no lyrics, and “coldwave” refers to the musical genre. But it has the
secret word in the title!
"It's the secret word of the day! AAAAHHHHH! HA-HA!!"
This was made by the Youtube user Accumortis,
and is a cover of the song that the goth kids from South Park listen to.
However, let us consider for a moment why the genre of coldwave has that name.
The genre was apparently first applied to Kraftwerk, yet another of the dozens
of genres they helped launch, and came to refer to music which uses minimal
synth,usually with sparse, monotone vocals. Listening to music in this genre,
for some reason I do feel a certain coldness. A robotic, emotionless type of
coldness, perhaps. I can’t properly articulate why coldwave in general, and
this song in particular, elicits thoughts of coldness. The song makes me think
of a clear, starry winter night. It also makes me ponder why we associate
coldness with the things that we do. We associate it with emotionlessness, to
be unkind, unforgiving, even cruelty. And we associate warmth with kindness and
love. It’s strange if you think about it.
Mortiis – Marshland
“I’m
stuck and cold, I’m stuck and cold in Marshland. I’m stuck and cold where life
is plentiful but nothing lives.”
Perhaps the marshlands of Norway
where Mortiis is from get cold. They’re not cold in Florida or California,
really, which are the only marshlands I’ve ever been to. I’ve written about this song on this blog before and dissected its lyrics. The use of the word
“cold” in this song goes along with what I’ve mentioned; emotionless,
lifelessness, cruelty. The chorus goes on to talk about the machine”, which
doesn’t care what you think or feel and will keep moving on if you die. To me,
the machine represents our society, where materialism is valued over people.
Thus, though the word “cold” only plays a minor role lyrically, the
associations that it brings permeate throughout the whole song.
And One – Years
“Years
are getting colder, just memories left behind.”
This is another song I’ve previously discussed. Lyrically the song doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, but I
like this particular line. It reminds me of becoming more jaded and cynical,
i.e. “colder”, as the years go on and you lose more and more of your innocence.
Cold here can mean jaded, depressed, bitter, hardened, as the dreams you had
when you were young seem more and more unattainable as soon as you start to
grasp the cold reality of how the world works.
Ministry – Cold Life
“Earth
gets colder every day, if scientists could have their way, they’d study us from
far away and watch as people’s minds decay.”
An early Ministry track from their
synthpop days (but it never made it on With Sympathy, so Al Jourgensen can't really claim the record companies forced him to make it), although this one has more of a funk sound to it, like early Red Hot Chili Peppers. The use of “cold” here is much as I said in the previous song. I
don’t know if I agree with him on scientists. Maybe some scientists are that
“cold” and detached from sentiment. The ones who do animal testing probably
are. The song is about a cold, pessimistic outlook on life, and the world.
Later in the song we have lyrics such as “Earth is such a filthy place and
humans such an awful race.” In actuality the world is overall becoming warmer
every day due to rampant climate change that’s going to doom us all pretty
soon, but metaphorically, I think it is becoming a colder place as well. Of
course, that said, the world has always been a harsh place, and humans have
always been an awful race. The “good old days” are an illusion. The world is a
colder place for those of us entering adulthood.
Bella Morte – Break this Cold
“Walk
this winter mile, under the snow, knowing the sun won’t ever break this cold.”
At long last, a more literal meaning
of the world “cold”. Days like this are sadly very rare where I live, in
Florida. But this song is about those winter days where it’s sunny, but
paradoxically, still bitter cold. Not even the sun is enough to warm the day. I
sometimes wish I lived in an area where it snowed. But everyone I talk to who
does seems to hate it. Yet snow gets romanticized every year around December
even in areas where it never snows. When I lived in California, in the San
Francisco Bay Area, everyone would get so excited when little Mt. Diablo (just
under 4,000 feet high) got snow. In Florida people make “sandmen” instead of
snowmen. The bigger cities in both states will often have parades or events
where fake snow is generated from machines. Ice skating rinks can be found in
both states, even in the town which I find myself in now, Rockledge. Snow is
one of those things. Those who don’t have it, want it. Those who get it, don’t
want it. As for the song, it’s about a winter cold that defies even the sun. A
cold that I miss and long for. Especially when it gets over 80 degrees
Fahrenheit in December here in Florida.
