Starblind

How good is Starblind on a scale of 1-10?

  • Total voters
    12
Can I get a link to this interview, and I'll get either Shadow or my girlfriend to translate it? I need to see what Bruce says on this subject.
 
Sorry, it's a paper-magazine=) And it's a long article.... maybe I can get it up, or at least parts of it, could maybe translate too. But it will take a little while, I'm working pretty much every day and don't have much free time :(
 
No scanner :/ It's 12 pages with half interview with Bruce and half with Murray/Smith together. Would really like to share it.... will see if anyone I know around have a scanner, no promesis though...
 
I'll appreciate it. If you get a chance, the bit about Bruce talking about religion is all I really want.
 
How incredible is the solo played underneath the second verse?! Alongside the main solos and the licks during the "starblind" chorus and this song is totally for the guitar lovers. I'm sure all three get a solo in this song.  And not forgetting the brilliant main riff that kicks in right speaker first followed by the left. The best!!
 
stannar_kvar said:
All religions being there for the same reason/god and leaving the humanity on it's own.
Click to expand...

"When you know that your time is close at hand
Maybe then, you'll begin to understand
Life down there is just a strange illusion"
 
Hmm, someone mentioned that this song was a disappointment for them. Interesting, because Starblind was the song I came back to and replayed after the album was through. It had the most profound impact on me after the first listen (by now I can't really say that any song on the record is "the best", they're all killers!).

The song definitely has some "space" feeling to it (never mind the lyrics) because of how it's produced. Especially how the guitar comes in after the breakdown, with the reverb in the back. Goes well with the album's theme. Musically I recognized a similarity to The Pilgrim from AMOLAD; the chorus ups the note after it's halfway through, which is what they did on Pilgrim in the instrumental chorus section.
 
There is something magical about the intro to this song. I'm not sure if it's the light synth behind the arpeggios or what, but I find myself restarting the song over and over just to hear the beginning. And then when the solo section is complete and it goes back to the clean guitar it's amazing.

I'd be very interested to see the interview with Bruce. I know Nicko is a born again Christian, but I've always gotten the feeling Bruce was an atheist or agnostic. I wonder if there's ever tension due to the opposing viewpoints.
 
I think 'Arry is a Christian too. Like I said…I think H put the "NML" riff into Isle of Avalon on purpose, to juxtapose the two songs. It's a hint to people like us who listen for that sort of thing. Otherwise..what's the bloody purpose of H writing in a riff that 'Arry wrote 7 years ago?
 
LooseCannon said:
I think 'Arry is a Christian too. Like I said…I think H put the "NML" riff into Isle of Avalon on purpose, to juxtapose the two songs. It's a hint to people like us who listen for that sort of thing. Otherwise..what's the bloody purpose of H writing in a riff that 'Arry wrote 7 years ago?
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The riff sounds much different to me. Different notes, different tempo and it has pinch harmonics
 
LooseCannon said:
I'd agree with you…but…well I'll explain when I post my review of that song.
I didn't particularly care for this song the first time through The Final Frontier. It was muted in places, and the music didn't click. What I could make out of Bruce's lyrics were, at best, jumbled. The chorus felt catchy, though, and I gave it another few chances as I went through. Finally, the lyrics were put together, and when this song connected to me, I felt like a baseball flying towards a batter's box manned by Babe Ruth: it's a home run.

Or a free kick taken by '90s Beckham from 50' for you Euros.

I've long since accepted that it's very rare that a singer shares my particular world view on religion; the only one I'm aware of who's of any sort of fame is Dio, and it's one of the reasons I treasure songs of his like "Heaven & Hell". That particular track expresses exactly how I feel about the subject of religion. "Starblind" mirrors that song. As always, the music isn't my part of the song to comment on, and I'll be tackling what could very well be Bruce's best lyrics of all time.

We must remember Bruce is a master storyteller, and here he is establishing the premise of the story he's going to spin. Someone is ready to die; they're weary of their body and prepared to pass on. The first few passages are laced with heavy metaphor; it's only by analyzing the end of the song that we can realize what Bruce is exactly talking about. The storyteller wants us to see the world through his experiences; he wants us to "take my eyes". However, he then establishes that this person isn't exactly one person, but anyone. They "have no mortal face".

