Kezia by Protest the Hero Album Review (Minus Plateful of our Dead)

No Stars Over Bethlehem- This song is the first song told from the point of view of the priest presiding over Kezia’s execution. In this first song the listener can clearly see that he has doubts in organized religion. In the beginning of the song the priest states he will “burn all the lives of the sacred illuminati” and he goes on to say: “When St. Michael sized means to find an end to justify”. I believe he is referencing the book of Daniel Chapter 12 where a great angel speaks of the world and the Antichrist, the angel states: "At that time shall Michael rise up, the great prince, who standeth for the children of thy people." The priest is questioning organized religion and he wonders how St. Michael the protectorate of the people could justify protecting them when they are so corrupt that they would allow for the execution of a fellow human being, Kezia. The priest then calls for a crusade against those who corrupted his religion or as he states “a crusade in which to die where lead locusts pierce the heart of men and tie the tongues of those who lie”. In the next few lines of the song the priest speaks of the way that the church has twisted God’s words to supply a mean for their own motives when he states “Someone plunged a dagger deep into God's chest and When he groaned it laid our entire civilization to rest When he pulled out the dagger and marveled at the pain he could create We stuck another in his back to seal creation's fate”. Finally he sarcastically states: “Amen to the fools and the Cossacks and the pulpits Amen to the people who think there's still a way to help us”, in this quote he “thanks” people of high ranking church positions for the current position the church is in and he “wishes luck” to those who are still trying to aid the church in its sad state.

Heretics and Killers- This is the second song written from the point of view of the priest. In this song he dines at the prison with Kezia along with the prison guards including the guard who will become her shooter and who will be the focus of tracks 4-6. In this song he has a period of introspection and he notices that even though he is a priest, representative of honesty and good values, he is now dining with “heathens” and thus he feels he is sinking to their level. He then states, “In wine there's truth but in silence there's surrender” which in itself is a very interesting line because wine in the Catholic religion symbolizes the blood of Christ and of Christ is a very positive symbol in Catholicism. However in the Bible silence has very negative connotations for example Judas denied he knew Jesus “three times before the cock crowed” and kept silent his friendship with him. The priest sees his silence as condoning the actions of the prison guards, mainly their practice of execution. The priest then states, “I built a temple in his life and used God to seal the pillars” which displays how much of his life is based on his religion. Now he is beginning to question the religion that he has dedicated his life to and he wonders how he could possibly continue to read from the bible and repeat the words in it like a “parrot” when he does not truly believe what he preaches. He ends by calling the Bible “a textbook Of my crying, lying, dying history” displaying how he has lost faith in his religion and now sees the Bible as a symbol of his past which is now worthless to him.

Divinity Within- This is the final song told from the priest’s point of view. The setting of this song takes place during the walk out to the prison yard where the execution of Kezia is set to take place and ends just before the execution of Kezia. In this song the priest walks alongside Kezia leading her to the “makeshift valley of death”. While he walks her to her death he remembers her face the night before when he had dinner with her and the prison guards (during the song Heretics and Killers). Primarily the image that haunts him is of her crying while eating her last meal or as he puts it: “Last night I saw you dine with lovers and human tears But glanced at me in ways that brought to life my sleeping fears”. When he recalls her last meal he hopes that she will metaphorically “bite [his] neck” and “peel away the aging skin” which while being somewhat disgusting imagery refers to his hope of being cleansed of the religion he once believed, through peeling away his aging skin he will become a new person, one free of religion. The song ends just before Kezia’s execution where the priest looks for some sort of closure when he asks Kezia her final words.

Bury the Hatchet- This is the first song told from the point of view of the prison guard. Its primary purpose is to display his feeling of the “justice” deals via his abuse and execution of the prisoners. The listener also finds out about his history in the military “serving abroad” and due to his time in the military he believes that God is cold and cruel and the only justice in the world is justice dealt by people like him. In addition to this very cold cruel front that the guard puts on for the prisoners we see that he only carries out his job dutifully because of the paycheck he receives and because without a paycheck and a sense of duty to carry out he has no purpose. He shows this feeling when he states: “It all means nothing if I forget why I'm here to serve and protect my fist over fist mind under matter career”. In the next few verses he states how he carries out his gruesome work “carving x’s” in the eyes of those who have committed crimes. He ends the song stating that despite his cruel outward appearance he “has compassion” and he’s “just been trained to disregard the prisoner’s life” showing he displays some form of regret for the man he has become.