Hante – In Cold Water
“And
I’m scared I won’t survive tomorrow if I let myself sink deeper. You can’t go
back from the abyss of sorrow. How could I keep breathing in cold water?”
Hante is a coldwave band (insert Pee
Wee Herman scream here) from France, that I’ve been a fan of for a couple years
now, ever since I heard the song “Empty Space”. In the lyrics to this song, the
singer is walking along the beach and is drawn toward the ocean, walking deep
into the cold waters, and wondering how deep they can go before they drown. I
think the “cold water” here is a metaphor for depression, the clue being the
reference to the abyss of sorrow. How deep can they sink and still survive? As
someone with depression, I definitely relate. It can give you a sinking,
drowning feeling when it becomes overwhelming. The word “cold” isn’t overall
very important to the lyrics as a whole; in fact, it may only be there to make
the number of syllables add up. But its inclusion does bring with it its own
implications. She could have substituted “warm”, “blue”, or “deep”, but the
song writer chose “cold” for a reason. Likely because of its nonliteral
interpretations, all of which I’ve mentioned.
Le Matos – Cold Summer
“In
the forest, why does it feel so cold? Feels so cold in the summer. In the
forest, I’m growing cold, feels so cold in the summer.”
Having it be cold outside in the
summer sounds amazing. Especially in Florida. The only places I’ve been where
it can get cold in the summer are Monterey, California, Vanadzor, Armenia (as
well as anywhere on around Lake Sevan), and maybe up in the mountains anywhere.
All places I wish I lived. Anyway, as for the song lyrics; no one expects it to
be cold in the summer. It doesn’t sound like the singer is happy that it’s cold
(like I would be). So here, cold symbolizes an unexpected disappointment. If
taken literally, maybe this song is about a summer camping trip that went awry
due to unexpected weather. But if you look into the alternate implications
which the word ”cold” has in the English language, you can make your own
metaphorical interpretations from there. Perhaps this is a metaphor for being
treated “coldly” by a loved one from whom you expected “warmth”, or affection.
It could mean any number of things.
Hoffen – Cold Tears of an Angel
“Cold
tears of an angel, are devastated with treason and lies.”
This one isn’t the easiest song to
interpret, but I found the full lyrics on Hoffen’s Bandcamp page. Tears are
generally warm, coming from the body which is a steady 98 degrees Fahrenheit.
Perhaps angels are different? It’s a song about being betrayed by someone, and
if angels are generally seen as pure and innocent (though they aren’t always in
many myths), the lyrics give the sense of a loss of innocence. The betrayal of
someone who is not used to shedding tears. Someone who is now “cold” on the
inside, and therefore so are their tears.
Paula Abdul – Cold-Hearted
“He’s
a cold-hearted snake, look into his eyes. Uh-oh, he’s been telling lies.”
Oh goodie, time to admit to a guilty
pleasure. I spent much of my early childhood watching MTV in the late 1980’s
and early 1990’s, where I inevitably became a fan of Paula Abdul. She was
probably my first crush. I never stopped liking her music, even after I got
into metal and then goth music. Pop music in the 1980’s is still way more
tolerable than pop music from the late 1990’s onward. Singers still had to have
some degree of musical talent back then. In any case, the usage of the word
“cold” in this song is related to its use in the previous song. The singer is
warning others about their ex-lover who cheated on them. To be “cold-hearted”,
by this song’s definition and in the general sense of the idiom, is to have the
ability to betray the love and trust of someone who loves you without any
remorse. I’ll be doing another mix like this with the word “heart”, where I can
discuss the implications of that word in its literal and metaphorical senses.
New Order – Blue Monday
“Tell
me how does it feel, when your heart grows cold?”
People have analyzed the meaning of
this well-known song already in the past. It seems to be about being in some
kind of a relationship (whether romantic or not isn’t stated, but somewhat
implied) with someone who is manipulative and controlling. This made it a very
good break-up song for me with my first girlfriend. Ah, fun times. The last
line in the song is the one above. Again, we have the “cold-hearted” idiom,
which can only be taken metaphorically. The person being sung about in the song
is unfeeling and unsympathetic, and the narrator wonders how it feels to become
that way, to no longer care about others. This is what it means to be cold, or
cold-hearted.