What is it when we shed our skins and pass into the void? Again, it's a discussion of death. However, we have to juxtapose with the first paragraph. Now, we are being promised to dance amongst the stars (a similar interpretation to heaven, and of course, other religious systems). Bruce reminds us that we are trapped in a "carbon spider's web" - an analogy for life on planet Earth, filled with carbon-based life that needs oxygen to survive. Of course, only a few hundred individuals have ever escaped Earth, and none permanently (save those brave souls who died in space). This analogy is probably intentional based on the name of the album, which was known to all when they started writing. However, Bruce is bringing the listener back to reality: the solar winds whisper with the sirens of the dead. He's giving us a nice little promise: an eternal dance amongst the heavens, but the dead are warning us about this particular fantasy: raising the sirens.

We've given the trust of our eternity to elders - those who run the various churches and temples throughout the world, people who are meant to satisfy our desire for eternity, and answer that all present question of what occurs after death. However, Damocles's sword dangles over that promise, as it's only time until we all realize that the promises are empty. The freedoms offered by the jailers mean religious thought; the false hopes offered by priests inside their box of closed thought. And when you walk away from those freedoms (the idea that your sins can be forgiven with 50 Hail Marys), you step into the light.

Perhaps this would make more sense if it went "Starblind - with Son". The concept of an afterlife is blinding, but really, it's all the same, a promise to bring an end to the eternal darkness of death.

It's all the same when we die. Religion's cruel device (the promise of heaven) vanishes. You, I, our families and friends and loved ones will experience the same feelings. We'll be very alone in those last seconds, as we can no longer move, breathe, and do anything but wait those agonizing seconds for the end. Of course, the preacher who told Christ's promises loses face when at the end of his life he's revealed as a liar; and of course, not even the bonds of marriage can transcend death.

Sin, of course, is all but eternal, and we're lying to ourselves if we think we can escape it through worshipping a holy book. The crucible of pain Bruce refers to is nothing more than life itself; life is short and miserable, according to some, but it's all we have. And as Bruce reminds us, you have two choices: a life to live, or a life to lose. Living your life means not worrying about the promise of a religion, but instead, choosing your own morals, rather than those from a Bronze Age text. The life that you have left to lose is the life spent in the devotion of a being that doesn't exist; Sundays in church, moneys on tithes, and in extreme cases, your life on a bus in Tel Aviv or Baghdad with a bomb strapped to your chest. You have everything to gain by living a life free of religion.

We are reminded that not all eternal promises are good. 72 virgins supposedly await those who die in the service of jihad; those damned souls who end their lives early, needlessly, are searching for an unrequited reward in paradise. Those of us who have rejected the promises of religion cringe sometimes when others waste their lives on what we consider pointless beliefs. And now Bruce makes the meaning of "startripping" known: those of us who choose to rage against the night, live in laughter, and be ready to fight the end of our lives and existence, rather than embrace the end of life in false comfort.

The speaker is encouraging those who listen to choose a life path; one that involves religion and another that doesn't. He's had a lifetime of experience, and he wants you to see life through his eyes. He reminds you that your God knows you better than you believe, because that God is a figment of your imagination, and that whatever reward you were promised, you will instead be rotting in your forever final resting place, deceived for a timeless eternity.

Again, the narrator is begging us to look at the choices he's offered. Our lives are short and we have precious few hours to us, even if we believe we have a long life ahead of us. The moon glow, of course, is a reminder that the night quickly approaches the narrator; that he is soon to die. He then reminds us that our "past and future all the same" - death is as not being born was. Unknown. Empty. Nothingness. We don't exist after we die just as we didn't exist before we were born. And, of course, "it cannot be bought" - the afterlife can't be purchased for all the tithes in the world.

Bruce has put together a beautiful and poignant discussion on what it is like to see the world from a certain philosophical viewpoint, specifically, religiouslessness. And for someone like me, who shares that worldview, the song is utterly touching. It hurts, day in and day out, to see the little veils people wear to make themselves believe that their life has more meaning than it does. People who believe they are special without trying to be special. And of course, the nutjobs who pray to Christ after murdering and raping and believe their sins are gone and they'll be rewarded in heaven; people who blow themselves up or fly into buildings for Allah; people who kill doctors or murder their "possessed" children.

