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These are mostly quotes taken during live shows and from interviews. All interpretations are my own unless stated otherwise. Ultimately the meanings will probably remain unconfirmed because Mudvayne wants each fan to have his own personal reflection associated with the music. Your own submissions are welcome, please remember to leave your name: chodamonkey@canoemail.com 1. Monolith The title is taken from the alien artifact in Stanley Kubrick's classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the movie the monolith represents human evolution, and when 3 million years ago the apes encounter this object, their 'minds' expand and the evolution of man begins. In the Monolith intro you can hear Terance McKenna (famous hallucinogens researcher) talking about his theory of how apes evoloved into human beings by eating hallucinogenic mushrooms, and thereby gaining a consciousness/self awareness. (check out the lyrics section for full transcripts of the intermissions) "The band isn't saying what and what not to believe. We just think people should experience different points of view. It's healthy." In the background the phrase "Open your mind..." keeps repeating. (I think they sampled this from the movie Total Recall, it's the part where Arnie is talking to that disgusting little creature) Mudvayne is suggesting to the listeners to open their minds to new ideas and the upcoming music. There are many trippy sound effects throughout the intermissions and I think they make the album sound like one big drug trip. Also, if you listen very carefully at the 1:35 mark, you can hear Poop Loser (intro from Beginning Of All Things To End demo) playing faintly in the background. 2. Dig "The song is all about change and reflects our sci-fi proclivities to that idea and 2001 - so enjoy our monolithic effort." It sounds like Kud is pissed off about how people want him to change his style so the band can be better commercialized, "Sell out motherfuckers in the biz that try to fuck me," and he wants the suits to realize the value of their music. That's why he says "Dig! Come on motherfucker dig!", he wants you to dig and discover the true meaning of the music. 3. Internal Primates Forever This song is about being addicted to drugs and how you can't seem to stop the cravings. "The only way we get away is give in sharpen up the razors stab the needles into pipes to kill cravings so sick of this in me..." No matter what you do, you can't stop taking the drugs because the addiction is so strong, and it destroys you. "Even if you want you can't stop" Kud is most likely singing about his own problems, but it could also be about someone he knows. The message in this song appears to be somewhat contradictory with the content in Pharmaecopia. Whereas here Chad is despising drugs, but in the latter he names almost every damn drug in the book and says "These are just a few of my favourite things." My view on this contradiction is that drugs can be disasterous for certain people, while for others it could be a very postive experience. It's all about knowing your limit - your L.D. 50. 4. -1 This song is about people who make you feel less than nothing or zero (hence -1) and act like you're below them. To me these people are the authority. Timothy Leary once said "It's been the authorities - the political, the religious, the educational authorities who attempt to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations - informing and forming in our minds their view of reality." 5. Death Blooms "The song is basically about being OK to die," Kud said. "You have to have a sense of self-fulfillment before you're actually able to go to the other side and be prepared for it. Everything we write about is a process of being human, so this is just one more thing." Kud also said..."It's a song about my grandmother, because she is seen as useless and shunned by other family members." The lyrics in this piece are stunning and beautiful. Kud describes dying as tranquil in one aspect, yet there is a disturbing undertone throughout the song about the struggle people have with the fact of death. Definately one of the best written songs on the album. 6. Golden Ratio  The Golden Mean is a ratio (a constant number) that is present in the growth patterns of many things -- the spiral formed by a shell or the curve of a fern, for example. The Golden Mean number 1.618... is an irrational number like "pi", and it goes on forever. For more info, click on the pic to see examples of this ratio in nature. It's basically everywhere!So what does this have to do with Mudvayne? I believe it's the continuation of the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme present throughout the whole album. The monolith in the movie is described as having perfect dimensions similar to the Golden Ratio. Discovering the meaning of this object will put Man in perspective to where he belongs in the universe and therefore how Man is part of nature, not above it. (By the way, if you haven't seen the movie yet go rent it or pick it up at a library. It will help you understand better where Mudvayne is coming from.) 7. Cradle On Cradle Chad Gray vents his anger towards his father: "That is a song about neglect, abuse and people walking away from something precious," explains the frontman. "My mother and father were constantly separating and getting back together until I was about five years old. Then my father just left, but before he did, the most traumatic point of my life occurred. They had this tug of war match, where my mom had me by one arm and my dad had me by the other and they were each like, he's coming with me. I didn’t understand and didn’t know what was going so, so just stood there crying. "The song hangs around being able to keep breathing. That is how it starts, just saying breathe over and over and then pushing through your life with all this shit that is stacked upon you because of this act of leaving and neglect. I tell kids every night that if you have kids make sure you love them. I will fucking tell the crowd that if they cant love their kids wear a fucking condom. "Back then I would rather have been anyone else but me but now I am totally content with myself. The person who I totally would not want to be is my father because I hate him. That must be a terrible feeling looking at things through his eyes now. He must be feeling fucking awful about it because he lost something and now he knows how strongly I feel." At a show in Las Vegas, Kud said "This song is about growing up in Illinois. This song is about my bad dad, fuck off dad..." 8. Nothing To Gein The track "Nothing to Gein" (pronounced "gain") is based on Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein's life. Gein's story grabbed the attention of sPaG and vocalist Kud as they were leafing through a book on murderers and true crime (incidentally, sPaG was quick to point out that