Megadeth - Holy Wars...The Punishment Due
Continuing on the thread of Middle Eastern conflict...
"Holy Wars...The Punishment Due" is one of metal's great songs on one of metal's great albums, Rust in Peace. But despite how often I've heard the song, I never parsed the lyrics until recently. They only reinforce my belief that despite how political Megadeth albums are supposed to be, Dave Mustaine's politics are a mess. At the very least, they're ill-articulated. Sure, Megadeth songs are political in that they talk about political matters. But whether they actually state clear positions or raise hard questions is another matter.
For example, the lyrics to "Peace Sells" amount to little more than "fuck you, man" in the first half of the song + the meaningless (though catchy) "Peace sells, but who's buying" chant at the end of the song. I get the feeling Megadeth's politics are like the interlude in the "Peace Sells" video, where the kid's dad comes in and tells him to turn off that garbage (i.e., the Megadeth video) and watch the news, and the kid turns around and says, "This is the news." Instead of subjective commentary, the jumbled, rapid-fire political imagery in Megadeth's videos and songs are merely reflections of reality - which is the supposed objective mission of the news.
Megadeth - Holy Wars...The Punishment Due
Of course, there's no such thing as fair and balanced. In today's media, any reflection of reality is a political act due to editorial choices. And to his credit, Mustaine does sustain some consistent positions. He thinks war in the name of religion is bad, a thread that continues from "Holy Wars..." all the way up to the recent United Abominations album. He also thinks the UN is a piece of shit.
The problem is, these are profoundly unprofound positions. Any 15 year-old who reads any amount of news would come to these conclusions rather quickly. Sure, picking on metal lyrics is shooting fish in a barrel. But for someone who mouths off to the media so much, and whose albums are hyped as political, Mustaine's politics seem highly unlikely to change anyone's mind about anything. Not that Nasum or Napalm Death would be more likely do so, however. In general, I think that politics - the flag-waving/burning, mantra-chanting kind - doesn't lend itself to great art. Politics is not about subtleties (though it should be), while art is.
Mustaine should understand this, though, as he's responsible for some of the 20th century's most amazing musical compostions. "Holy Wars...The Punishment Due" has no musical cracks. It's wall-to-wall awesomeness, full of twists and turns that somehow make perfect sense. Trivium and Lamb of God can cite Megadeth all they want, but they will never, ever write a masterpiece like "Holy Wars..."
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However, the lyrics are nowhere near as cohesive. The first half of the song, the "Holy Wars" part, is straightforward - "Killing for religion / Something I don't understand." However, when the song switches to half-time (the "Punishment Due" part), the head-scratching begins. The first verse ("Upon my podium") still makes sense; it depicts a zealot in line with the song's theme.
But the second verse - what does "Wage the war on organized crime" mean? What does organized crime have to do with anything? "Sneak attacks, repel down the rocks"? Wouldn't "rappel" make more sense? (otherwise, who is repelling what?) "Some people risk to employ me / Some people live to destroy me / Either way they die"? Huh???
The rest of the song is similarly befuddling, though repeated examination yields one possible answer. The "Paid by the alliance, to slay all the giants" line - is the narrator some sort of assassin of holy war? That might explain the "risk to employ" bit. Maybe that also accounts for the last few lines about how "they'll take my thoughts away" and "now I must scream of the overdose / And the lack of mercy killings." Has he been imprisoned, and wishes to commit suicide by OD because they won't shoot him? The narrator certainly seems delusional. Or maybe I'm just dense. Help, anyone?
Here's an interesting interview where Mustaine seems to imply that "Holy Wars" is about conflict in Ireland, not the Middle East.
Labels: clee, features, thrash metal, usa, videos
8 Comments:
The whole message of "Holy Wars...The Punishment Due" gets even more confusing when one takes into consideration that the second half of the song is apparently inspired by The Punisher comic book...
While I definitely agree with you about Mustaine's muddy (and increasingly, at least for me, offensive) politics, I think this song is actually more clear than that. The ellipse/break that he's so fond of splits the narrative between a commentary on war, and the internal struggle that Mustaine is writing from the perspective of The Punisher, a Marvel character.
