"Darkest" Album Ever?...

[Rushmore]

[ QUOTE ]
To me, Lateralus is about the sorry state of our species, not hopefulness. I'm a pretty cynical bastard, though, and don't hold out much hope for us "put[ting] aside our egos," to stop "bargain[ing] for ruin," or "[re-]opening the avenues of communication."

On the Parabol/Parabola spiritual connection theme, you can reorder the songs on Lateralus to generate something that resembles a single work, a "Holy Gift" as it were. There's a post about it here and, though the guy kinda goes off the deep end about it, the reordering is very powerful, especially if you remove the silence between tracks and match the ending beats of certain songs with the starting beats of the following songs.

[/ QUOTE ]

I can certainly see that perspective, but believe that lines like "...let's crucify ego/before it's far too late...," and "...to bring the pieces back together/rediscover communication...," and "...recognize this holy gift and celebrate this chance to be alive and breathing..." definitely infer a hopefulness rather than the same old darkly negative rock and roll gloom and doom.

Now, granted, the entire CD could be seen as overwrought. I just happen to really like it a LOT.