One bummer about digital advance albums: they don’t come with lyrics, which means you can either understand what the vocalist is saying, or you can’t. Case in point: Through the Eyes of the Dead’s excellent new album, Skepsis (read my review here). I can’t really understand what Danny Rodriguez is screaming most of the time, so I never even took the lyrics into account when writing my review. I did bother to look up the definition of the word “skepsis,” but even that was only gonna tell me so much about what Rodriguez (and the rest of the band?) had in mind in terms of lyrical themes.

Luckily for me, Rodriguez (at least, I’m assuming it’s Rodriguez) has now posted a MySpace blog outlining the concept of the record. Check it out:

I have decided to post the lyrics for our new CD “Skepsis” on here for one simple reason. The lyrics for “Skepsis” are all based on a concept / story I came up with for the album… so they were written in a particular order for the story to tie in together. The track listing for “Skepsis” is not in that order. So the following are the lyrics in order according to the story.

The following is my concept / story for “Skepsis” if you wish to read it before carrying on to the lyrics section. The lyrics can be interpreted much better if you understand the idea for them.

The story is a first person view through the main character who has a strong, skeptical view on humanity and reality. He believes that this reality is a mere illusion, and that there are celestial / spiritual forces at work that control this world, and the human race. He has a re-occurring dream of the nearing apocalypse, and inevitable damnation of mankind. The dream starts to drive him towards extreme paranoia, so he begins to search for answers to his odd suspicion. He then becomes channeled by an omen that gives him a vision of the underworld, and how it is the final destiny for the human race. He becomes maniacal at this point and communicates with the omen, pleading for his fate to be spared and that he may be granted the privilege to become a spiritual force like the omen. He returns from the vision….psychotic, believing that the omen granted him the power to take human lives, so that his can be spared. He loses all consciousness, and morals, and begins to start taking lives uncontrollably, and drinking himself to death. He is void of sanity at this point, possessed by an evil, supernatural force that is killing him with haste. “The omen” makes him commit suicide and he descents into hell. He awakes in a white room; confused at first, thinking it was just another dream…. only to realize the room is empty, with no exit. He is in his own personal hell for eternity.

That’s some pretty trippy shit, man. It gets even trippier when you read the album’s lyrics, which have been included as part of the same blog.

As is so often the case with artists with goals loftier than my own (smoke weed, eat, write about metal, fuck, piss n’ shit, bathe, sleep, repeat), I’m not entirely sure I understand everything about this concept. But I certainly dig Skepsis enough that I’m stoked to listen to the album while reading along with the lyrics so I can at least try to understand.

Read the full blog here.

-AR

[via Metal Underground]