Believer - Gabriel

seth wrote:

StevenCressler wrote:

seth wrote:I know Seventh Angel moved away from Christian lyrics, I’m not sure if the members still consider themselves to be Christians or not though. One of them featured with Adorned Graves on the latest album, which is overtly Christian.
Deliverance also has moved away from Christian lyrics, sad to see since their lyrics were great in early years.

I don't mind the change in D's lyrics that much, but I do think if their going to have album covers like the one on The Subversive Kind or album titles like As Above - So Below they should do a little more to confirm what side they're on lol.

I think Jimmy may have moved away from the faith in his personal life as well, some stuff he has said in interviews recently seem to indicate this

Airola wrote:I think a lot of Gabriel can still be interpreted from a religious point of view. Straight from the title, Gabriel, to lines like "seven years of shame" and "melted tongues appear" etc (the Aramaic Bible has a translation that goes "and their tongue shall melt in their mouths").

Stoned seems to be an anti-drug song in the style of Stop the Madness. "Fly high and grind away / Light dies and they invade" I think means you are open to demons when you are high on drugs.

The lyrics to Redshift feel a bit like the lyrics to Singularity on Dimensions. Redshift is phenomena that is used to calculate the beginning of everything, the moment of singularity. The song Singularity basically warns that what began from a singularity will end up in a singularity. Everyone will end up in a state of infinity. "A darwinist, a humanist, a hedonist, a legalist", everyone will confront it eventually. The song seems to say, at least in part, that redshift is evidence of creation ("to reveal creative stress") and there's one blatantly obvious biblical reference too with "The first becomes last".

The song The Need for Conflict could basically be about any evildoer out there, from a school shooter to a politician or a hypocritical preacher. But there are just enough words here and there to put a religious edge to it and have the song also be about Satan.

Focused Lethality could very well be about an endtime angelic battle. "Crush the false strength" could mean the false power of the Antichrist, angels and believers being the "crazy ones" and the "hated" - and there's the clear biblical reference to the "Crown of life" too. Gabriel being the name of the album it wouldn't be a surprise if the lyrics for this song would've been inspired by the Book of Revelation.

The only direct mention of God is in Nonsense Mediated Decay (the title is a scientific term Nonsense Mediated mRNA Decay that I understand nothing about). First a kid mentions "the face of God" and then a man describes an "alien incident" he experienced, ending it with "Kind of like I was touched by the hand of God." When Gabriel came the UFO enthusiasts were still more on the side of aliens being biological creatures from other planets. In the recent years more and more of the same people have changed their views into aliens really being extradimensional beings instead of extraterrestrial, more like angels and demons. However, the "lyrics" of this song weren't written by Believer members but the guy who speaks on it. Anyway, it's part of the album.

Nonsense Mediated Decay, by the way, has an AMAZING beginning! It's such a great hook that it really irritates and bothers me that it lasts for like 20-30 seconds and then it never comes back again. I can only imagine what a whole song based on that small part would be like. It's one of the best music pieces I've ever heard and they use it only for a short moment.


So, with Gabriel we have enough bits here and there to at least interpret the Bible into it.
When it comes to Transhuman, however, there's nothing like that.
The only thing that could have a connection to the Bible is the "it's 4:44" line in Entanglement, and even that is a HUGE stretch as it's most likely just a reference to time with no other meaning (especially as another song already mentions time being 3am). Interestingly though when I googled that I found this written 9 years after the album: The revelation of the number 444 and what does this mean in these last days? By Apostle Jeshurum
The writer woke up 4:44 and wrote what it might biblically mean if you see that time. It sort of makes Transhuman's lyrics a bit more interesting if you add that to it, but obviously there's no actual connection.


In an interview Kurt said they have written the lyrics together. Someone wrote one verse, someone else another, and together they figured out phrasings etc. So that might explain why there are Biblical lines here and there in Gabriel, where the rest of the song might not feel biblical at all.

Anyway, Gabriel is a fantastic album, and Transhuman has a few very good songs too. But Transhuman is clearly the biggest departure both musically and lyrically.

TZ75 wrote:

Airola wrote:I think a lot of Gabriel can still be interpreted from a religious point of view. Straight from the title, Gabriel, to lines like "seven years of shame" and "melted tongues appear" etc (the Aramaic Bible has a translation that goes "and their tongue shall melt in their mouths").

Stoned seems to be an anti-drug song in the style of Stop the Madness. "Fly high and grind away / Light dies and they invade" I think means you are open to demons when you are high on drugs.

