(SMS) Slipknot - The Devil In I

[Verse 1]

Undo these chains, my friend, I'll show you the rage I've hidden

Perish the sacrament, swallow but nothing's forgiven

You and I can't decide which of us was taken for granted

Make amends, some of us are destined to be outlived

 

[Chorus]

Step inside, see the Devil in I

Too many times we've let it come to this

Step inside, see the Devil in I

You'll realize I'm not your Devil anymore

 

[Verse 2]

Under the words of men, something is tempting the father

Where is your will, my friend? Insatiates never even bother

You and I, wrong or right, traded a lie for the leverage

In between the lens in light, you're not what you seem

 

[Chorus]

Step inside, see the Devil in I

Too many times we've let it come to this

Step inside, see the Devil in I

You'll realize I'm not your Devil

I'm not your Devil anymore

 

[Bridge]

Your station is abandoned

Fooled you 'cause I know what you've done

Sensation, deprivation

You should've burned when you turned on everyone

 

[Chorus]

So step inside, see the Devil in I

Too many times we've let it come to this

Step inside, see the Devil in I

I know you'll find your answers in the end

Step inside, see the Devil in I

You'll realize I'm not your Devil anymore

 

[Outro]

So step inside

Step inside

See the devil in I

See the devil in I

Photo by Stefano Pollio on Unsplash

A great friend of mine, Will, asked if I could give my point of view on this song. Promptly I've accepted. Maybe it was one of the most difficult songs that were requested to put my perspective.

 

Some points before going deeper into what the song says, we have to understand what the band's history brings to this context. Recognising, firstly, since the the very beginning the group's lyrics reflects their feelings towards anger, pain and anguish on past traumas and what some of them were living at that time.

 

I also note the band's return with new material since their last album (All Hope Is Gone, from 2008) and this song (the first single from the album .5: The Gray Chapter, from 2014) making a new season. In the meantime the band have gone through some changes, like Joey Jordison's depart, he was the drummer, which some consider a treason, and the passing away of one of the band's founder and, till then, band's bassist, Paul Gray, in 2010.

 

We keep on feeding nasty and negative feelings from the past. It may be a lost or grief, some "devil" we'd faced, disgust towards someone who went by your life. Everytime we visit them, we're receding with our lives. Then you ask me: why receding? I answer with two sentences I heard or read somewhere:

 

"Overflowing past is depression. Overflowing present is stress. Overflowing future is anxiety."

"Who lives in the past is museum."

 

Though I disagree with the "overflowing" of the first one, I can see truths. If we are too focused in a point which we don't have any control, our life loses its course and we may develop mental disorders, as the already mentioned in the sentence, and even physical ones. We must use the past as tool to be better beings. Not for the futre: for the here and now! We don't have controle about the future or if we even will be alive.

 

The Bible brings and interesting excerpt regarding the past, and it's on the book of Isaiah 43:18: "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past". And this jibes with Shawn Crahah, one of the band's percussionists, pointed being one of the song's inspirations: becoming one with your past and doing away with it.

 

Doing away with anger. Doing away with grief. Doing away with fears! Talking about fears, it's one of the points the video reinforces. Although visually unpleasant, we see Chris Fehn, the other percussionist, being eaten by crows, because it's exactly one of his fears, and Sid Wilson, the DJ, eating his own arm and fingers, being them fundamental for his "instrument". The fusion with the fear to become better musicians.

 

Don't live in the past. Don't feed your fears. Use them in favour of being a better person. Know how to forgive and accept forgiveness.

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Sources:

https://genius.com/Slipknot-the-devil-in-i-lyrics

https://slipknot.fandom.com/wiki/The_Devil_in_I

https://www.songfacts.com/facts/slipknot/the-devil-in-i

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(Albums Recommendations) Relient K - Is For Karaoke [2011]

Relient K is a Christian pop-punk/alt-rock band that was introduced to me back in 2002, and I always enjoyed their "happy" and humorous sound. Funny and even reflexive lyrics. Every time I could, I followed their trajectory.

