Secular Haze - Commentary Version

There's a lyrical meaning and there's a musical, dramaturgical thought. It has a sort of carnival theme, which was not really intended to be carnivalesque or in a circus sort of manner, sort of maritime because it's moving in waves or... There's a saying that if you freeze to death it is apparently one of the most pleasant of deaths. The closer you come to the actual point of death, you all of a sudden go warm and the acceptance of death, this apparently overwhelming and quite comfortable. The song was supposed to feel like you were basically in a stormy sea, freezing to death. So it being very like monotonous and non stop stormy, whereas in the end you sort of come into this sort of acceptance part, which is the 'come rest eternal' part in the end. Lyrically deals with, as with most of these songs, with the presence of a force that is recognized as evil, the hedonistic signs that we are progressing towards a darker future.