My Acolyte Journey: 2014.20

Battle Cry
Imagine Dragons. This song reads awfully familiar. I think I've seen it somewhere before? I must be confused. But then again, I don't think angels scream in the middle of the night, so what do I know?

No, this is a different song that bases its entire identity on the same song as before. But it's different! It has anthemic rock themes and the repeated phrase "do or die" and a message to not waste my life. So I'll come at it from a different perspective.

Here.

The Charge of the Light Brigade was written by Lord Tennyson.
Battle Cry was written by Daniel Reynolds, Daniel Sermon, Benjamin McKee, and Daniel Platzman.
LB was a dramatized recounting of a real occurrence in which hundreds of men were willfully driven to their deaths by a pillock who didn't think about human lives.
BC is a song.
LB uses its repetition to drive the narrative, and uses subtle and overt changes in the repeated lines to drive home the point of the poem.
BC repeats stuff in order to build the structure of the song, to rise and fall with the cadence of the music, and to stick in your head.
LB makes me cry in quiet moments. Let's find out what BC does.

[I can see the smoke drifting through the trees toward us. It brings the acrid smell of sulphur, brimstone, and men's cramped sweat. I'm revolted by my own hand as it lifts my sabre high above my head, pushing a final thrust toward the enemy line.
I can feel more than hear the hoofbeats crescendo behind me, thundrous and loud. We're making the only sound in the valley, now filling up with the thick staccato, choking me with the smoke and tears. I can barely breathe.
The level plain, full of ruts, holes, and blood.
The upward incline is suddenly full of shot and cannon. Lead laces the air. There's no more smoke, no more sound, no more fear. I've been built for this moment, I think.
I then notice I'm on the ground. I've been knocked, thrown, spewed from my horse and I'm pushing the last of my life's blood into the sodden soil. I hear the line break and my men gallop back past me, back to our hill, but this time the air is not filled. The stillness is instead punctuated by solitary men, the last of a proud formation.]

The song is suitably epic. I do feel like the music tells a better story than the words though. Right near the crescendo of the crashing rock, I feel like my place is in a thunderstorm, yelling and posing like the wind and rain have the power to knock me down and I need to fight for my right to scream into the uncaring crash.

I wouldn't buy this. I would look for it when I was in a bad mood and spoiling for war, and I would reach out my hand and I would not find it.