Psychosocial

• I did my time and I want out, so effusive Fate, it...:

  These two lines express Corey Taylor’s disgust at the insincerity of human behaviour in modern society.

  ‘Effusive’ means to show pleasure or gratitude in an overwhelming way. People can fake friendship, affection or excitement in life and flatter others, but it – fades -. “It doesn’t cut” = it’s not sincere, it doesn’t add up. The human condition is not as warm and loving as that (“the soul is not so vibrant” – people are only behaving this way to get something.

  This is one of the reasons he’s fed up with modern Western society – he’s done his time and he wants out.

• The reckoning:

  “The Great Reckoning” is judgment day. He could be saying as society continues to further and further worsen, we approach the end. He quickly adds “the sickening” as an afterthought, expressing his disgust at the progression of society towards oblivion.

• Packaging, subversion,:

  This talks about how people should fight against authority that restricts us like social norms and government. Subversion means to undermine authority and to package it talks about Corey’s wish to make courage and rebellion an easily accessible item.

• pseudo-sacro sanct perversion,:

  ‘Pseudo’ means fake or artificial. If something is ‘sacrosanct’ it means an inviolable principle, ‘a holy cow’, for instance family values. ‘Sacrosanct’ also has religious connotations, as it comes from the 15th century latin word ‘sacrosanctus’, which means ‘a holy rite’. Ie, it’s talking about religion. This line is talking about superficial entities ‘perverting’ religion and traditional values for their own purposes. This could be corrupt ‘family values’ politicians, self-promoting televangelists looking for money, or terrorists twisting religion to justify violence. This is ‘pseudo sacrosanct perversion’.

• Go drill you deserts, go dig you graves Then fill ...:

  A reference to the ongoing war in the middle east, which some see as the coalition losing lives for oil. He’s fed up with society having skewed priorities and people believing lies, even if it means lives are going to be lost.

• And the rain will kill us all:

  This could be a reference to a conspiracy theory that claims the government for spraying lithium into the ionosphere, therefore making it “rain” an anti-psychotic drug, killing us all slowly.

• If we throw ourselves against the wall:

  The idea of “throwing ourselves against the wall” could mean that we have built up a metaphorical wall to protect ourselves, but now those who we thought were on our side, have become our enemies, which is reflected in the first line. Now, we feel like there is no hope, so we’re throwing ourselves at the “wall” to get out.

• But no one else can see The preservation of the ...:

  The artist not having anyone else to share his points of view, vision and/or experiences with causes him to feel invisible and isolated from the rest of the world. Literally, “no on one else can see”. This lowers one’s sense of self, feelings of self-worth and will often play enough havoc on their mental state to cause a mental disorder. With all of his frustration and disappointment in the ways of the world, the artist still chooses to do everything within his power to not act out in violent rage or anger towards another human being. Even though he has been hurt and has had to deal with pain, he doesn’t want to inflict the same upon someone else. The fact that the artist here would rather practice restraint and be psychosocial as opposed to homicidal makes him a martyr in my book.

• This is nothing new but when we kill it all The ...:

  Possibly referring to the Iraq War, this whole war was all fueled by pure hatred for the Middle East and their culture and religion instead of oil, which is what the American people were told was what the war getting from H.W.

Submitted by minuch on 2012-06-10