Song discussions, day 75: Inner Sanctum

Inner Sanctum is a song from eighth album “The Apostasy” (2007), and it’s clearly a very stand out track of the album. First of all, most of the spoken word vocals are done by guest vocalist Warrel Dane (from american band Nevermore). Music video is almost like a mini-movie and really helps to bring some context to the lyrics. The song is basically a dialogue, where most parts are done by some broken men who is so overwhelmed with his suffering that he fails to see anything good about live whatsoever, even when it is there (“let I see darkness in the tunnels of light”), which is a really good metaphor for clinical depression and how depression works in general. Then Nergal steps a few times in to contradict the narrator, as ‘voice of reason’ type of character. All of this happens in first (bigger) half of the song, by the way, while second half is completely instrumental.

Music video showcases another classic psychology scenario – when people get so stuck in grief and can’t let go of their deceased close ones, that they start making a ‘temples’, basically (quite literary in the music video though). The guy we see there is so obsessed with losing his wife, his entire life becomes this sense of loss, and stops living in any other way. I have to say, this is unusually deep real-live message here from Behemoth, with this music video. I wish they did more like it!

Overall, “The Apostasy” really isn’t an atmospheric album like almost at all, however, this specific song really brings some darker notes to it, that are otherwise completely absent from the album. I get a feeling this is not a particularly popular song of “The Apostasy”, still, I think it’s really strong one, and I applaud the band on how they handled connecting lyrics with the music video, what a great effort.

So, what do you think about this track? Underrated? Or not really? Also, what do you made of the music video?

Inner Sanctum