This song compares moderate people who stand for nothing beyond their own comfort to machines, likening them to automatons or cogs in a larger system that keeps them bound and subdued.

The following paragraph is an excerpt from Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr. The sentiment has always felt profound to me, because I see complacency the primary force that keeps our culture stuck in limbo, suspended between comfort and contempt.

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

With that in mind, you can better understand the meaning behind lines like:

“Still, most of you hoes’ moral codes come with plot holes
Like a sponge soaking up evil out here
It’s either all or nothing
But the tempest skies gray, fall for something, huh
Nervous, pull up and wreck
Head scrambled so you can’t recollect
Lurking, lagoon in the depths
Just a creature going through the steps”

One of my favorite lines in the song is, “Growing up, my dad looked like Truman,” because he really does look like Jim Carrey, but it’s also a reference to The Truman Show. It emphasizes how modern media and power systems try to keep us placated, comfortable inside an illusion of safety. Even though, like Truman, deep down most of us would rather live free, we worry the steps required to reach that freedom would be too uncomfortable to take, similar to Truman’s fear of water in the film.

Another part of the meaning behind this song that isn’t obvious from the lyrics alone is tied to Creature from the Black Lagoon. When the movie was released, it was filmed using 3D technology, but many viewers watched it without the intended glasses. I read that it was typically shown in 3D in large downtown theaters and shown flat in smaller neighborhood theaters. That detail felt symbolic to me: a way to represent the divide between metropolitan and rural America, and a reminder that we’re often shown different “pictures” of reality, shaped and manipulated by news and algorithms.

The song is also intended to be a sonic representation of characters from my Magnullium comic series. These characters are aquatic androids whose consciousness was downloaded using ancient, organic forms of technology. While the minds inside these androids originally belonged to people from the Overworld, they are now trapped in the Underworld, yet still maintain a degree of influence over powerful people in the Overworld.

In an effort to restore their dominion and escape the Underworld’s confines, the androids puppet powerful people to do their bidding. Those people are persuaded to help because they’re promised immortality through the androids’ technology, which has been lost in the Overworld for millennia.