Viva Emptiness Lyrics

Anyone who has been listening to the lyrics of this album already knows that this is one dark f'n album, even darker than Last Fair Deal Gone Down! I've been a fan of KATATONIA since Dance of December Souls, and I have to tell you that this album is very personal!

Here you will be able to write down what you think the songs are about (only Lord Jonas really knows) and answer some of the questions you may have like "Is Omerta a love song?"(HELL NO!)
 
Actually, in an interview Jonas said it was a lot less personal than the other albums >_<

Your lyrics have always sounded very personal. Just how personal are they and how important are they to you? To which degree does the music and the lyrics function as an emotional outlet for you?

“I feel that the lyrics are as important as the music. In the past, my lyrics were very personal and were definitely also a way of dealing with my feelings. On the new album, they are different. I felt that the new album needed another kind of lyrics. So while these lyrics are still personal, it is to a lesser degree than before. These lyrics are more abstract”.

but i do admit they sound pretty f'n personal :)
 
Omerta is about someone who probably went under witness protection, and had to leave someone important in their life without letting them know. They illegaly meet up at a bar (since omerta means a rule prohibiting talking to anyone, usually dealing with a crime) , they talk, find out how eachother have been. Then the person who left before, tells the person he meets to tell everyone he loves them and misses them, and leaves again with no intentions of comming back, hence the sudden ending.


There's a lot more i can interpret into that, but thats the main idea of it.
 
Spoon said:
Omerta is about someone who probably went under witness protection, and had to leave someone important in their life without letting them know. They illegaly meet up at a bar (since omerta means a rule prohibiting talking to anyone, usually dealing with a crime) , they talk, find out how eachother have been. Then the person who left before, tells the person he meets to tell everyone he loves them and misses them, and leaves again with no intentions of comming back, hence the sudden ending.


There's a lot more i can interpret into that, but thats the main idea of it.

I think it`s alot more symbolic then that. I think Omerta represents something. Not nescessary literally a witness protection program.
 
Blossom_blue said:
I think it`s alot more symbolic then that. I think Omerta represents something. Not nescessary literally a witness protection program.

It is true that this album isn't as personal as Tonight's Decisions or Last Fair Deal Gone Down, where it seems like he is talking to you about himself, but it is still is personal in the way that he express himself into these songs. A different kind of perssonal is what I meant.


Omerta to is more of a death song, meaning one of two things are happening here:

1)The person talking to this guy is going to die and they meet. Again don't take everything so literally, they are not at at a bar.

2)The person talking to him is is dead already and the listener is the person who has not come to (his grave) to see or talk to him. "Out of sight, out of mind" syndrome or just plain fear; for whatever reason he has not paid his repects.
 
(WAY TOO MANY TYPE O's N MY LAST POST!)

Remember here we analyze all the lyrics, not just Omerta!

Who else thinks that if there is any "love" song here it is Evidence.

In "One Year From Now" it seems like he doesn't see himself alive "one year from now".

Criminal is a song about one very fuct up situation!
 
actually, Evidence's lyrics sound much more interesting, what fucking "test" does jonas mean?
 
well, here's my interpretation:


The protagonist speaking might be an ex-criminal who decided to testify everything he knows to the police, or something like that, and therefore he’s about to be put under a program of witness protection and taken away. During the whole album he keeps repeating it, "in some time I will change my name", "I’m running away, I will never forgive myself for running away from you", "no one here knows my name".
Someone is obviously willing to take revenge, in fact someone goes to his girlfriend’s house ("he came back to your house/ I didn’t take it as a promise…" ).
He’s taken away, they give him a new name, a new identity, they cut his hair short. He thinks back to when he had decided "to join in", he looks at a picture and remembers a scene from the past when he was abroad in a hotel room with his girlfriend and asks himself "what will replace us?", he knows he won’t ever go back to her, but the contemplation of that possibility is always there, behind the corner.
In the song "One year from now" he wonders if he will be strong enough to bear it, he asks himself if, in one year’s time, he will dare calling her "mine".
In the last songs of the album, he decides to take a big risk and to meet a friend of his; with fear in his heart he goes to the meeting, always staring at the clock and expecting that someone could find him and kill him. He meets his friend, tells him he’s traded all of his memories but he still remembers him well; they talk for a while, then it’s time for him to go away (or maybe someone had put some poison in his drink? Did the friend betray him?) and the last words he says are "my regards to the ones that I love, I miss them, tell the I love them I miss them". The song ends abruptly, meaning he 1) goes away and won’t come back anymore, or 2) dies.
 
