Testament looking anything from apprehensive to mournful.Last year, Testament released their highly-anticipated full-length album The Formation of Damnation, their first studio release in almost a decade. The album received strong praise from the critics and over all, the album is strong (except the title track which has poor metalcore written all over it). Seeing as Testament's last album The Gathering was released in 1999, they never got the opportunity to commit to record their thoughts on the 9/11 terrorist attack. 'The Evil Has Landed' was to be their articulation space for this. The music is good; the lyrics are sub-par for an American band.
Songs about atrocities like 9/11 are best avoided (see Iced Earth's 'When The Eagle Cries') but if a band's desire is to show their support for the victims, who can stop them? Besides, Dream Theater's 'Sacrificed Sons' was not considered a joke and was a mature approach to the topic. Despite the music being high grade modern thrash metal, the lyrics Testament have produced truly lay waste to the pun-enclosed title and it is questionable as to whether they were written by Joakim Broden of the Swedish band Sabaton. The title is an excellent pun but all it truly does is underline the camp nature of the lyrics.
Here are the lyrics presented in their entirety:
"The sky began to fall, ripping open a path up to Heaven
Time slowed to a crawl - early morning September eleventh
Steel crumbling frames, the scales of justice are decimated
Hate ignites the flames, New York city incinerated
See the flames on the river, is this our judgement day?
Praying hands of a killer when evil flies our way
Our way
The towers got hit, a steel bird with wings of destruction
As the building split, the skyline has been deconstructed
So many people killed, two thousand nine hundred and seventy four
Innocent blood spilled, extremist plotting a holy war
See the flames on the river, terrorism sealed our fate
Praying hands of a killer reciting a sermon of hate
Will you please reconsider, is this our judgement day?
Time to stand and deliver when evil flies our way
Flies our way
We will pick up the pieces
We never cast the first stone
Through all the bereavement
We will rebuild our home
The sky began to fall, ripping opening a path up to Heaven
Time slowed to a crawl - early morning September eleventh
See the flames on the river, terrorism sealed our fate
Praying hands of a killer reciting a sermon of hate
Will you please reconsider, is this our judgement day?
Time to stand and deliver when evil flies our way
Flies our way"
The analysis is as follows:
"The sky began to fall, ripping open a path up to Heaven Time slowed to a crawl - early morning, September eleventh"
The attention to detail is precise without being pedantic (giving the actual time of impact, for example). Time slowing to a crawl gives the sense that the entire world was upset by America's injury and using it as a pre-modifier for "early morning, September eleventh" only adds more emphasis. The separation of "early morning, September eleventh" highlights the importance of the date/event for the listeners unaware about what the song is dealing with.
"Steel crumbling frames, the scales of justice are decimated Hate ignites the flames, New York City incinerated"
The justice metaphor is awkward, at best. It sounds like a foreigner wrote it, using a complex word where it is just not necessary. 'Decimated' is such an overwhelming verb that it makes the line further more ridiculous. The lack of the word 'is' in the phrase "New York City incinerated" makes the incineration more immediate but New York City was not incinerated. It just lost two features of its skyline. That hardly insinuates the destruction of the entire city. The chorus continues:
"See the flames on the river, is this our judgement day?
Praying hands of a killer when evil flies our way
Our way"
Judgement Day is supposedly at the close of the world. Again, the city just lost two buildings, not the whole country. The contradictory nature of 'Praying' and 'killer' is a nice balance (perhaps an ironic reference to the scales of justice mentioned earlier being disturbed?) although one must wonder how much thought Testament actually put into writing these lyrics. Additionally, the 'our way' makes it sound as if America is the only country that has had violent, foreign interference. It also makes the States sound innocent of committing any atrocity.
