Someone who comes along with this very exotically to the point message.
Things are like this and things should be like this and we gotta do this.
I feel like that really speaks to people.
Sometimes it's more the unhinged type of person that comes along with that sort of message.
So then you get people following someone who's pretty fucking crazy.
And that's the history of cults.
I think a lot of times it’s really just people who want something and someone who
has the strange narcissistic gall to say that "I have it figured out."
Sometimes I'll get an idea thematically independent of hearing music.
But in the case of this song, my band made Daniel play me the riff.
There was something about it that evoked something edgy, something very like Americana.
Whenever I think about something quintessentially American or Americana to me is the desert
and West Coast.
And then I saw this sort of semi-ominous, semi-charismatic figure came to my mind.
Like you know the rover ... It's more like the word will come and I want to say "the
rover" here but why do I want to say "the rover?”
And then I'll piece it together, like oh shit, it's like a cold figure, wandering through
the desert.
So that sort of seed of an idea came within 10 minutes I think, of just even playing it
on bass with Daniel.
It's like literally, you might not even make it out of this alive, so the stakes couldn't
be higher.
But I will keep you in some sort of abstract reward that is quasi-spiritual, quasi-hedonistic
and I think that lyric, the "fluid kind of artwork," it's like what the fuck does that
even mean?
People that can be seduced by this cult figure, they'll fill in the blanks for themselves
to be whatever it is they want.
His message to his followers is you have to give me all of yourself and complete allegiance
and do everything I say, and then you can be part of this special group.
You can't show up to our little meetings here for five hours and then go home.
You're all in or you all get the fuck out.
I think in cults you're going to have muscle, probably.
People that'll actually get out and get their hands dirty for whatever the common cause is.
Whether it be intimidating local officials or whatever.
That to me evokes that unhinged muscle figures within this guy's team of his cult.
And then also, fireworks.
The way that some explosions can bring light as well as destruction.
Go out and speak.
Speak my message, ye followers.
I guess this guy's main gist is all the shit is going down.
So stick with me and we'll either get through it or just sort of live it up in the end times.
It wasn't inspired by any particular cult leader.
I kind of envisioned somebody like, '70s, Venice Beach, kind of like Jesus hipster sort
of dude.
“Ça suffit” is French for “That’s enough.”
I kind of imagined somebody who just sort of lives on the road and he’s kind of saying,
“It’s safe here with us.”
The peak of the pyramid at any given moment in time is inevitably going to lapse.
Or fall away.
But there always must be a peak to that pyramid so that’s another way that this guy's trying
to get people brainwashed into what he's doing.
If it was in a film, and then you're doing jump cuts to some kind of really decadent,
debauched orgy situation where people are wearing masks and shit.
That's just one way for me in my mind to shoot that image out there.
Even though satin face might not register that way to you, that's the idea to me.
And the fact that it's really a strange term that doesn't really fit normal language, speaks
to the fact that this guy doesn't really fit in normal thinking.
Previously he's talking about societal constructs are on the way out.
But then he goes all the way down to nature, herself is kind of in upheaval here.
This shit is really going off.
I guess there's a suggestion that the lifestyle of one of these people he's talking to was
all the way into prostitution, in a nutshell.
When you hear it, you assume it's repentance, c-e, but it's repentants, t-s.
His thing is working so well that he doesn't actually have to go out and solicit people
to come and join his cult.
They come to him.