The lyrics to Redshift feel a bit like the lyrics to Singularity on Dimensions. Redshift is phenomena that is used to calculate the beginning of everything, the moment of singularity. The song Singularity basically warns that what began from a singularity will end up in a singularity. Everyone will end up in a state of infinity. "A darwinist, a humanist, a hedonist, a legalist", everyone will confront it eventually. The song seems to say, at least in part, that redshift is evidence of creation ("to reveal creative stress") and there's one blatantly obvious biblical reference too with "The first becomes last".

The song The Need for Conflict could basically be about any evildoer out there, from a school shooter to a politician or a hypocritical preacher. But there are just enough words here and there to put a religious edge to it and have the song also be about Satan.

Focused Lethality could very well be about an endtime angelic battle. "Crush the false strength" could mean the false power of the Antichrist, angels and believers being the "crazy ones" and the "hated" - and there's the clear biblical reference to the "Crown of life" too. Gabriel being the name of the album it wouldn't be a surprise if the lyrics for this song would've been inspired by the Book of Revelation.

The only direct mention of God is in Nonsense Mediated Decay (the title is a scientific term Nonsense Mediated mRNA Decay that I understand nothing about). First a kid mentions "the face of God" and then a man describes an "alien incident" he experienced, ending it with "Kind of like I was touched by the hand of God." When Gabriel came the UFO enthusiasts were still more on the side of aliens being biological creatures from other planets. In the recent years more and more of the same people have changed their views into aliens really being extradimensional beings instead of extraterrestrial, more like angels and demons. However, the "lyrics" of this song weren't written by Believer members but the guy who speaks on it. Anyway, it's part of the album.

Nonsense Mediated Decay, by the way, has an AMAZING beginning! It's such a great hook that it really irritates and bothers me that it lasts for like 20-30 seconds and then it never comes back again. I can only imagine what a whole song based on that small part would be like. It's one of the best music pieces I've ever heard and they use it only for a short moment.


So, with Gabriel we have enough bits here and there to at least interpret the Bible into it.
When it comes to Transhuman, however, there's nothing like that.
The only thing that could have a connection to the Bible is the "it's 4:44" line in Entanglement, and even that is a HUGE stretch as it's most likely just a reference to time with no other meaning (especially as another song already mentions time being 3am). Interestingly though when I googled that I found this written 9 years after the album: The revelation of the number 444 and what does this mean in these last days? By Apostle Jeshurum
The writer woke up 4:44 and wrote what it might biblically mean if you see that time. It sort of makes Transhuman's lyrics a bit more interesting if you add that to it, but obviously there's no actual connection.


In an interview Kurt said they have written the lyrics together. Someone wrote one verse, someone else another, and together they figured out phrasings etc. So that might explain why there are Biblical lines here and there in Gabriel, where the rest of the song might not feel biblical at all.

Anyway, Gabriel is a fantastic album, and Transhuman has a few very good songs too. But Transhuman is clearly the biggest departure both musically and lyrically.

Nice review!

You made some good points. I already said that the title “Gabriel” could be a reference to the Archangel. Too bad most people still won’t see Gabriel as having a Christian connection. I think most people want straightforward lyrics like Weapons of Our Warfare. I like that, but I also enjoy Tourniquet’s allegorical lyrics as well… 

Anyways, I really like the Gabriel album!

Pethead wrote:I like more straightforward lyrics. I’m not sharp enough for too much allegory.

Constantine wrote:

Pethead wrote:I like more straightforward lyrics. I’m not sharp enough for too much allegory.

Especially if the allegory is very vague and obtuse, who's going to be able to interpret it?    I thought the point of an allegory was so that people could follow a story and derive certain truths from it.

Pethead wrote:I’ve said it before, but I’ll take Bob Hartman’s lyrics over almost anyone’s. Straightforward Scripture, but not simplistic.

Constantine wrote:

Pethead wrote:I like more straightforward lyrics. I’m not sharp enough for too much allegory.

Especially if the allegory is very vague and obtuse, who's going to be able to interpret it?    I thought the point of an allegory was so that people could follow a story and derive certain truths from it.

TZ75 wrote:I hope I didn’t mix up the words allegorical and metaphorical…

They can sometimes be confused. Either way, Ted used both! 

StevenCressler wrote:

TZ75 wrote:I hope I didn’t mix up the words allegorical and metaphorical…

They can sometimes be confused. Either way, Ted used both! 

I think Skeezix is one of the best examples of that

Kerrick wrote:CMR is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're going to get!

I'll let you guess which ones are the nutty chocolates...