"The towers got hit, a steel bird with wings of destruction
As the building split, the skyline has been deconstructed"
The fact that the towers that were hit are not specified assumes the listener knows exactly which towers the band are talking about and they do not want to be less economic with their words in explaining. Or, the lack of specification could be because the band were so close to the Twin Towers that they always called them 'The towers'. Technically, the word 'got' should be substituted with 'were' to modify the flow better: "The towers were hit". The 'steel bird' metaphor is very visual in representing a plane but there were two planes; surely it should read 'birds'. Nonetheless, this is a trivial issue but manifests itself in the following line by mentioning 'building' as opposed to 'buildings'. Dictionary.com's definition of the word 'deconstructed' is [1]:
de·con·struct
| (dē'kən-strŭkt') Pronunciation Key tr.v. de·con·struct·ed, de·con·struct·ing, de·con·structs
|
The skyline at the bottom, which features what looks like an Ancient Greek temple, is a clear example of deconstruction."So many people killed, two thousand nine hundred and seventy four
Innocent blood spilled, extremist plotting a holy war"
Precision is employed further by the thrash icons who give the exact number of casualties from the 9/11 attack, justifying the independent clause that precedes it. It is fortunate for Testament that four is the only digit that rhymes with 'war'. Had 2975 or 2973 people died, this line could be something else. The possibilities are phenomenally endless. Apparently only one extremist was behind this. The magnitude of hijacking and crashing two planes into two of New York's trademark skyscrapers was apparently all orchestrated and committed by a single character. It appears Testament have difficulties in distinguishing between the singular and the plural.
"See the flames on the river, terrorism sealed our fate
Praying hands of a killer reciting a sermon of hate"
'Fate' suggests finality but as far as the world is aware, America is still alive and running. The following line is acceptable but far from compelling.
"Will you please reconsider, is this our judgement day?
Time to stand and deliver when evil flies our way
Flies our way"
"Will you please reconsider" - apparently Testament are willing to negotiate with terrorists. Perhaps they should become ambassadors to America [2] or join the UN if they enjoy negotiation so much. Does this thrash metal band really think terrorists will quit their objectives that they spent years forging because they requested it in a song? What exactly do they want the terrorists to reconsider anyway? The listener will never know (and neither will Testament probably). With another 'judgement day' reference, it is clear that finality is a semantic field of this song. What the band plan on delivering is completely vague and if the "time to stand" has only come now, what were they doing before: sitting or lying? Something entirely different? It seems surprising to learn that for these choruses instead of not including the awesome pun-laden title of the song, they contradict it by saying evil is flying as opposed to landing (and this all contradicts the reality that evil crashed, not landed.)
"We will pick up the pieces
We never cast the first stone
Through all the bereavement
We will rebuild our home"
The second line of this passages marks America completely innocent. The final line suggests that the band's homeland of Oakland, CA was attacked when that is actually on the other side of America. If they are actually referring to the States in its entirety when they say 'home' here then again they are exaggerating as only two buildings in New York were struck and if the whole of America needed to be rebuilt because of two buildings in a single city then it is no wonder their economy is failing hard. It would be a criminal waste of money. Testament really need to clarify this.
"The sky began to fall, ripping opening a path up to Heaven
Time slowed to a crawl - early morning September eleventh
See the flames on the river, terrorism sealed our fate
Praying hands of a killer reciting a sermon of hate
Will you please reconsider, is this our judgement day?
Time to stand and deliver when evil flies our way
Flies our way"
The repetition of this section can only be to entertain the listener, emphasise terrorism further (as if the song had not been doing such a thing at all) or because the band [3] did not want to write more lyrics.
It is sincerely hoped that Testament rectify their poor lyrics on their next release. A few US thrash metal bands have laughable lyrics (Exodus, Overkill, Slayer etc.) but Testament take the cake and the rest of the bakery with 'The Evil Has Landed'. It truly is hard to believe they are an American band. However, if Broden penned these lyrics as widely speculated, he can be forgiven.
You are already forgiven, Joakim.----------
[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/deconstructed (in regards to online matters and discussion, dictionary.com outweights the Oxford English dictionary).
[2] With Kataklysm being 'The Ambassador of Pain' this seems an achievable goal for an American metal band.
[3] or Sabaton's Joakim Broden.