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mourningstar said:
well, here's my interpretation:


The protagonist speaking might be an ex-criminal who decided to testify everything he knows to the police, or something like that, and therefore he’s about to be put under a program of witness protection and taken away. During the whole album he keeps repeating it, "in some time I will change my name", "I’m running away, I will never forgive myself for running away from you", "no one here knows my name".
Someone is obviously willing to take revenge, in fact someone goes to his girlfriend’s house ("he came back to your house/ I didn’t take it as a promise…" ).
He’s taken away, they give him a new name, a new identity, they cut his hair short. He thinks back to when he had decided "to join in", he looks at a picture and remembers a scene from the past when he was abroad in a hotel room with his girlfriend and asks himself "what will replace us?", he knows he won’t ever go back to her, but the contemplation of that possibility is always there, behind the corner.
In the song "One year from now" he wonders if he will be strong enough to bear it, he asks himself if, in one year’s time, he will dare calling her "mine".
In the last songs of the album, he decides to take a big risk and to meet a friend of his; with fear in his heart he goes to the meeting, always staring at the clock and expecting that someone could find him and kill him. He meets his friend, tells him he’s traded all of his memories but he still remembers him well; they talk for a while, then it’s time for him to go away (or maybe someone had put some poison in his drink? Did the friend betray him?) and the last words he says are "my regards to the ones that I love, I miss them, tell the I love them I miss them". The song ends abruptly, meaning he 1) goes away and won’t come back anymore, or 2) dies.


Wow thanx!
I am going to have to read those lyrics again, I never even suspected the album as being a concept album silly me, this sounds like a great story (if it is so) and will make me appreciate the album more!!
 
I suspected the album was a concept piece... first from the line 'in the city of glass' in the first song also being the title of the instrumental outro, and then from the seeming chronological order of events and the similarity in theme of the songs ('Criminal', 'Evidence', 'Omerta' all being crime-related)...

I reckon Mourningstar's interpretation's a good one.
 
It's weird, people have been complaining that Jonas uses the word "fuck" too many times, I think it suits the overall feeling quite well actually... and it sounds quite cool...
 
Whereas some people on this thread seem to have a problem actually saying the word "fucking". :p

Val, that sounds pretty damn good to me, from what I can remember of the lyrics. I'll read through them again (while listening, of course ;)) and maybe post some further comments.

I will say though that my thought is that he doesn't die at the end of Omerta. Inside the City of Glass doesn't sound like any sort of "funeral" or "death" song to me... instead, I interpret it as some sort of conflict in his mind - maybe he's forever (the fade-out maybe hinting that it never stops) warring with himself over whether to go back. It seems like that sort of a song to me.

Just my thoughts. :)
 
Rusty said:
Val, that sounds pretty damn good to me, from what I can remember of the lyrics. I'll read through them again (while listening, of course ;)) and maybe post some further comments.
that would be great, russ.

Rusty said:
I will say though that my thought is that he doesn't die at the end of Omerta. Inside the City of Glass doesn't sound like any sort of "funeral" or "death" song to me... instead, I interpret it as some sort of conflict in his mind - maybe he's forever (the fade-out maybe hinting that it never stops) warring with himself over whether to go back. It seems like that sort of a song to me.
yeah, i agree, the "dying option" popped up in my mind because of the two lines "what is it i have been drinking/ i do not understand" but it's more an invention than something else. he might be blaming on the alcohol the state of confusion he's in.
oh, well, whatever.

@dill_the_devil; Schism: thank you :)
 
Spoon said:
(since omerta means a rule prohibiting talking to anyone, usually dealing with a crime)

omerta is a collective behaviour of a community who lives by the regulations of organized crime, although they have no active role in the criminal acts themselves. the organization does not forbid the members of the community to reveal details about a crime - such as the perpetrators or other circumstances - but they keep their mouth shut anyway because of the advantages that the organization provides them with as compared to the state of abandonment the actual authorities subject them to.
it's not a rule that is applied in connection to any witness protection program. this, of course, doesn't mean that the lyrics are not about that subject anyway.

rahvin.
 
I dont think Omerta is about a meeting in a bar and leaving all of a suden in mid conversation I think he Die's at the end!!
That makes more sense to me,what it really means only jonas can say.
 
dill_the_devil said:
the seeming chronological order of events and the similarity in theme of the songs ('Criminal', 'Evidence', 'Omerta' all being crime-related)...

I reckon Mourningstar's interpretation's a good one.
So do I.
Will I Arrive- "My trial awaits, got nowhere to run".

One year from Now- could be referring to when he gets out or something.

The pieces are starting to fit. The first verse of 'Walking by a Wire' states that he's up against a wall and he can't breathe and that he's "too young to be ignored", like he's too young and pretty to stay below the radar.

Evidence- has the lyrics, "Will they let me out to take the test" and "Will you read the letters I will send to you." Definitely sounds to me like he is in jail.


Omerta- He's just got out of jail and he's meeting an old friend.

Viva Emptiness- going to jail and facing the 'emptiness'.

Would Jonas really write a lyrical concept about going to jail? Sounds pretty stupid to me, but all the 'evidence' points that way at the moment....