I got Protest The Hero's new Volition the Thursday after it came out, so about a week and a half ago, and by god, it's already the best album I've heard in 2013. I mean it. They've improved upon everything they've done before. You've got the lush sound of Fortress and Kezia, the thrash from Scurrilous, and the vocal prowess of A Calculated Use of Sound. The boys of PTH have grown up well, it seems. Lamb of God's Chris Adler also does all of the drums on this album...yeah. I enjoy the album more as the days pass, but "Skies" will always be the best one.
"Skies" is classic Protest The Hero, but it's also something new at the same time. The slow start is something you don't see very often from the band, but it works here, and it leads into something great. This is a six-and-a-half minute wonder. You've got superb lyrical content (which I have to include, of course), lush instrumental work that still retains a good amount of prog and thrash, and vocal work from Mr. Walker that makes everything he'd sung before sound terrible. There's also some guest vocal work from a few guys I haven't heard of, but they add their own flavor while still leaving Rody in center stage. "Skies" will ruin your life, simply put. It just gets into your head and doesn't want to leave, and that's perfectly fine with me.
Cough, gasp, and sputter, spinning helplessly down toward the earth.
A loss of control, the sky swallows whole.
Falling down, down. Forever falling down, down, down.
But is it entirely a flightless fall?
No deceptive currents, no rise at all?
Maybe it’s too naive to not jump ship when deviating so drastically from the initial script.
Tremble beneath the weight of inevitability, and all the casualties therein.
Cower in the shadow of the ever-present sun, witness eclipsing, eclipsing, eclipsed.
Is it completely void? Or is the truth in shade?
Are all the facts before us a masquerade?
Suffering no deceit, no selfish lies, we stand in our own crypt and we mobilize, waking up to blazing heat and the stench of rancid meat.
Don’t have the patience or the time to repeat mistakes.
Like high, hot hauls, through highway tolls with bigger brothers for hungry trolls.
Each horn sharpened by eye sockets torn, standing on the graves of the worn.
Welcome to the place integrity is born.
Heart in the right place, just missing the mark.
Feigning exception is a shot in the dark.
With no remorse and no regret, is anybody listening yet?
Tremble beneath the weight of inevitability, and all the casualties therein.
Cower in the shadow of the ever-present sun, witness eclipsing, eclipsing, eclipsed
Bask in uncertainty.
Strange things can happen when faced with adversity.
Ask and you shall receive, or swing frantic your arms.
Fate is nothing but a nervous belief.
I don’t believe the end is in pavement.
I don’t believe there’s anything beneath.
I don’t believe there’s death in the basement, no I don’t believe.
Embrace the fall, there is no end.
No ambiguous hypothesis to comprehend.
No bruised and battered egos in descent’s entire ethos.
No magnificent creation myth.
No wind to pad the story with.
Only I will never quit, or watch my brothers quit, but I’ll lower down a lifeboat if you’re abandoning the ship.
“True sailing’s dead,” should have been the first thing said before the writing could be written,
before the writing could be read.
The wreckage was never found, but the black box was recovered.
The message therein profound.
In our final moments our true names are all discovered.
So let it fall.
Even if it turns out to be futile, at least we couldn’t ask for a sky so clear or a day more beautiful.
They’ll never find the wreckage, transcending all human languages.
Just a promise and a final message: the descent is all there truly ever is.
Just a promise and a final message: the descent is all there truly ever is.
Just a promise and a just a promise and a final message: the fall is all there ever is
Just a promise and a final message: the descent is all there truly ever is.
Just a promise and a just a promise and a final message: the fall is all there ever is
Stumble beneath the radar,
big holes in each great city is all the evidence I need.
Knowledge often beckons and can lead astray.
Whisper release me, release me, release.
Dive into an endless sea.
No reason to falter
no plan supersedes.
Altering frequencies, but we welcome the change.
Fate is nothing but a nervous disease.
Cough, gasp, and sputter
Spinning helplessly down toward the earth
A loss of control, the sky swallows whole
Spinning down, down, forever falling down, down, down...
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