Sounding The Seventh Trumpet (2001) "Lips Of Deceit"

[Reprinted as written by Avenged Sevenfold]

The mark I breathe on you.
It's burning through your soul.
The breath I waste.
Losing control.
I bleed in pain.
Testing what I know.
Lips soaked in deceit.
Pull me from here.
No one s innocent.
So why do I feel bad?
But guilt keeps creeping, creeping up on me.
Guilt. Tearing me up inside.
The innocent.
An evil in disguise.
The face of beauty to fall for.
I fall to my knees, deceitful.
Brought down by feelings of regret.
Again your mind has failed the test.
Not everyone feels the same.
Pacifist blinded by the game.
Stand tall. They'll break your heart.
Stand tall. They'll smash your ego.
Stand tall. They'll tear you down.
Stand tall. Scar your soul.
Break your thought.
F**k your mind.
The mark I breathe on you.
It s burning through your soul.
The breath I waste.
Losing control.
I bleed in pain.
Testing what I know.
Lips soaked in deceit.
Pull me from this hole.

As in many of his poems, there are layers of meaning. The poet finds someone beautiful and seemingly innocent, yet that is a disguise for the evil hidden inside. This person is able to break his heart, smash his ego, tear him down and scar his soul. There are lies on both sides of this relationship, in the poet's mind. He expected purity, but he got deceit. Now he is retaliating.

Who is this person? Is it the poet's lover? His muse? His ideal?

In keeping with the theme of this album, there is the screaming rage, yet a sense of anguish along with the anger. There is evil disguised as innocence, worshiping love that is not really what it seems to be, and the poet derides himself for his own deceitful lips, he understands that his words have such power they will burn through another's soul, and I get the sense that he's talking from experience. Words are like that, they do burn, as Jesus' brother James once commented,

It takes only a spark to start a forest fire! The tongue is like a spark. It is an evil power that dirties the rest of the body and sets a person's entire life on fire with flames that come from hell itself. All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and sea creatures can be tamed and have been tamed. But our tongues get out of control. They are restless and evil, and always spreading deadly poison.

My dear friends, with our tongues we speak both praises and curses. We praise our Lord and Father, and we curse people who were created to be like God, and this isn't right. Can clean water and dirty water both flow from the same spring? Can a fig tree produce olives or a grapevine produce figs? Does fresh water come from a well full of salt water?

He knows what he's doing, and he's doing it anyway, he's testing what he knows. Some part of him doesn't want to do this, he wants to be rescued. Does that get him off the hook? He's sure wishing it could -- nobody's innocent, this is how the world is, so why does he feel guilty about it? The inner struggle hurts, and he can sense a loss of control over his words and actions.

He's a liar, and he knows it. But what would happen if he admitted it to somebody else besides himself? What if he were to admit that it's a life habit of his, to be deceitful?

And who is he lying to that makes him so uncomfortable about lying? Is it his muse, in the next song in this set? What would she think of his words of love, if she knew that lies come from the same mouth?

[The poet was writing about the truth that what you sow you will reap]

If this post got you to thinking, please leave a comment and join the conversation