Twilight of the Gods, Essay Example

I chose “Twilight of the Gods”, title track of the 1991 album of the same name by the Swedish black/Viking metal group Bathory. The song was written by Bathory front-man and lead guitarist virtuoso Seth Quorthon. Overall I think the meaning is very clear: the theme of the song is temptation, greed, and deceit. The song is a condemnation of what the songwriter sees as the evils of modern society, from televangelism (“TV preachers and dirty tricks”) to social and legal injustice (“And he who was wrong but paid the most won”) to Bismarckian global Realpolitik (“While countries are both bought and sold”) (Bathory, 1991). As depicted by the song, much of the modern world is a societal, moral, and spiritual wasteland. The unscrupulous seem to be everywhere, looking to take advantage of the naïve and the vulnerable. The singer warns his audience to beware and take heed, lest they too be taken in and ill-used. Ultimately, however, there is no escaping the looming catastrophe, as the rest of the song makes clear.

The instrumentation for the first part of the song is soulful, brooding; the heavy beats, slower tempos, and melodic groove create a strongly Romantic aesthetic, stirring and fearful at the same time. The thudding, hammer-and-anvil drum-work and bass are practically Brahmsian in their intensity and power; they captivate the spirit and compel it upward, conveying the impression of tremendous power and an aura of something mystical and fearful at the same time. The aesthetic is clearly designed to impart a sense of fear and disillusionment, but at the same time the Viking/folk melody carries the listener along.

The very first line provides a particularly important clue to interpreting and understanding “Twilight of the Gods”: the song refers to “a serpent in every Eden,” indicating the overall theme of false promise and lies (Bathory, 1991). The song crescendos by delving into the existential horror of a soulless modernity, a vision that decidedly echoes both Nietzsche and Freud: it is the twilight of the gods, because the modern age has killed the gods and replaced them with empty idols of materialism and selfishness. The music is more frantic here, a thing straining under tension, desperate to break the cords that bind it and drag it down. There is struggle here, a profound and terrible war within the soul both of the individual, and of society. The activities and tendencies the singer condemns reflect the profound bankruptcy of society, but the truly terrible thing is the lack of any lodestone, anything upon which to affix one’s hopes. Society is filled with the desperate struggle for meaning, but ultimately there is something truly futile in the struggle. The modern age has completely lost its soul; in a fundamental sense, there is no saving it.

At the same time, the tremendous power of the song carries through: there is something wonderfully, terribly glorious in it all. “Twilight of the Gods” brims with the dark and dreadful magic of destruction and catastrophe. Despite the world-weariness of many of the lyrics, “Twilight of the Gods” does not bid the world good riddance. Instead the singer laments the collapse he sees all about him, and points to something transcendently beautiful in it at the same time.In this sense the song fulfills the promise of the literary reference in its name: as with its namesake, the song is telling the story of a tragedy.

Although “Twilight of the Gods” tells a story of downfall and collapse, it would not be tragic if the consequences did not matter. They do matter, and there is a deadly beauty in the tragedy itself. The instrumentation reinforces this combination of catastrophe and menace with transcendent beauty and awe, creating a mournful air with the powerful drum-beats and bass, while the riffs evoke a timeless, folkish aesthetic.The song manages to capture something of the aura of the Wagnerian Gotterdammerung, that death-fixated sense of the profound and dreadful beauty of the pyre. The modern age is awash with the flames of its burning, empty gods, but there is a Romantic sense of terrible majesty in the conflagration.

References

Bathory. (Artist). (1991). Twilight of the gods. On Twilight of the Gods [CD]. Berlin, Germany: Black Mark Production.

Song: “Twilight of the Gods” Artist: Bathory Album: Twilight of the Gods

There is a serpent in every Eden

Slick as grease and cold as ice

There is a lie in every meaning

Rest assured to fool you twice

In this age of utter madness

We maintain we are in control

And ending life before deliverance

While countries are both bought and sold

Holy writings hokus-pokus

Blaze of glory and crucifix

Prepaid costly credit salvations

TV preachers and dirty tricks

Don’t trust nobody

It will cost you much too much

Beware of the dagger

It caress you at first touch

O, all small creatures

It is the twilight of the gods

When the foundations to our existence

Begins to crumble one by one

And legislations protects its breakers

And he who was wrong but paid the most won

Even the gods of countless religions

Holds no powers against this tide

Of degeneration because we have now found

That there is no thrones up there in the sky

Run from this fire

It will burn your very soul

Its flames reaching higher

Comed this far there is no hold

O, all small creatures

It is the twilight of the gods

[Twilight of the gods

Twilight of the gods

Twilight of the gods

Twilight of the gods]

https://play.google.com/music/preview/T5vwa4fiqg6mixq5phcdpcd4pzi?lyrics=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=lyrics