Song Rationales
In the May 2006 issue interview with Revolver about the album re-issue, guitarist Mark Morton and vocalist Randy Blythe talked about the meanings of the song on the album and information about them.
- "A Warning"
" 'A Warning' is one of my favorite tracks on that record. People forget now, but it was a little harder to be a fucking weirdo back then, you know what I mean? Now it's not so much of a big deal - you see frat boys with Slayer shirts or Slipknot shirts on, or whatever. But that song was about people looking at you as if you were a freak, metalhead, a punk rocker-whatever—and them being like, 'Oh, my god, what a fucking loser freak!' and you just saying, 'Yes, I am, so screw you.' "
- "Letter to the Unborn"
The song "Letter to the Unborn" contains no lyrics to read in the book of the CD. The song indeed has lyrics but, according to Blythe, the song is very personal concerning the death of his daughter with his ex-wife. They were written before she was born. Because of all of this, he didn’t want the lyrics to be reprinted or read.
- "The Black Dahlia"
"It seems kind of typical for guys in bands to have a serial-killer fascination. I don't—I just thought that particular Black Dahlia murder case was interesting, and it kind of panders to my film noir, romantic side. I romanticize about that time a lot in my head, and I took that whole story and put it into lyrics, so I could sit around and wear a fedora and smoke unfiltered cigarettes to it later. Call women 'dames' and stuff, you know?"
- "The Subtle Arts of Murder and Persuasion"
"One of my favorites on the record, and it's still in the set to this day. You can really hear my nerves in cutting the guitar intro to that song—so much so I think we actually had to fade it up a little bit. It was a real new piece of me, and it's pretty difficult to play. It's imperfect but it came out really cool."
- "Pariah"
" 'Pariah' was written about a certain individual who used to live in my beloved city, the former capital of the Confederacy, who I did not get along with too well. He was a fucking heroin junkie and was just an awful person. I had a couple of unpleasant run-ins with him and he was just a real shitbag, basically. I despised him so much that I wrote a song about him."
- "O.D.H.G.A.B.F.E."
Stands for
Officer
Dick
Head
Gets
A Black
Fucking
Eye. This song was written about an incident that occurred during the period of Randy Blythe's life spent as a vagrant. At one point, the group Blythe was with were caught in a storm and sought shelter in an abandoned building. A while afterwards police from the San Diego Police Department arrived and violently detained the group. Finally the police took all of them to jail and they were released afterwards. Blythe said the song was about police brutality and he "thanks the San Diego Police Department" for that. The song meaning explains the names at the end such as Kent State, Tiananmen, and Waco.