Nice everybody...
We all know that the theme is "death" on the album, like many other katatonia-albums. But here the concept also is death, the process of dying.
Something that is clear is that after the instrumental, elohim meth, something happens. With some imagination, that may be the moment of death, that's why they enterrupt the album in the middle. From Velvet thorns, he describes his way to some kind of hell (on a very beautiful road
), a blackmetal hell. Blackmetal usually describes hell as "into the coldest place of all", where he is wandering, into a colder and colder place... "to the purest of winters", "where no angels ever dare to tread" etc. (I'm not gonna explain the whole lyrics, you've got to read this on your own to get it).
And in the end of velvet thorns he says "I can fly" wherupon the others song starts with "falling, crying sleeping..". As he wandered to his fate in velvet thorns, he found his fate in "tomb of insomnia". For those who don't understand Swedish, I can let you know that "Insomna" means "to fall asleep". Insomnia is a little nice nickname.
Just like in "inside the city of glass" he describes the eternity of death in "Dancing december", and the only words are "dancing, dancing dancing" which I think means that he's falling forever, just like in the tombs of insomnia...
The reason to why I started from "elohim meth" is that the songs before are very difficult to tell something concrete about. A theory(theory #1) has allways been that in the first song, the chaos-song, he get's some kind of message or something. Anyway, I don't think he dies of a disease. He comitts suicide, because he never could reach his bride, and his life is a misary. Gateways Of Bereavement is the worst one, totally depressed... In the next song he's sleeping, taken some kind of drug maybe, however he's dreaming about crazy things like black roses whisper "our death is eternal", about his bride etc. the most depressing things.
In "without god" he thinks about a very natural thing for a dying person; if god exists or not. And if you that didn't know, "jhva elohim meth" only means "god god god". Got a bit disappointed when I found that out actually
However, that's theyory #1. He's alive until "elohim meth", from there he's wandering through death...
But many things speaks against that, if you wanna belive in something, you got to spare some imagination, especially about poetry which never is concrete or easy.
In theory #2, to make it simple, he dies in the chaos-song, seven dreaming souls. In this theory he's "dead but dreaming" in the first two lyric-songs (I don't have to explain it again, do I?), until he arrives to god in "without god" where god says
"I am God creator of Life
I am God Enchanter of Death
Death - that now marks you
Life - that slowly pass away"
Whereupon he sends him to hell, and "elohim meth" starts.. and he's on his way, as I describes above.
Theory #2 is more likely, but theory #1 is better, if it holds... more depressing.
I hope you understand what my points are. Sorry for describing bad
But I just woke up and couldn't wait. However, off to the shower! Gimmie some comments.
There must be some kind of concept IMO, even if it isn't so deep or complicated.
