Scream of the Butterfly by Acid Bath Lyrics Meaning – A Dive Into the Psyche’s Desolate Landscape
Lyrics
Her eyes were like the sky
Rabbit howls like something old
As we twitch to her lullaby
The scalpel shines in gods sunshine
Street lights whisper pain
Down here near the poison stream
You’re god has gone insane
She smiles like a child with flowers in her hair
With blood on her hands into the sun she stares
She feels it die, I heard her cry
She smiles like a child with flowers in her hair
With blood on her hands into the sun she stares
She feels it die, I heard her cry
Like the scream of the butterfly
Sunshine a house in flames
She likes it where she gets it
But it’s never felt the same
Surgery in the house of dissection
When your candle burns out I will resurrect you
She runs through fields of daisies
Yeah it’s just a shame
That they eat their own babies
Who cares cause the air is free
When you get there will you kiss the dead for me?
There’s blood on the moon
And the summer is cold
There’s love in the room
But baby that’s gettin’ old
There’s blood on my face
Sittin’ on a dead shore
A highway of emptiness
And I’m feeling old
There’s blood on the moon
As we plan our escape
The goddess in bloom
Handcuffed and raped
There’s blood in the bath tub
Murder the king
There’s blood on the moon
There’s blood on just about everything
Sunshine a house in flames
She likes it where she gets it
But it’s never felt the same
Surgery in the house of dissection
When your candle burns out I will resurrect you
She runs through fields of daisies
Yeah it’s just a shame
That they eat their own babies
Who cares cause the air is free
When you get there will you kiss the dead for me?
Something cold is forced inside her
A tear spills down her cheek
Stillborn songs of a dead dreamer
Hymns of the needle freak
With sunlight in her hair
She smiles like she don’t care
Her dreams are liquid blue
I cut myself again and again
To remind myself of you
She smiles like a child with flowers in her hair
With blood on her hands into the sun she stares
She feels it die, I heard her cry
Like the scream of the butterfly
I met an angel with a sawed-off shotgun
Wanted by the FBI
We dropped some acid, killed our parents
Then we hit the road
Like the scream of the butterfly
Like the scream of the butterfly
Within the tangled webs of psychedelic sludge metal, Acid Bath etched a stark narrative in their track ‘Scream of the Butterfly.’ More than a foray into the macabre or the grotesque, the song is a poets’ canvas, marred by the bleeding colors of pain, delusion, and awakening.
To dissect ‘Scream of the Butterfly’ is to wander through a gallery of grim impressionism. It’s a carnival ride that twirls listeners between beauty and devastation – each stanza, an arresting portrait of human vulnerability.
A Lurid Waltz with Sunshine and Shadows
The song pirouettes into existence with ‘A creature made of sunshine / Her eyes were like the sky,’ encapsulating a figure that is at once ethereal and wrenched from dreams. This juxtaposition of light and darkness permeates the entire piece, sewing together themes of innocence and corruption.
The duplicity of the figure, a child-like embodiment with bloodstained hands, weaves a disconcerting relationship with purity and sin. Listeners cling to her innocent image even amid the brutality suggested, symbolic of humankind’s refusal to relinquish hope.
Dissecting the Tempest of Pain: Street Lights to Dissection Tables
The visceral narrative unfolds in bleak scenes as Acid Bath takes us from the ‘poison stream’ to the cold clinicality of a ‘house of dissection.’ Here lies the paradox of searching for life’s essence in the geography of death—the futile efforts to understand existence through its cessation.
Strewn throughout these lines is a haunting collision of the mundane and the extreme. ‘Street lights whisper pain’ – everyday objects become bearers of suffering, suggesting a world where despair is as omnipresent as light in darkness.
A Chorus of Tragedy: The Screaming Metaphor
The titular ‘scream of the butterfly’ is a motif that repeats with a choir’s grim resolve. It resonates as a call to the tragedies that are both intimate and shared, a singular outcry multiplied by the experiences of those who hear it.
This scream, therefore, is not merely an expression of agony; it’s an emblem of the loss so profound that it defies silence. It serves as a chilling reminder that behind the veneer of serenity, there is a scream waiting to be acknowledged.
The Symphony of ‘Sunshine a House in Flames’ – Interpreting the Chaotic
In Acid Bath’s ominous visualization, the house in flames is a beacon of despair that stands in stark contrast to the ‘sunshine’ it bathes in. The image presents an internal chaos so fierce it can consume the self, seen in the line ‘She likes it where she gets it / But it’s never felt the same.’
Through the framework of internal and external destruction, the band challenges the listener to question the very stability of reality. The flames swallow wholesomeness just as surely as the self devours its own essence in a desperate search for meaning.
Translating the Hidden Cry – The Butterfly’s Final Message
Beyond its grim narrative and haunting allegory lies the hidden kernel within ‘Scream of the Butterfly.’ Acid Bath encapsulates the visceral response to the world’s cruelties and the personal apocalypse one battles with.
In the closing lines, ‘I met an angel with a sawed-off shotgun / Wanted by the FBI,’ listeners encounter one final grotesque juxtaposition—a convergence of the divine and the felonious, suggesting perhaps that salvation and ruin are twined tighter than we dare admit.
