Lethe

As I was working for the past few days, I rediscovered some of the music I used to listen to. I haven’t really listened to much music lately, I forgot just how much I love music. I particularly rediscovered this melodic death metal band I love. They’re called Dark Tranquillity. I was about sixteen when I discovered them. I was already well into metal and rock in general. At the time in Lebanon all the music I liked was banned. You see a couple of kids from very wealthy/important families had committed suicide. As no one was willing to admit that there might be family problems, or some psychological issue that led to them killing themselves, a scapegoat was needed. The axe fell on rock music.

The kids used to listen to rock, as everyone did at the time. Remember we are talking about the early/mid 1990s. Some of the best rock music was written at the time, and it was quite popular. We’re talking about the Seattle era with Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains amongst others, as well as Metallica’s Black Album, the rise of Brit rock with Oasis, Blur, and Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine was starting as well. It was a good time for Rock in general. Also, MTV was big at the time (it was still a music channel back then), and all these bands visited the charts regularly and were highly exposed at the time. So the fact that these kids listened to this music wasn’t a real surprise. But rock was blamed for their suicides.

It was strange because all of a sudden anyone who listened to rock was a potential satanist. That’s right, the story was that these kids got into satanism because of the music they listened to, and became part of a sect called Nirvana (I promise I’m not making this shit up). The band was seen as the major culprit. The fact that Kurt Cobain committed suicide was used as proof that the band encouraged its fans to do the same. The argument was that they take you in through the music and then, because their music was quite angsty would suggest that you kill yourself.

Anyway, so all of a sudden my friends and I were outlaws because we listened to this music. I remember a few awkward conversations with some of the stupider members of my family about my potential satanism (it was even more laughable because at the time I was a very devout Muslim. Well I say devout, I used to fast for Ramadan, and go to the mosque for major holidays, but that’s pretty much it in terms of practising. I was quite a believer though). I had long hair at the time, wore torn jeans and black t-shirts with skulls on them, and was in a band, which was seen as the uniform of satanists. My neighbours were scared of me and wouldn’t get into the lift with me if they could help it. If they were stuck in with me they would stand in the corner and recite verses of the Koran. It was a crazy time.

So all of our music was banned all of a sudden and music stores were not allowed to sell the cds we wanted. So of course a whole black market emerged. We had a guy, who owned a cd store next to our school, he used to get cds and make us tapes of the cds. We were so deprived of all the music that we liked that we would take anything he got us. That’s how I discovered the darker persuasions of metal, including black metal, doom metal, death metal (in both its melodic and brutal forms), and a host of gothic genres of metal. At first, I was quite uninterested in the darker metal. I just didn’t get it. It seemed to have no real musical value and the singers just growled in that inhumane and monstrous way. I thought that only people who can’t sing properly would need to do that.

Then I discovered Dark Tranquillity and the first song I ever heard by them Lethe. Now, I have to admit, I never listened to death or black or any other dark metal. The metal I knew and liked was the mianstream, Metallica, Megadeath, Slayer, Sepultura, Panthera, and the like. But then this tape falls into my hands and I listen to my first melodic death metal tune. It was a revelation. It pretty much hit every right button. The music was inspired, the lyrics were beautiful, the voice made sense, basically it was an almost perfect piece of music. I was lucky to have listened to this one first. Dark Tranquillity and their album The Gallery are considered one of the founding moments of Swedish death metal in the 1990s. They changed he way you did metal.

I thought I would share that song with you all. Now before you listen to it, you need to know that it is death metal. It is loud, angry, and brutal. I can understand that it is not for everybody. In fact, most people are turned off by the singing. It is an acquired taste and it isn’t for everybody. But this band has had such an impact on me. And this song in particular has been such an important part of my life that I have a very special place in my heart for it, as well as a peculiar fondness for it. So anyway here it is.

The song is basically about a Swede getting drunk. Lethe, the mythological lake in the underworld that had the property of erasing all your memories if you drank from it, is a metaphore for alcohol. The protagonist is drinking in order to forget. And the poetry of the lyrics is incredible. Here are the lyrics:

give me to drink of the fluid
that disintegrates
and lend me the sweet balm and blessing
of forgetfulness, empty and strong
lethe
oh, lethe
hold me near, unravel the stars
as i speed through the heavens
i speed through the night
for you are my blade and my rope
you are my
you are my lethe
you are my own

in currents of cobalt you storm through my heart
to severe, to puncture the memories that burn
let sweep through the arteries in sharp stabs of pain
your talonlike fingers to kill me again

-in currents of cobalt you storm through my heart
(to severe, to puncture)- to severe, to puncture
-(the memories that burn)- the memories that burn
-let sweep through the arteries in sharp stabs of pain-
-(your talonlike fingers)- your talonlike fingers
-(to kill me again)- to kill me again
and again, and again and again
steal me, invade me, and charge me again
and again, and again and again
for i burn and i shudder
burn with each movement of…

so, cleansed through a floodlight
i appear, renewed and reforged
caressed by the sweet balm and blessing
of forgetfulness, empty and strong
lethe

hold me near, my one friend and guide
as i drown through your fingers
drown through your love
for you are the life that i hate
you are my
you are my

drag me down, in passionate sighs
with the ocean above me
and flames in my eyes
and grant me a life i can live

take me away…
take me away…

…from the life that i hate

The beauty of the song is the way in which the way it is performed reinforces or reflects the meanings in the lyrics. The intro is a beautiful and haunting melody played on the bass guitar. It is however, played in the range of a regular guitar which gives it a very special texture. Then the distorted guitars kick in with a repetition of the melodic motif of the intro, yet introducing a few subtle changes to that melodic line. Then the vocals come in, this is where most people will be lost. I will however say that given what the vocalist is singing about the growls make sense. They convey the fact that he is angry, sad, and shouting and screaming at the world. He needs to forget and only alcohol can do this for him. He loves what alcohol does yet he hates it. The terms he uses to describe it are ambiguous at best. It is his ‘blade and his rope’ which conveys the self destructive nature of his act. Yet it is also gives him ‘the balm and the blessing of forgetfulness’. The images he conveys are also quite ambiguous. They are a cross between sexual and erotic imagery and the imagery of death. I’m thinking in particular about the lines:

‘hold me near, my one friend and guide
as i drown through your fingers
drown through your love
for you are the life that i hate
you are my
you are my

drag me down, in passionate sighs
with the ocean above me
and flames in my eyes’

Also, at one point he starts singing in a normal human voice that is doubled for one of the lines by a female voice. also towards the end of the song some of the lines are sang in harmony. This to me mirrors the effect of alcohol, in that his identity is split and he starts thinking in different voices. It is the point when too many thoughts are going through one’s mind when one is drunk. I particularly like the repetition of again and again, which to me not only speaks to the drinking of more alcohol, but also to the need of the repetition of the process of drinking in order to achieve the sought after effect of forgetfulness.

All in all this song speaks to the times when we seek self destructiveness in order to deal with trauma or anger or sadness. It speaks to this human compulsion to seek ones own death in order to deal with pain. It is a beautiful and powerful expression of the darker moments of ones life, where the self destructive impulse takes over. Be it alcohol, drugs, food, cigarettes, or any other means one uses in order to heal the pain that one necessarily encounters in one’s life, this song speaks to that. Or at least that’s how it speaks to me.