Re:Physics in Metal Music
by livatlantis on Tuesday November 03, 2015 @05:43PM
(#10503270)
It didn't even occur to me to try to read the song in any but the most literal sense. Your explanation is very compelling!
The only thing that detracts from it is the relative cheerfulness of the song (especially the keyboard/guitar duet that starts at about the 2m30s mark) -- although who knows, it could very well represent euphoria associated with the prospect of imminent liberation?
Thank you for this! Glad you like Strato; I love the way Event Horizon shifts to Elysium, a song I listened to three times a week for 4 months on repeat on my 20-minute bus commute back when I was in uni.
Those Stratovarius guys should consult some native English speaker before finalizing lyrics. "A star dies collapsing in its core" can be corrected to "into its core"---and then the number of syllables actually scans better; we don't have to stretch the "-ing" over an extra beat.
The song is not really about "it involves someone approaching a black hole in a spaceship with an onboard computer that has a vaguely Russian accent". The speaker in the song imagines that. The beginning is:
Standing outside in darkness
My breath is steaming
The skies open wide
I hear the silent screaming
Deep in the dark, somewhere in space
Spinning around, leaving no trace
We can regard this as the speaker's imagination being stirred with thoughts of distant black holes, as he stands clear sky on a winter's night. The main element there is that of suicide: nothing matters:
I can see the point of no return
And when the light is slowly turning to red
Life gives away, there's no concern
On this cold night under the stars, the speaker voice is fantasizing about dying by steering a ship into a black hole, ignoring the evacuation alarms that are going off.