Kamelot – On the Coldest Winter
Night
“On
the coldest winter night, this moment is our right.”
Let’s
look at a song that’s not about a failed romance now (well okay, the romance
does fail in a major way later in the album, which is a concept album based on
the story of Goethe’s Faust, but nevermind that). This song just makes
me feel all warm and toasty inside. It’s all about cozying up with your true
love on the coldest night of the year and having a moment of passion with them.
The world outside is cold, maybe in both the lyrical and metaphorical senses,
but love warms this couple in spite of all that. I’ve always loved this album, Epica.
I suppose Kamelot is a melodic power metal band, but you’d never be able to
tell with this song, which is mainly soft piano and vocals. If more people only
listened to this album it would be more popular.
Serj Tankian – Garun a
“My
sweetheart has become cold. Akh, I wish for my rival’s tongue to dry up.”
Serj Tankian covers an old Armenian
folk song popularized by Komitas Vardapet in this track. The full lyrics aren’t very long. It’s spring yet still snowy, the singer’s lover has ”become cold”, and
it seems to somehow be the singer’s rival’s fault (if the final line is
connected to the other two at all). I have an intermediate understanding of the
Armenian language, but I can’t say I know if the word for cold has the same
several meanings it has in English. The word specifically in this song is Υ½Υ‘ΥΌΥ₯Υ¬, meaning “to become cold”, as the
act of becoming cold is it’s own one-word verb in the language (nifty, isn’t
it?) Has she become cold because the singer is in a love triangle with their
rival, and she’s choosing the rival over him? Or is she literally cold, perhaps
even dead, and the rival is to blame? I can’t really say for certain,
unfortunately. Wishing for someone’s tongue to dry up must be an old-world
curse, I take it. Maybe someone else knows the correct interpretation of this
song. I’ve heard renditions of this song that are upbeat, danceable even, but
this one sounds tragic and heart-wrenching. It’s a tear-jerker. I remember it
best because I listened to it on repeat on my last day in Armenia and moped because
I was leaving my beloved country. This song brings me back to that last day.
I’ll blog about that day on its anniversary this October.
Dishwalla
– Counting Blue Cars
“It’s
getting cold, picked up the pace. How our shoes, make hard noises in this
place.”
Following the sentimental
tear-jerker theme this mix is now on, we have this gem from my 1990’s
childhood. It’s hard to say what this song is really about when you look at the
lyrics. “Tell me all your thoughts on God, because I’d really like to meet
her.” Having God be referred to as a female is kind of interesting. Maybe the singer is Wiccan. Anyway, the word
“cold” isn’t doing a whole lot in this song. Perhaps if I find a song more
centered on cold I would eliminate this one from the list. Not that I don’t
like it, of course. It’s a song from when I was pure and innocent, before
Middle School destroyed it all. But yeah, if I make a mix of songs about God
I’ll have more to say about this.
Eisbrecher
– Eiskalt Erwischt
“You
smell me, you chase me, you have me, captured ice cold.”
And now for some German. We’re
kicking it up a notch now after the last several songs to a speedy industrial
metal song. Maybe I should have put more of a mid-level heavy song between this
one and the previous as more of a buffer. But, I consider this mix kind of a
work in progress anyway. The band, “Eisbrecher”, translates to “ice breaker”,
and the song roughly translates to “Captured Ice Cold”. Coldness is a common
theme in Eisbrecher’s songs, unsurprisingly. The band sounds a lot like
Rammstein to the untrained ear, making it even more amusing when he says “Du
has mich” several times throughout this song. The song is very carnal, about
being chased down and captured by your lover and enjoying it. But with lyrics
like “I tear the cold heart from your chest every night with lust”…yeah, maybe
it’s more than just sado-masochism. As long as it’s consensual, whatever floats
your boat I guess. I’m unsure if “eiskalt erwischt” is a common German idiom.
My last German class was a long time ago now. I’m better at Armenian at
this point. Maybe it means something akin to being “caught red-handed” in
English. That would be my guess. If true, that would be an altogether different
way to look at the word “cold”.
