“Ophidian Wheel” saw Greek band Septicflesh deliver one of the strongholds of death metal with a more melodic affectation; we will be turning our attention to the lyrics of “Heaven Bellow”, in our opinion one of the album’s best offerings.
Our case is that the song tells above all a tale of Nietzschean overcoming (a very common theme around these parts). Starting with the introductory section:
“A peacock rests alone in the vitreous valley
With an innocent pose like it doesn’t know
On its feather’s ventaglia thousands of eyes
Empty since the end of oracles“
The image of the peacock can symbolize many things, including the abundance and inner richness signaled by the bird’s many colors – an attribute prized by Zarathustra, who admires the natural bountifulness of the Sun. In any case, it is clear that the peacock is the stand-in for the figure of the “enlightened” individual (the Übermensch?) that for the remainder of the lyrics will serve as the song’s narrator and point of view.
The “vitreous valley” might be a suggestion of transparency – from the peacock’s advantaged point of view, everything is transparent; he can see through the common people’s (the inhabitants of the valley) world of lies, projections, morals, etc. The “thousands of eyes” mentioned in the following verse once again point to the almost transcendental ability to see reality as it is, unclothed by the many filters with which common humanity cover it. This section ends with the mysterious “Empty since the end of oracles“; this could be a reference to a society’s state after the death of God, or even more than that: it’s appropriate to note that, far from a complete “system” (he despised that), Nietzsche’s philosophy is always a preparation, or, to use his preferred term, a prelude, a gesture towards a future mode of thought from a human type that would have not only surpassed the death of God but that of his last vestigial remains:
“God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. – And we – we still have to vanquish his ‘shadow, too.” (The Gay Science)
The oracles might be counted as one of the sights that occur after the demise of traditional belief (we can count as examples the many gurus and New-Age idols that inevitably appear in such an historical moment, the phenomenon that Oswald Spengler termed the “second religiosity”). Thus the “end of oracles” refers to a state (which may refer solely to our protagonist and not necessarily to society in general) where every vestige of traditional belief has been left behind.
“Clouds create a hollow pillow
For sleepy heads to rest
By denying to submit
To the whims of their unstable patterns
I glide above ’em all“
Here we have a very Nietzschean description of the “herd”, composed of those with “sleepy heads” and needing the comfort of “hollow pillows” (a pre-determined set of values and moral or religious codes). The image of the clouds is curiously chosen to represent this comfort, leading us to the realization that the set of beliefs that is being evoked here is of a specifically religious nature – it is the idea of heaven that serves as a “hollow pillow“; maybe the song’s target is not the commonfolk but the priestly class, the one that relies more intensely on this concept?
And, of course, we have the statement that our protagonist doesn’t submit to these ideas and, as such, “glides” above all those who do. The “heaven bellow” chorus further, and triumphantly, emphasizes this victorious sense of overcoming.
Interestingly, if it weren’t for the song’s explicitly anti-religious stance (one very common in the world of metal music), this could very well tie in with the esoteric idea of a type of transcendence higher than Heaven, present, for example, in the Hindu and Buddhist teaching on how the heavenly states and their respective gods are still bound by the all-compassing wheel of samsara, thus, bellow the ultimate state of total Liberation. The core spirit here is, however, borrowed from the German philosopher and (as far as one can judge) a certain limitation when it comes to the study of religion, namely, his interpretation of the religious phenomenon at large being wholly derived from his unpleasant encounter with Christianity, or rather, the bourgeois Lutheranism of his father that by that time already amounted to little more than a moralism deprived of the mysticism at the core and origin of the religion.
The next verse asks “How far can one reach?” with the expected answer being “As far as his limits go” leaving as a final note a sense of the infinite and of boundless ways and potentialities, as open as the cosmos itself.
“Heaven Bellow”, besides the musical achievement it represents in the death metal canon, presents us with a clear demonstration of a well-trodden topic that it nevertheless manages to explore without the overt camp tiredness that many others fall into when dealing with similar thematic avenues.