Please…stop.
Click to expand...

Have a praise. This is deep shit. Holy crap.
 
I just put that there for now. I'm gonna go back and finalize it after work.

Seriously the song I've been looking forward to since 2000.
 
Yes, some very deep thoughts there, and thank you for sharing them with us. I think perhaps, though...it's all just a little bit TOO deep. Notice that he doesn't say there's no Christ and all that. He says that the preacher loses face with Christ. To me, that means that the preachers who would use Christ's name to cause people to do what the preacher wanted, for the preacher's own gain....those preachers lose face with Christ, as we all pass on after death and finally know the truth of it all. There are so many sects even within Christanity, that I have no doubt several of them direct people to do what they want, using the name of Christ to gain it all. Now, I don't think that Bruce is specifically talking just about Christianity...but it's a reference everyone will catch, and makes sense lyrically. I believe he pretty much means that all preachers in all religions will lose face with their God...as people pass over and find the real truth. I think this is made clear by the line "Religions cruel device is gone"....Religions cruel devince being that whatever lies it is that humans use religion for to get people to do what they want...that is stripped away at death, since all those lies are then exposed.
 
Robert Heinlein said:
The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by Homo Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the sacharrine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not recieve this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history.
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Benjamin Disraeli said:
Where knowledge ends, religion begins.
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I didn't particularly care for this song the first time through The Final Frontier. It was muted in places, and the music didn't click. What I could make out of Bruce's lyrics were, at best, jumbled. The chorus felt catchy, though, and I gave it another few chances as I went through. Finally, the lyrics were put together, and when this song connected to me, I felt like a baseball flying towards a batter's box manned by Babe Ruth: it's a home run.

Or a free kick taken by '90s Beckham from 50' for you Euros.

I've long since accepted that it's very rare that a singer shares my particular world view on religion; the only one I'm aware of who's of any sort of fame is Dio, and it's one of the reasons I treasure songs of his like "Heaven & Hell". That particular track expresses exactly how I feel about the subject of religion. "Starblind" mirrors that song. As always, the music isn't my part of the song to comment on, and I'll be tackling what could very well be Bruce's best lyrics of all time.

Take my eyes the things I've seen in this world coming to an end
My reflection fades, I'm weary of these earthly bones and skin
You may pass through me and leave no trace, I have no mortal face
Solar winds are whispering, you may hear me call
Click to expand...

We must remember Bruce is a master storyteller, and here he is establishing the premise of the story he's going to spin. Someone is ready to die; they're weary of their body and prepared to pass on. The first few passages are laced with heavy metaphor; it's only by analyzing the end of the song that we can realize what Bruce is exactly talking about. The storyteller wants us to see the world through his experiences; he wants us to "take my eyes". However, he then establishes that this person isn't exactly one person, but anyone. They "have no mortal face".

We can shed our skins and swim into the darkened void beyond
We will dance among the world that orbit stars that aren't our sun
All the oxygen that trapped us in a carbon spider's web
Solar winds are whispering, you may hear the sirens of the dead
Click to expand...

It's important to set against the later meaning Bruce uses for "startripping". He uses the idea of "dancing among the world that orbit stars that aren't our sun" as a metaphor. While people who believe in the promises of the Bible, the Qu'ran, and other books think they get to live in heaven forever, in reality, they are mundane, trapped in "a carbon spider's web". Those of us who have passed beyond religious thought are enlightened and freed. He's using the comparison to escaping the Earth's atmosphere, something only a few hundred individuals have ever accomplished, and none permanently (save those brave souls who died in space). That's something we didn't achieve through blind faith. The ability to leave this Earth, however momentarily, is a monument to our ability to think and reason: not through belief in a text or religious system that would have us all still as peons scrabbling in a mud-filled field. But some of us throughout time have escaped and thought these dangerous, irreligious thoughts: enlightened minds that call back to us, the sirens born to our ears by solar winds. Folk like Disraeli, and Paine, and Franklin who all thought that religion was bunk, and dared to say so in a time before thought was protected.

Left the elders to their parley meant to satisfy our lust
Leaving Damocles still hanging over all their promised trust
Walk away from freedoms offered by their jailers in their cage
Step into the light startripping over mortals in their rage
Click to expand...