The
Kovenant – Through the Eyes of the Raven
“My
tears no longer turned to frost, my eyes they gleam no more. Triumphant pride
forever lost. King Winter, where’s thy cold?”
I’ve discussed at length
Covenant/The Kovenant’s debut album In Times Before the Light, an
important album of my formative years. This song is almost like a prayer, or a
summoning. A summoning of the cold of winter. Later on in the song the singer
even makes offerings (“Make me frozen cold as ice, I give to thee my blinded
eyes”). King Winter here is kind of a representation of winter, like a God of
Winter. This is sung by someone who misses winter and hates summer, but is also
steeped in dark fantasy. They want winter back. Their glory and pride depends
on it being winter again. At least they don’t live in Florida. I found this to
be a suitably grand finale to the mix. An ode to coldness and winter.
Honorable
mention:
Clan of Xymox – Under the Wire
“So
tired, so cold, as stone I’m told.”
Missing
the boat on the CD mix was “Under the Wire” by Clan of Xymox, because I only
realized after I’d burned the CD already that it had the word “cold” in it. It
will have to be on the cassette version, whenever I make it (I may wait until next winter). Or if I have to
remake the CD Mix (which is inevitable after a couple years when the CD
eventually gets too scratched up) I’ll put it on there, possibly instead of
“Counting Blue Cars”. If I were to keep “Counting Blue Cars”, this may be the
track I was looking for to bridge between that and “Eiskalt Erwischt”; and this
is what I did for the Spotify version of this mix. Anyway, looking at the
lyrics for this one, it seems like a depressing one, about having reached your
limit, being fed up with everything, close to the brink. Maybe I should add happier
songs to my music library? Eh, that’s what my synthwave music is for. “Cold” here is used as part of the idiom “stone
cold”, as popularized by the wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. It can mean
literally cold (as in “your tea is going to be stone cold if you don’t drink it
soon”), or it can basically mean the same thing as cold-hearted, more in the
sense of being emotionally stoic than a heart-breaker.
Anyway,
as I said I did my best to reproduce the playlist on Spotify, although of
course, Spotify doesn’t have the really obscure ones. For that there’s YouTube.
Who knows what songs I may have missed, they’ll probably turn up over time and
the playlist will get longer. In the meantime, my next mix will have to do with
the Moon.
To begin, I’d like to post an excerpt from the Ukhtagirk;
a recreation of Armenia’s ancient legends passed down by bards of Goghtn, which
were obscured when Christianity took hold in the country, compiled by Slak Kakosyan,
translated to English by Nvard Sureni, and edited by me for this blog. This
legend, about the primordial dragon (called Vishap) that rules the night, taps
into the same ancient dark energy that this album taps into.
THE HOLY LEGENDS OF ARARAT
Part III The Birth of Charyi
Vishap was alone in the Heavens
and on the Earth. There was only darkness around and he was the only lord of
this darkness. At first, he was pleased, because he was the absolute ruler of
this kingdom of darkness. But over time, he became upset. Yes, he was the
absolute ruler, but who did he rule? Who worshiped him? Who made sacrifices to
him? Vishap
often came down to the Earth and watched the land of Ararat closely from a
distance, where birds flew, animals ran, and trees and flowers bloomed. He
envied other Deities who enjoyed nature and played with Aryi (the first man),
while Vishap was alone. There was no one with whom he could play with, talk or
patronize. That made Vishap angry with Aryi even more, because by his own
existence Aryi made Deities happy, and this emphasized Vishap’s misfortune. If
only Aryi did not exist. If only Vishap also had someone like him. And so, Vishap addressed Ar the Creator, “Oh, my Father, I am alone, and my life is
sadly flowing. There is life in Ararat, and there is Aryi who pleases the Gods.
Give me someone similar to Aryi so I can patronize him as well. After all, even
the lord of darkness has the need of joy.”
And Ar replied, “I will make your
wish come true: spread your fetid breath around, and the desert will come to
life. Then temper the steppe clay the with water from the river Iordokh and
shape it into an Aryi-like form and breathe upon it, and it will come to life.
But you must know that this creation, created from the dirt, will only look
like Aryi. It will not be a deity, because it was not created by the Creator.
