Porphyria Cutanea Tarda is a gathering of the sufferers from Strength Through Wounding. Simply put, it’s an establishment of worth, identity, and a common enemy. The transition of content here is as smooth as the musical changeover. Now that identity has been established, it must be accepted. Sometimes the discovery of one’s true identity and place in the world can be rough, and somewhat of a shock. The bridge is about one’s fight against oppressors for freedom of self expression.

I love Malleus. Just a side note. It’s been well explained as being about the Salem Witch Trials. I think that this is right on, but the Witch Trials are merely a metaphor for persecution because of a gift. “Set alight for all we’ve learned” could be persecution for extraordinary intelligence (geeks will understand this one) or for some natural gift such as writing, music (especially the school band), or whatever else. Narrative of Soul vs. Soul is completely straight-forward. There’s one on every album. When someone is pushed too far, one of two things often happens. They either push back or opt out of this world. This song tries to dissuade the choice of the latter option.

For the longest time, Clove Smoke Catharsis hasn’t made sense to me. Now, it does. Scaling the walls is a metaphor for standing up for something. To make this easier to explain, I’m going to make an example of something happened in real life. This is what made it fall into place while I was writing. A friend of mine and I tried to start a gay-straight alliance at our high school. The wall was all the resistance and hesitance we were met with. A couple of years ago, someone else tried the very same thing and it had proven futile, but still we worked for it. As a result, some of my friends and acquaintances began distancing themselves from me. My peers would ask how things were going just so they could rub it in our faces that we were having difficulties. The pure sweetness of understanding and an end to persecution because of who we are was offered by this gay-straight alliance. The taunting we endured whilst petitioning left us with a bitter taste in our mouths. “From above comes a faint smile,” in our case refers to the first shred of help offered to us by someone with some kind of authority; the school’s student assistance counselor. With her help, things really started to look less bleak. My friends who’d distanced themselves from me were suddenly surprized that when they came crawling back, all apologies, I just walked away. Either accept me for who and what I am all the time, or leave me alone. Don’t slam me and expect that an insincere apology will make everything better.

Lower It fits in quite nicely, so I have no trouble including it (plus the fact that I actually had it on rotation with Black Sails cause I did the interpretation completely in my room). Lower It rejects the rejectors. Those who posed as friends and supporters (“I heard you say that we shared a destiny,” and the bit about being part of a family) only made matters worse, so they’re out. They were completely insincere, and they obviously didn’t think before they acted. So now they will always be unwanted. Simple as that.

“I was dreaming” is the key to No Poetic Device. Freud believed that dreams are a manifestation of our subconscious. There are just so many ways to look at this song. The way I see it, the first verse is about suicide. Although it may no longer be a conscious consideration, anything that would drive a person to seriously contemplate suicide is usually very deep rooted, and, therefore, may still linger in the subconscious. “I just anticipate what awaits when I awake” could refer to a fear that one might act on these subconscious desires. Not cool. The second verse is about feeling like a complete screw up. “I pushed my hand through the thorns just to crush the final rose” is giving up on everything and tearing down what hope there may have been. The crushing of the rose signifies defeat and utter failure.

As has been suggested, The Last Kiss is about a relationship gone wrong. Everything probably started off great and the narrator came to trust his/her significant other, but then said same significant other betrayed his/her trust. “Hung in your room, swaying, hoping only that you'll see,” could refer to the desire to make the other person feel supremely guilty for what s/he’s done. “All by myself, I'm alone in such poor company,” as I interpret it, is how the narrator might as well be alone whether his/her significant other was there or not. The insects feeding is a sign of decay in their relationship, and the needles are just more pain inflicted by the relationship. The next part is the effects of the decay on the narrator. The chorus is literal, well, it could be, and to me it is. There is at least one among us who probably knows where my interpretation of this song came from. Anyway, the last verse is the narrator’s attempt to talk to his/her lover and how miserably it backfires. The bridge is his/her reaction when, later on, his/her lover approaches him/her to ask what’s wrong as if nothing ever happened.

After listening to At a Glance, I believe that Weathered Tome is about patching up the relationship in The Last Kiss, rather than recovering from it as I’d originally thought. Now, however, the relationship is full of holes, and these holes are doubt. “What if could go to sleep for days, would you count the hours, or would your restlessness consume fading memories of me?” If I went away, would you miss me or move on? The second verse illustrates this doubt particularly well, giving it a very real edge.

Until now, I’ve only been able to hear God Called in Sick Today as a fight between Davey and his mother. Now, it’s kind of an analysis of one’s life. Let’s take a look at what’s going on, and what’s wrong with this picture? Our narrator’s life is just so screwed up and his/her soul so mislead that it would make angels cry. The closing of the story and unwinding of animosity are the ending of this hurtful relationship from The Last Kiss. “And miles away, my mother cries,” is one of two things. Either mother was attached to this significant other, or else she’s happy that her child is trying to make life better again. Nowhere does it say she is upset. “Omnipotence, nurturing malevolence;” I take this as the person from “The Last Kiss” meant everything to our narrator, but then s/he took advantage of that and became self-centred and downright cruel.

If the silence has any significance on Black Sails, it’s a meditative silence to pick up the pieces. Midnight Sun is triumph. All the questions are signs of the return of ambition. Some can be answered, some cannot. “Beyond and to all time I stand!” The ever ambiguous statement of Black Sails. It is triumph through perseverance.

Okay, I know I skipped Prayer Position, but there’s good reason for that. It has to do with not being able to think past the first thing that came to mind. I apologise if the end of the album seemed jumbled, but The Last Kiss was the track that made me decide to interpret Black Sails as a whole, and when I got to it, I lost coherency to some extent. It took me a very long time to write it out so it’d make sense to someone else because it’s based on something that hit very close to home for me.