We've given the trust of our eternity to elders - those who run the various churches and temples throughout the world, people who are meant to satisfy our desire for eternity, and answer that all present question of what occurs after death. However, Damocles's sword dangles over that promise, as it's only time until we all realize that the promises are empty. The freedoms offered by the jailers mean religious thought; the false hopes offered by priests inside their box of closed thought. And when you walk away from those freedoms (the idea that your sins can be forgiven with 50 Hail Marys), you step into the light. Startripping, as will later be revealed, means that you are capable of travelling above the norm - elevating your level of thought - above those who are angered with the religious condition. It's also an analogy for the inability of mankind to forget what we've learned if we pass it on properly.

Starblind - with sun
The stars are one
We are the light that brings the end of night

Starblind - with sun
The stars are one
We are, with the Goddess of the sun tonight
Click to expand...

Perhaps this would make more sense if it went "Starblind - with Son". The concept of an afterlife is blinding, but really, it's all the same, a promise to bring an end to the eternal darkness of death. The Goddess of the sun is also an interesting concept: most pagan religions have the sun diety as male, whereas the moon diety is female. Consider Helios and Diana in Greek myth. The German myth, however, has Sunna, the sun goddess. She was known as Sol in the Norse faith.

Sol's task was to run the heavens, chased forever by wolves nipping eternally at her heels, as punishment for arrogance. When Bruce says we're with the Goddess of the sun, he's reminding us that even the enlightened have dogs baying after them. It's an analogy for how religion tries to tear one back down - consider Copernicus and Galileo, Turing and Tiller, all of whom were killed or impeded or otherwise harmed by religious dogma attacking their job.

The preacher loses face with Christ
Religion's cruel device is gone
Empty flesh and hallowed bones
Make pacts of love but die alone
Click to expand...

It's all the same when we die. Religion's cruel device (the promise of heaven) vanishes. You, I, our families and friends and loved ones will experience the same feelings. We'll be very alone in those last seconds, as we can no longer move, breathe, and do anything but wait those agonizing seconds for the end. Of course, the preacher who told Christ's promises loses face when at the end of his life he's revealed as a liar; and of course, not even the bonds of marriage can transcend death.

The crucible of pain will forge
The blinds of sin, begin again
You are free to choose a life to live
Or one that's left to lose
Click to expand...

Sin, of course, is all but eternal, and we're lying to ourselves if we think we can escape it through worshipping a holy book. The crucible of pain Bruce refers to is nothing more than life itself; life is short and miserable, according to some, but it's all we have. And as Bruce reminds us, you have two choices: a life to live, or a life to lose. Living your life means not worrying about the promise of a religion, but instead, choosing your own morals, rather than those from a Bronze Age text. The life that you have left to lose is the life spent in the devotion of a being that doesn't exist; Sundays in church, moneys on tithes, and in extreme cases, your life on a bus in Tel Aviv or Baghdad with a bomb strapped to your chest. You have everything to gain by living a life free of religion.

Virgins in the teeth of God are meat and drink to feed the damned
You may pass through me and I will feel the life that you live less
Step into my light startripping, we will rage against the night
Walk away from comfort offered by your citizens of death
Click to expand...

We are reminded that not all eternal promises are good. 72 virgins supposedly await those who die in the service of jihad; those damned souls who end their lives early, needlessly, are searching for an unrequited reward in paradise. Those of us who have rejected the promises of religion cringe sometimes when others waste their lives on what we consider pointless beliefs. And now Bruce makes the meaning of "startripping" known: those of us who choose to rage against the night, live in laughter, and be ready to fight the end of our lives and existence, rather than embrace the end of life in false comfort. It's an analogy for freeing your mind from the bonds of religious thought.

Take my eyes for what I've seen
I will give my sight to you
You are free to choose whatever
Life to live or life to lose

Whatever God, you know
He knows you, better than you believe
In your once and future grave
You'll fall endlessly deceived
Click to expand...

The speaker is encouraging those who listen to choose a life path; one that involves religion and another that doesn't. He's had a lifetime of experience, and he wants you to see life through his eyes. He reminds you that your God knows you better than you believe, because that God is a figment of your imagination, and that whatever reward you were promised, you will instead be rotting in your forever final resting place, deceived for a timeless eternity.