It will be a Titan. And his name will be Charyi.”
Vishap came back to the Earth
pleased. He spread his fetid breath around, and thorny bushes and grasses grew
on the steppe sands, and many scorpions, snakes and lizards came to life and
vivified the desert steppe. Then Vishap tempered the steppe clay with water
from the Iordokh River and shaped the form of the Titan Charyi, breathed upon
it, and it came to life. Vishap was satisfied because his kingdom of darkness had sprung with life and
had its own man. Vishap loved the Titan, cared for him and tirelessly
instructed him, “You will grow up, mature, you will have offspring and you will
extend my dominion over the whole world, and relying on my mighty power, you
will destroy the Kin of Aryi in Ararat, and you will cover Ararat with
darkness, and make me a master of Ararat too.”
And Charyi cherished ill-will and
hatred for Aryi from Ararat. He always dreamed of conquering Ararat and making
it dependent on Vishap.
In
Times Before the Light hearkens back to a time when the world was
ruled by darkness, before all of the sunlight, rainbows and fluffy bunnies ruined
everything. Listening to the opening track, “Towards the Crown of Nights” you
get the sense that this is the soundtrack to a dark uprising. A conquest. With
lines like “Feeble humans, behold me in my victory!” I mean just read the
lyrics to some of these songs. The lyrics themselves say more than I ever could
about this album. Each song is full of dark poetry. I don’t know how the band,
who were only 17 years old when they wrote this album, managed to produce
something so perfect. How did they manage to tap into something so ancient,
dark and primordial? Here, read the lyrics for yourself:
The
first two songs will make you feel like you’re riding on the back of a dragon
through a torrential thunderstorm, swooping down and attacking armies of
rebelling humans, conquering the land. The third song, “The Dark Conquest”, is
where we land, sit back and relish at the destruction we have wrought and the
lands we have conquered, basking in the darkness (“Worlds have I destroyed,
stars have I born. Dark my kingdom is, desolate.”). Just like Vishap conquering
the lands of Ararat. The energy picks up again with “From the Storm of Shadows”
carrying into the next track. Another thing that could be said for this album
is that the tracks are arranged perfectly. Each song flows into the next. You
get high energy tracks, and then you get a breather with some slower tracks.
With
all this said, I’m not sure why the band, after being forced to change their
name to The Kovenant due to a lawsuit from a band that was called Covenant first,
remade the album in 2002. The remake does have its merits (I like the whole
creepy circus vibe that version of “From the Storm of Shadows” has), and it’s
actually the version I heard first. I had to work to find the original version
back in 2004, which at the time was pretty rare, through a couple fierce eBay
bidding wars. But it truly is The Kovenant covering Covenant. They took it from
being symphonic black metal to industrial metal, added synths to the songs, and
something was lost in the transition. Something happened when the band changed
their name. Instead of channeling their music from some dark ancient cosmic entity,
it seemed like they were finally making music that came from themselves. I
still like all their albums, but their last two studio albums are like an
entirely different band made them. One unforgivable change in the remake album
is the removal of those epic trumpets from the title track “In Times Before the
Light” that kick in at the climax. The song seems toothless without them.
As far as “life changing” albums go, I could just as
easily nominate their third album Animatronic, the album that introduced
me to European metal when I was 16, without which I wouldn't have eventually
heard this album. I could also nominate their second album Nexus Polaris,
which is arguably an improvement on this album in
some ways. But it was the lyrical content, filled with images of dragons and
conquerors and eternal night, and just the raw dark energy of their debut album
In Times Before the Light that encapsulated my adolescent rage and delusions of grandeur, and eventually ended up providing major inspiration for the fantasy novel
I'm about to finish up writing. Let's call it a tie I suppose between those
three albums. This one is just my overall favorite in the long run. It's
unfortunate that The Kovenant seems to have fallen off the face of the Earth
since 2003, although with the weird electronic spacey direction they took their
final album SETI in, maybe it was for the best, sadly. Regardless, I’m
still waiting for their next album Aria Galactica. I’ve been waiting close
to 17 years for it now. So, more than half my life. I wonder if it will be worth the wait, if it
ever does get released.
