"Hope Bleeds Eternal"; The Story Behind The Lyrics

In my last blog post, I told the story of the history of Decaying My Youth. For this post, I will be telling the story behind each song on the EP, entitled, "Hope Bleeds Eternal". As some of you may know, "Hope Bleeds Eternal" is a reference to the old saying, "hope springs eternal". However, the title is stating the fact that hope is always there, but you have to suffer (bleed) for it.

The first song on the EP is entitled, "Into The Eye of Oblivion". The title to this song was inspired by one of my favorite Canadian bands, Oblivion's Eye. The lyrics were written on a whim, while I was listening to one of my favorite CDs, Symphony X's "Paradise Lost". One of the lines stood out to me; "Looking down from ethereal skies, silent crystalline tears I cry." Out of this, I pulled the first line of the song, which is, "On crystalline shards my thoughts drift". The lyrics are about trying to find who you really are in a world that betrays you and puts up many false visions of yourself.

The second song on the EP is the first song that I really recorded for Decaying My Youth, which is "Shadowed Pt. 1 - Trial". Focusing around a central theme of sorrow, the lyrics depict me in a hellish place, walking through it and trying to find who I am. The lyrics were written on the fly late one night, when I was experiencing a severe bout of depression.

The third song on the EP is the second part of Shadowed, "Shadowed Pt. 2 - Tribulation". This is the only song on the album that was originally a creation of someone else; in this case, my friend Amber wrote it as a poem originally, then she gave it to me. I changed very little of it in my creation of this song.The overall meaning is having two sides, one being sacrificed for another's life.

The fourth song on the EP is the title track, "Hope Bleeds Eternal". As I have explained, it is a play on the phrase "hope springs eternal", and this song shows how that is relevant. The main focus is on one man, who is nameless. He is telling his story from a post-apocalyptic world. We learn from the lyrics that the world was destroyed by a nuclear war, and he is one of a few lone survivors. He suffers to survive and repeats to himself the title of the song. Eventually, he writes his whole story down (the song) before committing suicide.

The fifth and final lyrical song on the album is entitled, "Nebulous By Design". The title was created when listening to another one of my favorite bands, Meshuggah. They have a song called "Nebulous", and the word itself means "hazy, uncertain, or unclear". The lyrics are about how we begin with no idea who we are or what we'll be, and how it's a journey through life to find out who we really are.

In my next blog, I don't exactly know what I'll be discussing.