Gein was technically more of a necrophiliac grave robber than a serial killer.) What excited sPaG the most was how he found humanity in Gein. "It seemed so impossible [for Gein] to bridge the gap into mainstream society. I found that exciting that I could find humanity in him". Kud, who allegedly tackled many personal parental issues of his own with the making of L.D. 50 found the subject cathartic in Gein's bizarre mother/son relationship. "I think Ed Gein reminds us that we live in a very mysterious, ever-changing, moving, potential universe." Spag added "Nothing to Gein is about Ed Gein. Not a serial killer, but a necrophiliac, cannibal, whatever you want to call him, and he had certain things that could be associated with the moon and he did things under the moon light that I think were important to him." 9. Mutatis Mutandis The title and Terance McKenna's distorted talking relate closely to L.D. 50's themes of 'opening new doors' and 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the movie the monoliths are responsible for altering the psychology of the man-apes and then at the end changing Man into then next evolutionary step, the Star-Child. (a soul/super being without the restrictions of a physical body) So not only do Mudvayne explore past human evolution theories with Monolith, future human evolution is also considered as well in Mutatis Mutandis. 10. Everything and Nothing I personally feel this is a song pointing out the oppression of the government on the people (be it American or another) and how we're being lied to so the rich can get richer. "Telling me that my life is free and boundless/Then I'm forced to stay between the lines" I will not go into my own personal views but if you are interested in alternative coverage of the news check out this site >>> www.whatreallyhappened.com 11. Severed Please send in your interpretations. 12. Recombinant Resurgence Recombinant: genes formed by crossing chromosomes to form a combination differnt than that of it's parents Resurgence: a recovery after a decline I think this track can shed some light on the cover art of L.D. 50 and its significance to the album as a whole. I see the cover art adding to the thematic content in two ways: (1) In the movie 2001, the man-apes are well underway to extinction. There has been a drought for 3 million years and they are all slowly dying because thier only food source are plants. The monolith that appears basically saves them from extinction because it changes the man-apes psychologically. It allows them to think outside their animal instints (use bones to kill wild pigs for the first time) and therefore survive the drought. (2) The chemical compounds on the cover are in the foreground, and therefore are more important than the baby itself. The baby is a result of these chemicals affecting the creation of life. What the compound could be is questionable, but remembering the good ol' days in chemistry class, black balls represented carbon atoms. The arrangement of these atoms looks very similar to the benzene ring (hexagon) that is present in all the chemical diagrams on the back of the CD. (which are all hallucinogenic drugs) So we're back to Terrance McKenna again his theory of how apes ate psychedelic mushrooms and expanded their consciousness. If we can understanding how drugs such as LSD affect the human brain, then perhaps we can discover how the human consciousness works and how it's developed. 13. Prod This song is pretty much self explanatory. In the first verse Kud describes Man to be suffering, sick, and basically self-destructing but nobody seems to care. In the chorus "Cannot receive the obvious" means there are signs of the bad shit going on in the world, but we are ignorant and therefore doomed. The second verse mentions pollution and science as some of our downfalls and that we're slowing losing our will to care about these issues. The rest of the song explains what's gonna happen to us if we don't change. "It's okay the ending it's over.. no more pain..." Kud sees our destruction as a good thing because there will be no more suffering in the world with us gone, and no more people around to feel pain. But I see this song more as a warning than a hopeless prediction of the future. To 'prod' something is to stimulate it into action. If people are willing to understand the global problems and educate others, then maybe it's not too late to save us from ourselves afterall. 14. Pharmaecopia Another spelling of the title is pharmacopoeia (more likely to find this spelling in the dictionary) and it means "A collection or stock of drugs." I think in this song Kud basically names every hallucinogenic drug in existance! He then goes on to describe what I believe is a trip: "I can feel them living..." and "Instruments prying, aliens inside me" (It is not uncommom for hallucinogen users to have religious or extraterrestrial experiences while under influence) If critics wanna pin down Mudvayne on their "negative" lyrics it would probably be this song. It's hard to deny Kud isn't promoting drug use when he says "These are just a few of my favourite things" but it should be noted that most if not all the drugs he mentions are hallucinogens. That in itself could mean that he's trying to see the world in a different way and escape the reality of the bad things happening to him and others. I personally don't think Mudvayne is promoting drug use because the way Kud names them. The drugs aren't identified by their street name but rather in a scientific fashion. After all, would you by "Tetra-hydro-chloride" off a drug dealer? Sounds like the stuff you add to your swimming pool to me. 15. Under My Skin A good ol' fashion rant/pissed off song about the dick-head in everyone's life. No deep meaning to this one. Great song. 16. (K)now F(orever) I think this whole song is about self-discovery, much like the most of the album. Musically, it's the most complex with a whole bunch of different riffs interlacing each other, and sPaG shows off his double-bass skills. 17. Lethal Dosage I'm not 100% sure on this part, just my own interpretation: Terance McKenna says that culture and language is formed on a logical structure created in our minds. Hallucinogenic drugs make us see our selves and our world in a different way, we think in abstract rather than logic, that is the state of the "perturbed mind". He believes culture and our logical thinking is what limits us understanding who we really are, and we need to rediscover our human nature outside the boundries of culture. The CD ends in the same way it started with someone saying "Open your mind...", so it's basically a cyclical continuation of the album. In doing this, I think Mudvayne hopes the listener can learn something about himself each time they listen to the music. I hope these interpretations helped you understand better what Mudvayne is. Remember they are only interpretations and should not be taken as final. |