Disturbed: "Inside the Fire"

"Inside the Fire" is Disturbed's first release from their new album Indestructible (2008), which debuted in the No. 1 spot on the Billboard charts this week. This song's meaning is apparent if you've seen the video. If you haven't, watch it now. It's staring you in the face. Draiman introduces the video and states that the song/video are about suicide. He then gives the number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The main character in the song/video is Devon. She has recently hanged herself. As a result, "Devon won't go to Heaven." The speaker could be Satan or God, who urges Draiman to "take your place inside the fire with her." The speaker allures Draiman: "Give your soul to me for eternity. Release your life to begin another time with her." Whoever the speaker is, it's obvious that he has the power to own souls and determine their fate.

Draiman's religious upbringing suggests to me that the speaker in this song is God, in spite of my own Christian presuppositions that bring Satan into the picture. Draiman has a Jewish background that often leaks into his lyrics. For an interesting take on Draiman's lyrics, read the article in the latest issue of Spin Magazine, where two yeshiva students talk about their Disturbed obsession in the midst of Orthodox Judaism. Anyway, if medieval Jewish philosopher/rabbi Maimonides has any bearing on Draiman's presuppositions, the speaker could be God, for concerning suicide the philosopher claims that the just penalty for suicide is "death by the hands of Heaven" (1). So according to Maimonides, it's God who administers death (obviously, a second death, possibly eternal fire when the Christian rendering of the Jewish text--conventional wisdom in our culture--is considered). Also, no entry into Paradise remains possible (i.e. if death is as final as it sounds), for suicide (as Catholic theology would suggest) warrants automatic placement into the fiery abyss.

The exchange between Draiman and God is a metaphor representing the hardship one faces when confronting the suicide of a loved one. Draiman expresses his love for the victim by his willingness to burn with her in Hell, but this love expression is couched within a deeper struggle that Draiman faces--his own path to Hell via shotgun suicide. The cruelty of requiring one to commit suicide in order "to meet [Devon] again," seems like a contingency that Satan would require, considering Satan's evil nature. However, Draiman's God is probably just as evil as Satan if one takes into account the God Draiman insults in the song "Prayer" from the album Believe (2002). Draiman portrays God as one who "compliments [his] sorrow," takes life from [him], "add[s] pain and suffering," "cripples [him] completely," "burns [him] alive inside," manifests nightmares, and "level[s] [him] completely." The views Draiman holds in "Inside the Fire" are consistent with his views from five years ago.

The aesthetics in the video remind me of Rob Zombie's work. Caked blood and matted hair decorate the band members as they play their instruments. All the while, "living dead girlish" shots of Devon flash on the screen. Half the shots key in on her blue, veiny dead body lying in the bathtub in which Draiman has placed her. The other half of the shots seem to depict Devon on the other side of life. With sunken and circled eyes, she creeped me out and made me want to yell to Draiman, "No, don't shoot yourself!! She's not 'all that' beyond our reality!!" But I guess I shouldn't overly concern myself with Draiman's decision; it's just a metaphor. At the end of the video, the fantasy-horror myth fades into the realism that Draiman confronts: After sucking the barrel of the shotgun, the scene cuts to an insane asylum, where Draiman continues his maniacal laugh heard at the beginning of the song, clothed in a straitjacket.

The graphic nature of the video and its message prompted the National Suicide Prevention folks to add the following disclaimer to the end of the video: "The Lifeline is not affiliated with the producer of this video and does not endorse the content of this video." I guess they wanted to disassociate themselves with Draiman's theology and any misunderstandings the video may cause. But regardless, this prevention group supports the theology-neutral message of Draiman's song and video minus the horror movie special effects: Suicide, although a tempting solution, causes pain, and the real victims are the ones left behind to cope.

1. "Euthanasia and Judaism: Jewish Views of Euthanasia and Suicide." ReligionFacts.com. 11 Nov 2005. 11 June 2008. .