If you listen to metal, you're halfway to hell already (according to society), but if you want to get there quicker, try putting on one of these songs. There's also a companion Spotify playlist for this article.
Tom from Architects (RIP) explained the song in on the band's official blog:
Let me be clear (because I’m treading on egg shells/landmines here). When I talk of fundamentalists, I am not talking of one religion in particular. I’m sure all religions have their extreme rights and extreme lefts. Simply put, I am talking about anyone who thinks it is fair to discriminate, condemn (that’s the same thing, innit?) or worse, attack and even kill people, for who they are - all in the name of religion.
"...It’s referring to someone involved in the Christian/Catholic community who thinks it’s okay to just go up to someone and push their beliefs. It’s kind of rude, but I get it they only want to help you find your way. I know a handful of people who are awful human beings, but think if they say a couple prayers at church on Sundays they wash their hands of it. I don’t think it works that way." - Drew York
Remember when The Amity Affliction weren't writing songs about suicide? The lyrics to this are pretty straightforward: "If the only reason to exist is to stare skyward and put my hands together, then why am I even here to serve a myth?"
Confession was Michael Crafter's new band after he left I Killed The Prom Queen. This song also features Ahren Stringer, clean vocalist for The Amity Affliction.
As one of the comments on the video points out, this song is "...about religious zealotry, and the fact that those in that community pretend to be persecuted, all the while persecuting others (i.e. gays) and suppressing natural human qualities, taught to fear God's punishment if they disobey biblical mores."
"This song is portrays my disbelief in God after everything that happened to me. I was angry and consuming myself with evil and darkness. This is what I let myself become and what I was, and I am not proud of it. All that has changed now but I still remember and will never forget what I was letting myself slip into." - Phil Bozeman
"The song is like a cyclical play on a book – The Satanic Verses written by Salman Rushdie about 20-something years ago and the idea behind the song was to create a piece of art that might make fundamentalist or extremist Muslims attempt to assassinate the band, because that would be ironic because the song is about Muslims trying to assassinate someone else for creating some art. I find hilarity in irony, even if it is kind of dark. And then some of the lines in the song like “The Army of Guardians,” is an actual Iranian army, whose only job is to uphold Sharia law outside the bounds of common lay, which is kind of sickening that that still happens." - Andy Marsh
"Lyrically it’s all about religion. Before we wrote this album, I was in a position where I was asked to believe in God, to get better, and I just couldn’t understand that, so that’s what I wrote from. It’s about [how] there’s no salvation, there’s no one that’s gonna save you. You’ve got to get better because you want it for yourself, your family or your friends, not because you believe there’s a man in the sky.” - Oli Sykes
"If God is real then he's an evil motherfucker. He's watching his greatest creation die before his eyes."
"I'll say a fucking prayer because I know it won't be answered."