Another thought that I had while listening to this verse was about the multiplication of human knowledge. Thanks to our increasing ability to maintain knowledge from one generation to the next (due to the Gutenberg press, the proliferation of universities, computers, and now the Internet), as we "pass on our eyes" - the benefit of the human experience - we become less and less religious in general. The elders no longer die and leave us with words of wisdom; each year brings us millions of new publications, new pieces of art, new albums that add to the bevy of human experience, and increase our understanding of the massive universe and our tiny sliver of it. The elders have given us sight. They gave us the idea of gravity, and the concept of splitting the atom; they taught us to understand biology and read the very imprint of our genetics. They taught us that holy books cannot be unless you believe they can violate rules and laws sacrosanct to physics and chemistry. The eyes of our elders have never been so clear.

Look into our face reflected in the moon glow in your eyes
Remember you can choose to look but not to see and waste your hours
You believe you have the time but I tell you your time is short
See your past and future all the same and it cannot be bought
Click to expand...

Again, the narrator is begging us to look at the choices he's offered. Our lives are short and we have precious few hours to us, even if we believe we have a long life ahead of us. The moon glow, of course, is a reminder that the night quickly approaches the narrator; that he is soon to die. He then reminds us that our "past and future all the same" - death is as not being born was. Unknown. Empty. Nothingness. We don't exist after we die just as we didn't exist before we were born. And, of course, "it cannot be bought" - the afterlife can't be purchased for all the tithes in the world.

Bruce has put together a beautiful and poignant discussion on what it is like to see the world from a certain philosophical viewpoint, specifically, religiouslessness. And for someone like me, who shares that worldview, the song is utterly touching. It hurts, day in and day out, to see the little veils people wear to make themselves believe that their life has more meaning than it does. People who believe they are special without trying to be special. And of course, the nutjobs who pray to Christ after murdering and raping and believe their sins are gone and they'll be rewarded in heaven; people who blow themselves up or fly into buildings for Allah; people who kill doctors or murder their "possessed" children.

Please…stop.

Note: edited to add in new understandings and ideas.
 
Very interesting read. I still think it's more about discovcering what the truth is all about, rather than discovering that there's no God and that it all was a lie. I think it's about the lies that are out there, being washed away at the threshold of death...with an open mind about anything being possible at that moment.
 
Loving this tune more and more.  May be the strongest on the record.

I don't know that Bruce is outright denying the existence of God; certainly he's questioning many of the foundational ideas of major religions.  I agree with Khan in that it comes more from a place of agnosticism than atheism.  How can a preacher "lose face with Christ" if Christ Himself does not exist in the afterlife?  Also the line about "Whatever God you know, He knows you better than you believe" to me suggests that the message of the song is more that God is unknowable rather than a deception or lie.

As a Christian myself, I am able to listen to and enjoy music that disagrees with or challenges my beliefs, as part of the human experience is coming into contact with other perspectives and ideas other than just your own.  For instance, I love Ronnie James Dio's music; in fact, it is he that got me into metal to begin with.  Yet his lyrics sometimes come off as atheistic or negative toward Christianity.  To me, that's part of the richness - Dio struggling with the questions of God, eternity, heaven & hell.  Same here with Starblind.  Regardless if you agree with the conclusion, the philosophy behind it has never been presented so beautifully or poetically as here.

LooseCannon said:
Bruce has put together a beautiful and poignant discussion on what it is like to see the world from a certain philosophical viewpoint, specifically, religiouslessness. And for someone like me, who shares that worldview, the song is utterly touching. It hurts, day in and day out, to see the little veils people wear to make themselves believe that their life has more meaning than it does. People who believe they are special without trying to be special. And of course, the nutjobs who pray to Christ after murdering and raping and believe their sins are gone and they'll be rewarded in heaven; people who blow themselves up or fly into buildings for Allah; people who kill doctors or murder their "possessed" children.

Please…stop.
Click to expand...

I hope you don't think that's a fair representation of either Christianity or Islam.  I'm not going to belabor the point, but don't project the wild excess of the few extremists onto the many.
Also, I was  thinking of the title "Starblind" as a reference to the unknowable nature of the divine and the afterlife.  Going with what LC said as "star" being a reference to deities, esp. in ancient mythology, the song is saying we are "blind" to the invisible and blind to what could be out there.
 
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