Megadeth - "Set The World Afire" from the CD So Far, So Good . . . So What!

Red flash clouds
Choking out the morning sky
They said it'd never come,
We knew it was a lie
All forms of life die now,
The humans all succumb
Time to kiss your ass goodbye,
The end has just begun

Distorted figures walk the street,
It's 1999
Weeds once underneath the feet
Have grown to vines
Bodies melted like a candle,
A land without a face
No time to change your fate,
No time left, it's too late

The aresenal of Megadeth can't be rid of they said
And if it comes, the living will envy the dead
Racing for power and all come in last
No winning, first stone cast

This falsehood wordly peace
Its treaties soon will cease
No one will be left to prove
That humans existed
Maybe soon the children
Will be born open fisted
We all live on one planet
And it will all go up in smoke

Too bad they couldn't see this lethal energy
And now the final scene, a global darkening

Dig deep the piles of rubble and ruin
Towering overhead both far and wide
There's unknown tools for World War III
Einstein said, 'We'll use rocks on the other side'
No survivors, set the world afire!

The best song from Megadeth's somewhat disappointing third one makes me wonder whether Dave Mustaine might not be kind of nostalgic for the bad old days when nuclear bombs meant flotillas of Soviet ICBMs coming in over the Pole and the impending global Doomsday, rather than just some deluded lonewolf assclown in a keffiyeh dumping a dirty bomb down a toilet at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Not that I or even Mustaine would make light of the grave damage even a schmuck like Jose Padilla might be able to inflict, but let's face it: if you ply the heavy metal horror biz like Megadeth does, the old tyme Mutually Assured Destruction postapocalyptic thang was so much better as a go-to lyrical device on those days when you just weren't sure which version of armageddon you wanted to conjure in your newest metallic opus.

Heavy metal tunes invoking the horrors of the Aftermath are almost as old as metal itself--think "War Pigs"--but, like politically-charged punk rock, they appear to have gone out with the Reagan presidency and the Berlin Wall. And from a geopolitical standpoint, you can understand why.

Not that metal will ever be hurting for lyrical themes. The Judeo-Christian Hell with its tortured denizens ain't thematically tapped yet, and won't be anytime soon. But--even if you're a clever sonofabitch like Mustaine--archaic quotations from Milton and Dante are a little less easy to recast than ones from Einstein.


File under: Speedmetal