I have been pretty critical of Mustaine in the past, but reading your piece reminded me how amazing Rust in Peace was (especially at that time when everyone else seemed to hang up their gloves in thrash). But I think he's used the ellipse as a way to bridge dissimilar song fragments and throw them together, sometimes to really good effect, and sometimes not so good.
Great memories, though. Thanks for this!
The Punisher angle would explain the title...though I still don't get the connection with religious wars.
The ellipsis/break idea is interesting, though - "Peace Sells" could be an example of that. I just realized "Rust in Peace...Polaris" is another one. A strange technique, for sure.
I wasn't a fan of Megadeth as a child mostly because I hadn't heard the golden era records and I was really put of by the Megadeth sneer vocal approach (which I now find endearing) on the loose latter-era tracks I've heard. So when I recently listened to the good stuff proper, it was easy for me to evaluate clearly. Though my opinion on their musical merits has changed, their lyrics are super-vacuous all of the time.
There is no connection between The Punisher and religious wars, obviously. Your post is a good one, it tells us two things: Megadeth songs do not stand up to inspection, lyrically, and second that the lyrics of our favourite political Heavy Metal bands certainly should.
(listen to some Watchtower or Deathrow)
Megadeth on that small golden period simply cannot be touched musically. However they're profoundly empty. A very big part of it them spends itself on Mustane ego stroking, which is kinda odd for Heavy Metal in the first place. Most bands don't even want you to know who is the person singing, let alone go 'me, me me me me I SAID ME!' like Mustane does.
I never understood nor agreed with talk that Megadeth have ever been politically insightful or 'smart', which has been in the past a widely said thing in metal circles. I guess 'if it sounds smart then it probably is smart!' as far as metalheads are concerned!
All that being said when I hear TAKE NO PRISONERS / TAKE NO SHIT I just go fucking insane every time.
IO,
I've been kicking this post around in my head all afternoon (well, sort of). Most entertainment celebs/ artists make fools of themselves when sticking their noses into the political arena. For example, should Madonna really be playing to audiences for the Live Earth concert and harping about global warming when she owns 9 (!) homes?! That's a "carbon footprint", to say the least.
Mustaine's rather juvenile forays into UN bashing falls into the same category of artists either being hypocrites (Madonna, for example), or just plainly ill-informed and discussing problems from a high-school-dropout-level-of-education (or very nearly so) point of view. I'm also reminded of David Lee Roth's pitiful attempt at a radio show with a serious tone, athough I never heard the show, as well. All of this detracts from serious discussion of the real issues and ends up being an exercise in histrionics.
So, should metal, and art in general, be political? I suppose, like anything else, if it's well thought out, and will provoke serious discussion or just raise the level of your average adolescent's thinking about the world. Not many bands can do this with regularity.
Helm,
I'd argue that Megadeth's success in its early years was precisely due to Mustaine's megalomania. That gave the band's first 3 albums an attitude and swagger (e.g., the bluesy, swing-y moments) that Metallica, for example, could match only on Kill 'Em All. When Mustaine got insecure and started worrying about radio play - that's when Megadeth started to suck.
Dave,
I think that entertainers can and should use their position to educate/preach/whatever. For better or for worse, entertainers are role models for the young. At the very least, entertainers occupy a lot of the bandwidth that kids consume. I believe in gateways: if some kid becomes politically aware through the ham-fisted sloganism of Rage Against the Machine, at least that's one more kid that's politically aware. Maybe that kid will grow up and release that maybe RATM or Public Enemy aren't substitutes for political knowledge, but complements.
Nuanced political music is rare, but possible. Fugazi comes to mind. The challenge is to show, not tell. Ergo, the lasting power of a song like Suzanne Vega's "Luka," which is about domestic abuse.
Whoops, "realize," not "release."
*ellipsis*
I knew I was doing something wrong there. It seems to be Mustaine's favorite grammatical crutch.
I have to agree that there is good, nuanced political music out there. Heck, Slayer's latest is one long, drawn out condemnation of war. System of a Down has done it really well, and I'm sure that everyone can come up with their favorite list. One of the things that attracted me to metal to begin with was that duality - pure aggression and something behind it if you care to tap in. That's as anti-pop as you can get.
And yeah, it's the snarl that made Megadeth rock. Rust in Peace lost the snarl, but kept the aggression. Everything afterwards seems like just a 15 year ego trip, with a few flashes of brilliance.
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