 

In 2011 they released an EP (Extended Play, which is bigger than a single and smaller than a full album) named "Is For Karaoke EP" with 7 covers, on July 28, and later another, on October 4, "Is For Karaoke Pt. 2 EP" with another 7 songs too. Concurrently to the last one, they released the full album, which is the junction of both EPs.

 

In the sequence showing in the album, the original artists and the year of release of their songs are: Cyndi Lauper (1982), Justin Bieber (2010), The Wallflowers (1997), Chicago (1984), Cake (1996), Gnarls Barkley (2006), Third Eye Blind (1997), They Might Be Giants (1998), Stone Temple Pilots (1994), Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers (1979), Toto (1981), Weezer (1994), Nada Surf (2003) and Tears For Fears (1985).

 

I must confess when the album was released in 2011 and I had access to it, I HATED IT. I speak ill of it, even after I listened to all its songs. Curiously, maturity came and I heard it again in these last 3 years. My opinion on it from when I listened to at the first time completely changed. It's one of their best albums for me. I see it as a precise and mature release.

 

With the exception of 3 songs (One Headlight, The Distance and Inside Of Love), I know all the others in their original versions. What delighted me the most in this album was the approach the band brought to the original versions, while putting a minimum arrangement here or there, characterising what they were doing in their recent releases.

 

 

The versions that excited me the most, in the order they show up in the album, are:

• Girls Just Want To Have Fun
• You're The Inspiration
• Crazy
• Interstate Love Song
• Here Comes My Girl
• Africa
• Everybody Wants To Rule The World

 

A pleasant album to listen with your family, remembering a little bit of the original versions, but with a different flavouring.

 

PS: I know the song Girls Just Want To Have Fun is actually from Robert Hazard and from 1979, though the band inspired in Cyndi Lauper's version, which was the most famous, meaning, a cover from a cover.

 

K7 #012 Underrated Artists 1

Taking great Eber's suggestion, this playlist will be with bands/artists that don't have enough recognition. Well, at least in the social circles I live in, even online, and I don't see many comments on them.

 

A playlist that will return from time to time.

 

These are the groups and their countries:

 

Al Joseph (USA)

Closure in Moscow (Australia)

Dead Artist Syndrome (USA)

Dorje (England)

FM-84 (USA)

Hands (USA)

Heartwind (Sweden)

King Głyk (Poland)

LP Septet (France)

Marbin (Israel)

Nito (Japan)

Sex on Toast (Australia)

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(SMS) Supertramp - The Logical Song

[Verse 1]

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful

A miracle, oh, it was beautiful, magical

And all the birds in the trees, well, they'd be singing so happily

Oh, joyfully, oh, playfully watching me

But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible

Logical, oh, responsible, practical

And then they showed me a world where I could be so dependable

Oh, clinical, oh, intellectual, cynical

 

[Chorus 1]

There are times when all the world's asleep

The questions run too deep

For such a simple man

Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned?

I know it sounds absurd

But please, tell me who I am

 

[Verse 2]

I said, now watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical

A liberal, oh, fanatical, criminal

Won't you sign up your name, we'd like to feel you're acceptable

Respectable, oh, presentable, a vegetable

Oh, take, take, take it, yeah

 

[Instrumental bridge]

 

[Chorus 2]

But at night, when all the world's asleep

The questions run so deep

For such a simple man

Won't you please (Won't you tell me)

Please tell me what we've learned?

(Can you hear me?) I know it sounds absurd

(Can you tell me?) But please, tell me who I am

Who I am

Who I am

Who I am

Oh!

 

[Outro]

'Cause I was feeling so illogical

D-d-d-d-d-d-digital

Yeah, one, two, three, five

Oh, oh, oh, oh

Ooh, it's getting unbelievable

Yeah

B-b-bloody marvelous

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

My dad, for some time, helped me correcting the texts I wrote about songs, and from time to time I ask him some biblical reference that fits into something I'm writing. The most recent help came when I wrote on my "virtual diary" about the song The Space Between Us (in Portuguese) by Eric Clayton. Some time ago he asked me to show my view point of view on today's song: The Logical Song.

 

This song, originally released in 1979, is a criticism on human being's life and its process of learning in the world, about comprehending itself. This was confirmed by the composer himself in an interview back in 2016.