Nautical- In this song we see the “true colors” of the prison guard as he tells us how civil glory has dismembered his civility” or how society has turned him into a monster. He questions whether or not it is correct for society to choose who lives and dies by saying execution is “the closest thing to a fashion trend that’s never been put on trial” displaying society’s obsession with punishing those who have broken its rules. He then goes onto say that those who founded this kind of society have committed the ultimate crime that to him is “the treacherous use of reason” that they use in order to justify the execution that the guard must carry out. The prison guard then regrets that this is the example that his current generation is setting for posterity. The song ends with the words of the prison guard cursing the prison by saying “And I'm still a cigarette softly smoking on the edge of a metal ashtray I begged this place to let me burn, and it whispered, ‘burn away’”. In these final words he basically tells the listener that because of the things he has done he slowly wasting (or burning) away much like a cigarette would.

Blindfolds Aside- This is the last song sang by the prison guard who will execute Kezia. In this song he truly sees that his job as an executioner is immoral because before he has never felt anything about any of the prisoners. Now that he has to kill Kezia, a women who has committed a crime that to him does not fit the punishment, he feels great remorse. As he continues his thoughts throughout the course of the song we see that his fate is truly tied to Kezia’s fate because he likens his hopes and future with her situation, “blindfolded”, meaning primarily hopeless. To the prison guard Kezia truly represents the only hope left in his life, he says this in the line: “And no one ever said that hope would be so beautiful And no one ever said I'd have to pull the trigger on her”. As the song goes on he truly regrets that he has to kill her and he even wishes that he could “still her trembling hands”. The prison guard then states that he and his fellow guards are numbed by the fact they aren’t held responsible if they kill this girl, but he is different because he knows that if he “pulls the screaming trigger” it will psychologically “bleed him dry” because he knows for sure that he has done something wrong. The song ends just before he shoots Kezia as he repeats the phrase stated earlier in the song which is a commentary on his job: “A sin I didn't care for, but a sin that paid my debts A sin that fed my children and burned my smiles and cigarettes”.

She Who Mars the Skin of the Gods- This song, which is told from the point of view of Kezia, shows Kezia’s harsh upbringing and it displays her mother’s harsh view of the world which may have caused her to commit the crime that she has been sentenced to execution for. In the first few sentences the listener understands that Kezia’s mother had a very negative outlook on life when she states: “the warmest of blankets is six feet of soil”. Kezia also talks about how her poor lifestyle and upbringing were the direct effect of her father leaving her mother at her birth, Kezia then looks into a mirror and sees her father’s face staring back which symbolizes Kezia’s mother blaming her for all of her father’s shortcomings. Finally the song comes back to present day Kezia as se is writing a letter to her mother from her prison cell begging her to come and visit. After writing the letter Kezia notices her hope for her mother to come visit her is futile and instead of her mother tucking her in to go to sleep the “shotgun will instead” which obviously is a reference to her execution being close at hand.

Turn Soonest To The Sea- This song is primarily a commentary on the lessened view of women in society. In the beginning of the song Kezia comments on how the Greek goddess Vesta (the goddess of hearth and home) is no protectorate of women rather she is a symbol of female servitude, and this is the first of many things that Kezia begins to notice as one of the “gaping holes in our social fabric”. Later in the song she makes a reference to the book of Genesis when she says “I know we'll wake up one day with a gun to the back of our brains You'll be asking for your rib and I'll smile and call you brave”. In the book of Genesis Adam gives one of his ribs in order for god to create Eve, which creates a sort of “debt” between men and women in the Catholic religion. At the end of the song she notices she is doomed to her fate because of societies view of women. She does exhibit hope for the future in that she hopes that society will see their mistakes and fix them.

The Divine Suicide of K- This is the final song from the point of view of Kezia. It takes place as she is walking down the long hallway out to the prison yard to be executed. In the beginning of this song she begins to accept her inevitable death displayed by the first verse “I better think of my answers now because pretty soon questions will be asked” in this line she is referring to the questions about to be asked by whoever will judge her in the afterlife. She starts to reflect on her current situation and she states that she is being killed “In tattered shoes that aren't even mine Because my own are in a box locked up with possessions I can't have Like the gunman with his future and the prison priest's golden calf”. In this line she liken her shoes which she cant have to the priests golden calf and the prison guards future in that at the moment it is the only thing that is truly bothering her. From this line the listener truly feels sorry for Kezia because Kezia’s problem of facing death and wanting some small amount of comfort, in this case her shoes, makes the prison guard’s future and the priest’s “golden calf” seem fairly unimportant in comparison because no matter how bad their predicaments are they are purely psychological and at no point so far are they truly facing death. Finally the song comes to a close as she reflects on her life and the little girl that she used to be before her mother stole her innocence, and a recent development that she received a letter that the listener can assume was from her mother “resurrected” her. Since her hope is renewed she decides to approach her death knowing that she will “always be Kezia as long as any hope remains”. These are her last words and the song ends before the prison guard executes her but the listener can at least take solace in the fact that she died with some hope left.