 

Since we were little we used to hear that we have to become this or that person, we have to study to be the best, we can't lag behind. They say we have to choose the career X or Y because it is that one which gives money, and if the opposite is said, some allegations may show up like, just as the song suggests, "liberal, fanatical, criminal".

 

Crime is when we impose something to our little ones, once today we are the adults who, in a certain way, lived this when we were younger. We must help them finding what they really enjoy and motivate them studying for this.

 

It upsets me when, during college entrance exams (vestibular, in Brazil), only the medical course is exalted. I do not deny their importance, ever, however for a doctor to become what it is, it wasn't only others doctors who taught them. They had a great diversity teachers from many subjects like biologists, chemists, linguists, among others. The problem gets even worse when the person chooses a career under the pressure of friends of family. All of its own characteristic senses disappear and the person doesn't know what he or she wants or even who he or she is.

 

It is complicated to change in us, adults, what we've been through childhood. We can adapt ourselves and reinvent for a new reality, what many have been doing on changing their jobs and feeling realised with that, although we can't commit this very same mistake with our little ones that are studying, learning how to write their own names, the basics of math.

 

If you're a parent, do not impose on your children your dream. Encourage them on having their own dreams and desires. Let them dream of being astronauts, firefighters, super heroes. This can eventually change in the future or not. I also wrote about this (in Portuguese) in my "virtual diary".

 

May you find yourself in your own realisations and help our little ones finding themselves, putting no pressure at all on them.

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(Albums Recommendations) Haken - Affinity [2016]

Since the very first time I've listened to Haken, which was near 2014, when the Dream Theater members were recommending the best albums they've heard and were released in 2013 and there was Haken with the album The Mountain in Jordan Rudess's list. The original link was lost and I've only found a reinterpretation by the Brazilian blog Whiplash. In this middle time, until I got to know about Affinity's release and the ad that the band made on their Facebook, the expectation grew up and, in the release day, I didn't get disappointed at all.

The album's cover resembles games or computer programs boxes from the 80s and the magic starts when the first song's name plays with how the album will start, using the ending ".exe", which is a reference to computer executables. Just right there the album won me, because since I was a little kid I like using and scrambling with computers.

This usage of 80s reference and the computational part is a subject alluded in the whole album. If we look at how mankind and computation evolved from then on, it's fearsome! The beginning of computers, videogames, advanced computing and how even artificial intelligence is bulking and, in a certain way, scaring us. It isn't a new subject if we think of movies like The Matrix that, if you haven't watched yet for any reason, I also recommend.

The album's instrumentals part is what pleases me the most. The band is very technical and accurate in what they want to do. There are moments that it seems easy to play but, when you pick up an instrument to try, you notice you've been tricked. The band makes it look easy because they are connected. The sound, at the same time it frequently refers to the 80s, brings modernity to its side. They also drink from the waters of of their "godfathers", Dream Theater, using odd time signatures, with the difference of having songs not as long as theirs.

The songs I like the most, following the order put in the album, are:

• Initiate
• 1985
• The Architect
• Earthrise
• The Endless Knot
• Bound By Gravity

In this eighties dream, will we someday live a technological utopia or dystopia? This is a question that the album brings to us in many moments.

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K7 #011 - Brazil "deboinha"

Brazil is a country of huge musical diversity, one of them is on music. We have Samba, Bossa Nova, Tropicália, Chorinho, Caipira, etc. Brazil was also influenced by genres from another countries. Nevertheless, Brazilian music isn't something that I seek to listen on my own, although I know some stuff.

These last days I've been helping my sister with the texts she's publishing along with her videos to promote her job as a Physical Education teacher. In this chat, I asked her to challenge me in a playlist subject, which the word she described: Brazilian "deboinha" songs. "Deboinha" is a slang that can mean easy-going or nice.

In the same chat I've tested the limits of how pumped it could be, because when she says "deboinha" she doesn't want any living being having his/her throat purged while singing. My limit was definied and it became easier to choose the songs. Actually not so much, for when I thought I had 30 minutes of songs remaining to fill the 1 hour list.

Finally, here are the Brazilian songs, sung in Portuguese, limited by one per artist, that are "deboinha".

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